1890. Tasma, `In her Earliest Youth,' p. 122:
"It pleased him yearly to see the fluffy yellow balls bedeck his favourite trees. One would have said in the morning that a shower of golden shot had bespangled them in the night-time. Late in the autumn, too, an adventurous wattle would sometimes put forth some semi-gilded sprays—but sparsely, as if under protest."
1896. J. B. O`Hara, `Songs of the South' (Second Series), p. 22:
"Yet the spring shed blossoms around the ruin,
The pale pink hues of the wild briar rose,
The wild rose wasted by winds that blew in
The wattle bloom that the sun-god knows."
<hw>Wattle-and-Dab</hw>, a rough mode of architecture, very common in Australia at an early date. The phrase and its meaning are Old English. It was originally <i>Wattle-and-daub</i>. The style, but not the word, is described in the quotation from Governor Phillip, 1789.
1789. Governor Phillip, `Voyage to Botany Bay,' p. 124:
"The huts of the convicts were still more slight, being composed only of upright posts, wattled with slight twigs, and plaistered up with clay."
1836. Ross, `Hobart Town Almanack,' p. 66:
"<i>Wattle and daub</i>. . . . You then bring home from the bush as many sods of the black or green wattle (<i>acacia decurrens</i> or <i>affinis</i>) as you think will suffice. These are platted or intertwined with the upright posts in the manner of hurdles, and afterwards daubed with mortar made of sand or loam, and clay mixed up with a due proportion of the strong wiry grass of the bush chopped into convenient lengths and well beaten up with it, as a substitute for hair."
1848. W. Westgarth, `Australia Felix,' p. 201: