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

by Edward Ellis Morris

"How any man could have been such an idiot as to attempt to make a cultivation paddock on a bed of clay passed all my knowledge.'

<hw>Curlew</hw>, <i>n</i>. common English bird-name. The Australian species is <i>Numenius cyanopus</i>, Vieill. The name, however, is more generally applied to <i>AEdicnemus grallarius</i>, Lath.

1862. H. C. Kendall, `Poems,' p. 43:

"They rend the air like cries of despair,
The screams of the wild curlew."

1872. C. H. Eden, `My Wife and I in Queensland,' p. 18:

"Truly the most depressing cry I ever heard is that of the curlew, which you take no notice of in course of time; but which to us, wet, weary, hungry, and strange, sounded most eerie."

1890. `Victorian Statutes, Game Act, Third Schedule':

"Southern Stone Plover or Curlew."

1894. `The Argus,' June 23, p. 11, col. 4:

"The calling of the stone plover. It might as well be a curlew at once, for it will always be a curlew to country people. Its first call, with the pause between, sounds like `Curlew'—that is, if you really want it to sound so, though the blacks get much nearer the real note with `Koo-loo,' the first syllable sharp, the second long drawn out."