Australia 's 1889 painting
Down on His Luck shows a
swagman camping in the bush. McCubbin and other members of the
Heidelberg School art movement depicted the bush in many of their paintings, contributing to its mythological status within
Australian culture. The term "the bush" was imprinted in developing Australian English as a sign of settlers’ attempts to relate to their adopted country, so very different from the green British and Irish landscapes familiar to them, to refer at first to
wilderness, and then to any sparsely inhabited region, regardless of vegetation. "The bush" in this sense became an iconic concept uniquely Australian a signifier also of a pioneering or adventuring spirit. Early uses of the term appear from the late 1700s, and in the 1839 compilation
A Voice from the Bush in Australia, in which unnamed immigrants' letters are reproduced. Conversely, the word attached to fear of the unknown, as a place of danger from bushfire, venomous or predatory creatures, and hostile
Aboriginals, a vast interior in which settlers, especially their children, could be lost, the latter most notably being the theme of
Joan Lindsay's 1967 novel
Picnic at Hanging Rock. The term "
Outback" is also used, but usually in association with the more arid inland areas of Australia, as is, to a lesser degree "
mulga". "The bush" also refers to any populated region outside of the major metropolitan areas, including mining and
agricultural areas. Consequently, it is not unusual to have a mining town in the desert such as
Port Hedland (population 14,000) referred to as "the bush".
The First Nations over thousands of years developed ways of utilising natural resources for
survival, mainly with
bush tucker and the physical and spiritual healing of
bush medicine. and
bushfires, an ever-present hazard in many areas in summer months, have become more frequent with increasing
suburbanisation of the Australian population. The bush is a frequent theme or setting in Australian literature.
Bush poets such as
Henry Lawson, in such works as
The Bush Girl (1901) or
The Bush Undertaker (1892) and
Banjo Paterson in
''A Bushman's Song (1892),
In Defence of the Bush (1892), or
A Bush Christening'' (1893), revered the bush as a source of national ideals, as did contemporaneous painters in the
Heidelberg School such as
Tom Roberts (1856–1931),
Arthur Streeton (1867–1943) and
Frederick McCubbin (1855–1917). Romanticising the bush in this way through
folklore cultivated 19th-century Australians' development of a distinct
self-identity. Thus Australians, New Zealanders and South Africans attach the term "bush" to any number of other entities or activities to describe their rural, country or folk nature; improvised "bush
cricket", "
bush music" (Australian folk music); "bush
doof"; and the word
bushranger, for the 19th-century criminals mainly in the eastern colonies who hid in the bush to escape from authorities. To be "bushed" is to be lost or exhausted.
New Zealand in
Fiordland. In New Zealand,
bush primarily refers to areas of native trees rather than exotic forests. However, the word is also used in the Australian sense of anywhere outside urban areas, encompassing grasslands as well as forests. Areas with bush (i.e. native forest) are found in both the
North Island and the
South Island, some of it bordering towns and cities, but the majority of bush is found in large national parks. Examples of predominantly bush clad areas are
Whanganui National Park, on
Taranaki volcano, on which the bush extends in a uniformly circular shape to the surrounding farmland, and
Fiordland in the South Island. Much of
Stewart Island/Rakiura is bush-covered. In the
North Island, the largest areas of bush cover the main ranges stretching north-northeast from
Wellington towards
East Cape, notably including the
Urewera Ranges, and the catchment of the
Whanganui River. Significant stands remain in Northland and the ranges running south from the Coromandel Peninsula towards Ruapehu, and isolated remnants cap various volcanoes in Taranaki, the Waikato, the Bay of Plenty and the Hauraki Gulf. From the word comes many phrases including: • bush-bash – to make one's way through the forest, rather than on a track or trail (
cf. American English "bushwhack[ing]", "bushwack[ing]", or "bush-whack[ing]"). • bush shirt – a woolen shirt or
Swanndri, often worn by forest workers. •
bush lawyer – the name of a number of native climbing plants or a layman who expounds on legal matters. • bush walk – short day walks (
hikes) in the bush • going bush – to live in the bush for an extended period of time, which may include "living off the land" by means of hunting or fishing. • bushman – Used in the 19th century for New Zealand loggers. The term still stands for someone that lives in the bush as a means of preferable lifestyle.
South Africa In South Africa, the term () has specific connotations of rural areas which are not open
veldt. Generally, it refers to areas in the north of the country that would be called
savanna. "Going to The Bush" (
Bos toe Gaan) often refers to going to a game park or game reserve. Areas most commonly referred to as The Bush are the
Mpumalanga and
Limpopo Lowveld, The
Limpopo River Valley, northern
KwaZulu-Natal or any other similar area of wilderness.
United States (Alaska) and Canada The Bush in Alaska is generally described as any community not "on the road system", making it accessible only by more elaborate transportation. Usage is similar in Canada; it is called
la brousse or colloquially
le bois in
Canadian French. In Canada, "the bush" refers to large expanses of forest and swampland which sprawl undeveloped, as well as any forested area. ==Related terms==