Talk:The bush

This article is rated Start-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects:

Alaska Australia The bush is within the scope of WikiProject Australia, which aims to improve Wikipedia's coverage of Australia and Australia-related topics. If you would like to participate, visit the project page.AustraliaWikipedia:WikiProject AustraliaTemplate:WikiProject AustraliaAustralia articles ??? This article has not yet received a rating on the project's importance scale. Need help improving this article? Ask a LibrarianWhat's this? at the National Library of Australia. The Wikimedia Australia chapter can be contacted via email to helpwikimedia.org.au for non-editorial assistance. Canada: Geography Low‑importance Low This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale. This article is supported by WikiProject Geography of Canada. project's importance scale .

	New Zealand Low‑importance
Low This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

South Africa

This article is within the scope of WikiProject South Africa, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of South Africa on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.South AfricaWikipedia:WikiProject South AfricaTemplate:WikiProject South AfricaSouth Africa articles ??? This article has not yet received a rating on the project's importance scale.

Would bits on bushtucker and bushranger be relevant here or should they be 'see also's? — Preceding unsigned comment added by SeanMack (talk • contribs) 15:06, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Definitely 'see also's' the way this article is going! — Preceding unsigned comment added by JarrahTree (talk • contribs) 00:49, 23 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Article Bushland might be a good place for the above links? Asa01 01:54, 23 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Trying to make head or tail of the bush mess is bad enough for an editor, what about a genuine seeker of info from wikipedia? The Bush (Australian) was put into a global context in The Bush article, now its pointed out there is a bushland article which is duplicating The Bush (Australian) original intent. someone needs to start a disambig of Bush---- phrases from the Australian context, with a possibility that bushland needs an afd, and be absorbed into The Bush, australian section, and bushtucker (which should be two words, and bushranger linked to the mother of articles - the bush. Anyone?SatuSuro 02:58, 23 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Why does this article have "The" in the title? Refer

• It falls under the exception in the policy you referred to, ie specific uses allowed under this convention: If a word without a definite article would have a general meaning, while the same word has a specific and identifiable meaning, understood by all, if adding the article, and if there is justification to have separate articles for both meanings, the specific meaning can be explained on a separate page, with a page title including the article.. The bush is not the same as bush--A Y Arktos\^talk 23:38, 11 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm in Melbourne and have never heard this term before "Sydney or the Bush". Maybe more a Sydney phrase? Just how common in it? Asa01 19:26, 11 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• For what its worth, it is a phrase I am familiar with. It gets 746 Google hits See for example this ABC discussion, this album title, this article by Workers Online--A Y Arktos\^talk 23:35, 11 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• While it is a well known term the meaning given currently in the article, is Another related term used in Australia is "Sydney or the Bush", which equates with such terms as "Hollywood or bust" to mean staking total success or failure on one high-risk event. is not a common one. I have asked for a source to be cited. The meaning I am familiar with is reference to the divide between the two, see for example, [1] which refers to "the old paradigm of Australia's divided self - Sydney or the Bush" or "The bush is going bust while the cities boom." at [2]. I have sought a reference for the article's assertion--A Y Arktos\^talk 23:48, 11 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• as the person who added that item to the artice, AY has asked me to provide a reference, which - to be honest - I can't find. The place I've heard the phrase most is in one-day cricket, where it's very commonly used by commentators referring to players needing to risk everything by slogging in the last few overs. Perhaps, weirdly, it's a phrase more used in New Zealand than Australia! Grutness...wha? 00:43, 12 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• I confess to not being a cricket-watcher, although I did enjoy the commentary a couple of years ago by I think it was Harsha Bhogle - he was brilliant but probably not going to use the idiom Sydney or the Bush :-) I am happy to abide with Wikipedia:Common knowledge#Should I believe what other editors say?, ie I believe Grutness, but I think the article should be clarified and give also the more general Australian meaning of divide between the two.--A Y Arktos\^talk 01:04, 12 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The only time I've ever heard this is in a Peanuts comic. There was a series of them, where Charlie Brown's sister Sally chants "Sydney or the Bush!" at every opportunity. It seems to roughly have the "all or nothing" connotation. Bear in mind that CB is an old comic (the 50s?), from the US. I had speculated that it was a reference to the colonisation of Australia, where if the settlement at Sydney cove had failed, the settlers would have found themselves in the bush. But I think I was wrong. :) I also note another reference at List of songs about Sydney. Stevage 13:49, 26 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Heh, see The Inbreds too. Stevage 13:51, 26 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The phrase is used twice in the animated cartoon "A Boy Named Charlie Brown" (1969), whose writing is credited to Charles Schulz. In context, it appears to mean "all or nothing". The second use of the phrase comes as the spelling bee that will make or break Charlie's reputation with his friends is about to begin. Pig Pen comments, "It's Sydney or the bush for Charlie Brown." (NTSC version time code 2.06.00) I'll leave the first instance for another industrious soul. Bocomo 18:34, 26 May 2006 (UTC)Bocomo[reply]

I've foud a couple of "second-hand" references - websites quoting an Australian slang dictionary and Australian companion to Literature, both of which use the term. Unfortunately I don't have copies of the original books available to me, but hopefully someone can work it through from there. Grutness...wha? 23:53, 16 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

At some point we seem to have lost the subsection on Australia in this article, which IIRC had a panoramic picture with in of the more open country often referred to in Oz as the bush. Anyone feel like hunting through the page's history... or does an Aussie editor want to have a crack and writing a description of what The Bush refers to to them? Grutness...wha? 00:23, 3 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I wonder if the definition of "Bush" in the New Zealand context is too specific. Bush is often used to refer to areas of native "scrubland" that was cleared of native trees during the 19th and early 20th centuries. It is regenerating and is some of the most beautiful "bush" in New Zealand. Ferns, vines and younger trees. Much of the southern North Island is covered in such "bush".

Kiwi Spartan (talk) 18:28, 2 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Where are we getting this definition of bush as a waterless, grassless, eucalypt woodland? That's not a usage that I have ever heard. While such areas may be bush, so are areas of tropical rainforest, or mitchell grasslands, or alpine pasture, or open eucalypt forests.

Probably the most well-known description of what is explicitly "The Bush" is from "Clancy of the Overflow". But Patterson's bush in that was a landscape of "sunlit plains extended" characterised by "the river on its bars". Hardly consistent with a rugged eucalypt scrub with no water and no grass. In other works Patterson describes the bush as having "gasses waving like a field of summer grain" and "mighty rivers with a turbid, sweeping flood." Even more odd is that, according to this definition, "The Man from Snowy River' didn't take place in "The Bush"

I really have no idea where this concept of the bush has come from, but it doesn't gel with the common usage of the last 150 years.Mark Marathon (talk) 02:17, 7 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It's almost an article just about Australia and New Zealand. No mention of Taxi Brousses (bush taxis) in Francophone Africa? Also maybe the definition given by the Oxford Dictionaries is worth including: "Middle English from Old French bos, bosc, variants of bois ‘wood’, reinforced by Old Norse buski, of Germanic origin and related to Dutch bos and German Busch. The sense ‘uncultivated country’ is probably directly from Dutch bos." The Canadian section is a bit limp too. Logging isn't something that just happens in the north. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 114.198.57.160 (talk) 01:26, 17 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Opinions are welcome on the best way to present the entry for this article on the dab page Bush. Please comment at Talk:Bush#The bush. Thanks! – Uanfala (talk) 22:10, 21 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]