Golden Words: List of Boldrewood's Phrases/Cultural Contexts Concerned with Gold, Gold Mining and Their Societies

A: • 'aboriginal natives' n. phrase, used especially of the more wild indigenous people in the desert parts of the continent, and so often near prospectors. LC 37 [water courses] were far apart and the aboriginal natives were indifferent or hostile - in any case, averse, from their standpoint, to point out or conduct the party to the inestimable waterstore. • 'absconder' n. special [and non-convict] sense of someone leaving his normal work as a reliable employee to go off hastily/irresponsibly to a new goldfield. RuA 212 The whole country was full of absconders and deserters, servants and shepherds, shopmen, soldiers and sailors - all running away from their work, and making in a blind sort of way for the diggings, like a lot of caterpillars on the march. ... • 'adventure' abstract noun, used reflectively in 1905 of the earlier gold seeking. LC 448 'And suffered too,' said his father. 'You must not forget that side of the adventure; it is, or rather was, very essential.' 'I suppose there was a good deal of that ingredient mixed up with the gold and the glory of the earlier days of the Field.'