AustLit

Author's note: King George's Sound, July, 1890.

In publishing the above I wish to thank a new chum friend of mine for the loan (and the loneliness) of his diary. Taken almost word for word from the speech of an old eastern bushman, he said, 'For Gorsake len' us yer little fly-catchin veil; the flies are a-worrit, worrit, worrit - narm the eyes out of me!' Worrit is evidently used to express the action of worrying; but I dare not attempt to give a derivation of the word 'narm' or 'knarm' (if word it really is), though by the sound of it it certainly does seem expressive of the intended meaning. The bushman in question came of a Kentish family, but this goes for nothing; in the backblocks of Australia the 'home' dialects become so mixed and blended that they often produce the most extraordinary and, I may say, the most expressive words.