Counting Sheep

I'm done looking at the City of Melbourne site for now. Now I'm exploring Freshwater.net. It's a Melbourne website that talks about Aboriginal people, natural history, and conservation...maybe other stuff as well.

I learned something fun and interesting on this page regarding the adoption of Aboriginal words into the society of white folks.

In the song "Waltzing Matilda", the sheep is referred to as a jumbuck. The word comes from an Aboriginal language. BUT there was no sheep in Australia before the white people came. So, why would they have a word for sheep? Well, the word jumbuck originally meant cloud. And the sheep reminded some Aboriginal people of clouds.

I liked that little story.


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