send bush

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send bush (third-person singular simple present sends bush, present participle sending bush, simple past and past participle sent bush)

1. (Australia, transitive) To send away into the bush (etymology 3)
   • 1938, Xavier Herbert, chapter XI, in Capricornia‎, New York: D. Appleton-Century, published 1943, page 174:

     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.

   • 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

     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

     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.

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

     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.