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Verb

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send bush (third-person singular simple present sends bush, present participle sending bush, simple past and past participle sent bush)

  1. (Australia, transitive) To send away into the bush (etymology 3)
    • 1938, Xavier Herbert, chapter XI, in Capricornia[1], New York: D. Appleton-Century, published 1943, page 174:
      Being unable to bring him up to town because the river was in flood at the time, he had given him a good hiding and sent him bush.
    • 1962, William Leonard Joy, The Birth of a Nation: The Story of Early Australia, Specially Commissioned by the Sunday Telegraph, Sydney, NSW, Shakespeare Head Press, p. 136 [2]
      Faced with famine, he armed the best shots among his convicts and sent them bush to hunt kangaroos and emus. He thus started a menace that plagued the colony for years, for, when supplies were adequate, the kangaroo hunters refused to resume their servitude in town.
    • 1992, Bryan Clark, Yammatji: Aboriginal Memories of the Gascoyne, Hesperian Press, p. 119 [3]
      The mustering teams consisted of about twenty men. They were sent bush for up to six months, forbidden to return to the precincts of the homestead unless summoned.
    • 1997, Rosalind Kidd, chapter 6, in The Way We Civilise: Aboriginal Affairs, the Untold Story[4], St Lucia, QLD: University of Queensland Press, page 168:
      But from Aurukun, where all the children were sent bush with their parents as a war precaution, MacKenzie feared that ready availability of cash would spell the end for traditional skills.