send bush

present singular third person sends bush · participle present sending bush · participle past sent bush · past sent bush

1. AustraliatransitiveTo send away into the bush (etymology 3)

   Being unable to bring him up to town because the river was in flood at the time, he had given him a good hiding and sent him bush.

   1938, Xavier Herbert, chapter XI, in Capricornia, New York: D. Appleton-Century, published 1943, page 174

   3 more examples

   1962, William Leonard Joy, The Birth of a Nation: The Story of Early Australia, Specially Commissioned by the Sunday Telegraph, Sydney, NSW, Shakespeare Head Press, p. 136 https://books.google.ca/books?id=P4UrAAAAIAAJ&q=%22send+him+bush%22+OR+%22send+them+bush%22+OR+%22sent+him+bush%22+OR+%22sent+them+bush%22+-george+-president&dq=%22send+him+bush%22+OR+%22send+them+bush%22+OR+%22sent+him+bush%22+OR+%22sent+them+bush%22+-george+-president&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiMvcm88PrMAhUMwGMKHee0BOYQ6AEILDAD Faced with famine, he armed the best shots among his convicts and sent them bush to hunt kangaroos and emus. He thus started a menace that plagued the colony for years, for, when supplies were adequate, the kangaroo hunters refused to resume their servitude in town.

   1992, Bryan Clark, Yammatji: Aboriginal Memories of the Gascoyne, Hesperian Press, p. 119 https://books.google.ca/books?id=C_UXAQAAMAAJ&q=%22sent+bush%22+-george+-president&dq=%22sent+bush%22+-george+-president&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjk4IzP7_rMAhUBXGMKHVB5D6sQ6AEI0AMwVg The mustering teams consisted of about twenty men. They were sent bush for up to six months, forbidden to return to the precincts of the homestead unless summoned.

   But from Aurukun, where all the children were sent bush with their parents as a war precaution, MacKenzie feared that ready availability of cash would spell the end for traditional skills.

   1997, Rosalind Kidd, chapter 6, in The Way We Civilise: Aboriginal Affairs, the Untold Story, St Lucia, QLD: University of Queensland Press, page 168