"The hot winds which resemble the siroccos in Sicily are, however, a drawback . . . but they are almost invariably succeeded by what is there called a `brickfielder,' which is a strong southerly wind, which soon cools the air, and greatly reduces the temperature."
[Here the cold temperature of the brickfielder is described, but not its <i>dust</i>, and the writer compares the hot wind which precedes the brickfielder with the sirocco. He in fact thinks only of the heat of the sirocco, but the two preceding writers are thinking of its sand, its thick haze, its quality of <i>blackness</i> and its suffocating character,—all which applied accurately to the true <i>brickfielder</i>.]
1853. Rev. H. Berkeley Jones, `Adventures in Australia in 1852 and 1853,' p. 228:
"After the languor, the lassitude, and enervation which some persons experience during these hot blasts, comes the `Brickfielder,' or southerly burster."
[Cold temperature noticed, but not <i>dust</i>.]
1853. `Fraser's Magazine,' 48, p. 515:
"When the wind blows strongly from the southward, it is what the Sydney people call a `brickfielder'; that is, it carries with it dense clouds of red dust or sand, like brick dust, swept from the light soil which adjoins the town on that side, and so thick that the houses and streets are actually hidden; it is a darkness that may be felt."
[Here it is the <i>dust</i>, not the temperature, which determines the name.]
(2) The very opposite to the original meaning,—a severe hot wind. In this inverted sense the word is now used, but not frequently, in Melbourne and in Adelaide, and sometimes even in Sydney, as the following quotations show. It will be noted that one of them (1886) observes the original prime characteristic of the wind, its <i>dust</i>.
1861. T. McCombie,' Australian Sketches,' p. 79: