Austral English / A dictionary of Australasian words, phrases and usages with those aboriginal-Australian and Maori words which have become incorporated in the language, and the commoner scientific words that have had their origin in Australasia - Edward Ellis Morris

(2) The panic rush of sheep, cattle, or other animals at the sight or smell of water.

1891: "The Breakaway," title of picture by Tom Roberts at Victorian Artists' Exhibition.

<hw>Bream</hw>, n. The name is applied in Australia to various species of Chrysophrys, family Sparidae, and to other fishes of different families. The Black-Bream (q.v.) is C. australis, Gunth. The Bony-Bream is also called the Sardine (q.v.). The Silver-Bream (q.v.) or White-Bream is Gerres ovatus, Gunth., family Percidae. The Red-Bream is a Schnapper (q.v.) one year old. The popular pronunciation is Brim, and the fishes are all different from the various fishes called Bream in the northern hemisphere. See also Tarwhine and Blue-fish.

<hw>Brickfielder</hw>, n. (1) Originally a Sydney name for a cold wind, blowing from the south and accompanied by blinding clouds of dust; identical with the later name for the wind, the Southerly Buster (q.v.). The brickfields lay to the south of Sydney, and when after a hot wind from the west or north-west, the wind went round to the south, it was accompanied by great clouds of dust, brought up from the brickfields. These brickfields have long been a thing of the past, surviving only in "Brickfield Hill," the hilly part of George Street, between the Cathedral and the Railway Station. The name, as denoting a cold wind, is now almost obsolete, and its meaning has been very curiously changed and extended to other colonies to denote a very hot wind. See below (Nos. 2 and 3), and the notes to the quotations.

1833. Lieut. Breton, R.N., `Excursions in New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land,' p. 293:

"It sometimes happens that a change takes place from a hot wind to a `brickfielder,' on which occasions the thermometer has been known to fall, within half an hour, upwards of fifty degrees! That is to say, from above 100 degrees to 50 degrees! A brickfielder is a southerly wind, and it takes its local name from the circumstances of its blowing over, and bringing into town the flames [sic] of a large brick-field: it is nearly as detestable as a hot wind."

[Lieut. Breton must have had a strong imagination. The brickfields, at that date, were a mile away from the town, and the bringing in of their flames was an impossibility. Perhaps, however, the word is a misprint for fumes; yet even then this earliest quotation indicates part of the source of the subsequent confusion of meaning. The main characteristic of the true brickfielder was neither flames nor fumes,—and certainly not heat,—but choking dust.]

1839. W. H. Leigh, `Reconnoitering Voyages, Travels, and Adventures in the new Colony of South Australia,' etc., p. 184:

"Whirlwinds of sand come rushing upon the traveller, half blinding and choking him,—a miniature sirocco, and decidedly cousin-german to the delightful sandy puffs so frequent at Cape Town. The inhabitants call these miseries `Brickfielders,' but why they do so I am unable to divine; probably because they are in their utmost vigour on a certain hill here, where bricks are made."

[This writer makes no allusion to the temperature of the wind, whether hot or cold, but lays stress on its especial characteristic, the dust. His comparison with the sirocco chiefly suggests the clouds of sand brought by that wind from the Libyan Desert, with its accompanying thick haze and darkness (`half blinding and choking'), rather than its relaxing warmth.]