growling grass frog - Litoria reniformis, sometimes called the southern bell frog, was once very common but appears to now be in decline. They are similar in appearance and habit to the green and golden bell frog. Adults can grow to between 80mm - 95mm in length and are cannibalistic. They breed in summer and are found in vegetation at the edges of waterways.

grubber - (cricket) ball that goes along the ground.

Grummet Island - the penal station at Sarah Island in Macquarie Harbour was set up for two central reasons - firstly as a place where the worst convicts and those who had escaped from other settlements could be banished. The only means of access was through a narrow channel known as Hell's Gates, which resulted in the death of many convicts before they even reached the settlement. As the island was separated from the mainland by treacherous seas and then from the settled areas of the colony by mountainous wilderness, the odds of escape from Sarah Island were particularly poor. The surveyor who mapped out the site concluded that the chances of escape were "next to impossible". A tiny nearby island, Grummet Island, was used as a place of solitary confinement. There was at least one recorded escape, however; bushranger Matthew Brady was among a party that escaped to Hobart in 1824 after tying up their overseer and seizing a boat. Convict Alexander Pearce also managed to escape twice, both times cannabalising his fellow escapees.

grundies - (rhyming slang) undies; underwear.

grungy - no-hoper.

grunter - 1. a prostitute. 2. a pig.

GST - Goods and Services Tax.

Guanaba Indigenous Protected Area - adjoins Mount Tambourine National Park in the high priority South East Queensland bioregion. Guanaba is approximately 100ha in size and is composed of largely original vegetation of the Mount Tamborine escarpment, which has significant biological value. Guanaba was declared as an IPA in November 2000. The Ngarang Wal Land council who hold title to the property plan to manage the property as an IUCN Category IV Habitat/Species Management area. The Guanaba property has significant biological and cultural values. The Tambourine escarpment is a diverse complex of ten ecosystems with 945 species of plants and 211 terrestrial vertebrate fauna, and is the stronghold for several species that are rare and threatened. The fauna on the escarpment includes 36 mammal, 28 reptile, 15 amphibian and 132 bird species. Of these, twenty-eight species are listed as rare, threatened or culturally significant under the Queensland Nature Conservation Legislation Amendment Regulation (No.2) 1997. The landowners are working with the Queensland Department, the Gold Coast City Council and Griffith University to develop options for protecting the property and for incorporating research and cultural activities into their management of the property.

Gubbi-Gubbi - an Aboriginal people of the Gympie-Cooloola Coast, southern Fraser Island and the northern Sunshine Coast hinterland region near Noosa in South East Queensland.

guernsey - 1. a garment that is pulled over the head (first recorded in 1907) taking its name from that particular Channel island which produces a distinctive cloth (references to guernsey coats go back to the mid-19th century). 2. a football jersey.

guff - nonsense; rubbish; baloney.

guinea - (hist.) a gold coin equalling 21 shillings; most often used (when used by the common man) in the payment of professional fees.

guinea-flower - any of several species belonging to the genus Hibbertia, bearing golden-yellow flowers. It is an understorey shrub that is very common in open forest. While it flowers most profusely in late winter and spring, some flowers can be found in all seasons. The guinea-flower prefers scrubland and open forest on sandy soils. In Sydney it is widespread from the coast to the mountains, and throughout NSW except in the far west; also in Queensland and Victoria. A quick-growing, hardy plant tolerant of poor soils, direct sun and drought, it is utilised in regeneration programs as well as being widely found in suburban gardens.

Gulaga the Mother Mountain - the centre of creation for all Yuin people and one of the most significant Aboriginal spiritual sites in Australia. The indigenous Aboriginal people tell you to look at Gulaga from two different angles and you can see a man and a woman.Gulaga (Wallaga Lake) National Park encompasses a landscape of great spiritual significance to the local Aboriginal people and of particular significance to Aboriginal women. Named Mount Dromedary by Captain Cook because it looked like the shape of a camel with its bumps, it is today part of the 4600ha Gulaga National Park, which has been handed back to the Aboriginal custodians. Located 10km north of Bermagui along the Wallaga Lake Road.

gulf - a body of water forming a coastal indentation in which the mouth is narrower than the magnitude of the indentation.

Gulf Coastal bioregion - gently undulating plains with scattered rugged areas on Proterozoic sandstones and Tertiary sediments; sandy red earths and shallow gravelly sandy soils; Darwin stringybark woodland with spinifex understorey.

Gulf Country - a Queensland regional area characterised by a myriad of stream channels that flow westward to the Norman River. Joining with the Saxby and Flinders, these three rivers drain northwards towards the extensive depositional plains and shallow waters of the Gulf of Carpentaria. During the Wet season (October to May), these streams transform the surrounding low, flat, arid plains into inland seas. The engorged rivers may eventually overflow their banks to join each other over tens of kilometres, effectively isolating communities. The discovery of the areas now known as the Gulf Country was exclusively a Dutch maritime affair. By the beginning of the 17th century the Dutch East India Company was looking to extend its influence and increase its profits. In line with this policy the Dyfken was dispatched in 1605. The expedition sailed down the south-west coast of New Guinea, missed Torres Strait entirely and entered the Gulf of Carpentaria. The knowledge that an unknown coast lay to the south prompted the Dutch East India Company to send out another expedition in 1623. The expedition gave the first descriptions of the northern coast of Australia.

Gulf Fall and Uplands bioregion - undulating terrain with scattered low, steep hills on Proterozoic and Palaeozoic sedimentary rocks often overlain by lateritised Tertiary material; skeletal soils and shallow sands; Darwin boxwoo and variable-barked bloodwood woodland to low open woodland with spinifex understorey.

Gulf of Carpentaria - a large bay shared by the Northern Territory and Queensland; and a shallow sea between Australia and New Guinea. It is less than 70m deep in the middle and is part of the Australian continent, although intermittently hidden by a rise in sea level. Lying entirely within the tropics the area is subject to constantly high temperatures and 12 daily hours of daylight almost year-round. The monsoon assures alternating cycles of flood and drought as well as high levels of cyclonic activity. Run-off from the heavy rains shifts large quantities of sediment into southern coastal habitats and recharges aquifers. The Gulf of Carpentaria is one of four major drainage systems in northern Australia, and is virtually all Aboriginal land. Islands in the gulf include the Sir Edward Pellew Group belonging to the Yanyuwa people; Manangoora, its shores still lined with the cycad palms that were once a staple food of the local Garawa people; Groote Eylandt, the largest of the Gulf’s islands, and Numbulwar.

Gulf Plains bioregion - marine and terrestrial deposits of the Carpentaria Basin and the Karumba Basin; plains plateaus and outwash plains; woodlands and grasslands.

Gulf Savannah - a bioregion within tropical north Queensland covering 186,000sq km extending from the Great Dividing Range in the east to the Northern Territory border. In the west the Gulf Savannah region begins just south-west of Ravenshoe in the Atherton Tablelands and heads west to the Northern Territory border along the Gulf of Carpentaria. The region is a safari country of golden savannah grasslands abounding with wildlife, and is the essence of Australia as it once was.

Gulf snapping turtle - Elseya lavarackorum, a brown to dark brown turtle growing to 35cm with an undulating suture between the hemeral and pectoral shieds in the plastron and white underbelly. It was unknown before 1995 except as a 25,000-year-old fossil from the Riversleigh fossil site. Discovered in a river that drains into the Gulf of Carpentaria, this ‘living fossil’ is one of the largest freshwater turtles in Australia.

Gulf St Vincent - the ending point of the Flinders Ranges. Adelaide, the capital city of South Australia, was founded on the eastern coastal plain of the Gulf after Matthew Flinders demonstrated in 1802 that the York Peninsula separates the Gulf St Vincent from Spencer Gulf. gull into - dupe fool. Gullibul - an Aboriginal people of the New South Wales.

gully gum - Eucalyptus smithii is used primarily for oil production. It is found native along coastal areas of New South Wales, growing on the lower slopes of hills and on the edges of swamps and streams. In higher, colder elevations it is reduced to a mallee form. The bark sheds from the upper branches in long ribbons and remains hanging in the crown to expose a smooth white or cream bark. The bark on the lower trunk is dark brown. Leaves are long and narrow and heavily scented. Favors cool to warm-humid to sub-humid climate. Flower color white. Growth rate moderate to fast. Also known as gully peppermint, blackbutt peppermint.

gully peppermint - (see: gully gum).

gum - 1. a general term for any eucalypt. 2. the resin of a gum tree. Aborigines used the gum from the trunk to treat burns wounds and diarrhoea. The gum is high in tannin,  a common astringent also found in tea-leaves and still used for treating burns.

gum arabic - a gum exuded by some kinds of acacia and used as glue and in incense.

gum-barked - (of eucalypts) smooth-barked as opposed to paper-barked.

gum-topped stringybark - Eucalyptus delegatensis a rainforest tree that is particularly abundant in the highlands of central Tasmania. It occurs predominantly in association with Jurassic dolerite which forms the majority of the upland ranges and plateaux in northern and eastern Tasmania, the Southern Ranges and the Central Highlands. Sites are well-drained and surface rock can be continuous on talus slopes and boulder fields. In Victoria it is also known as alpine ash.

Gumatj - one of the largest clan groups of the Yolngu people from north-east Arnhem Land. Rom is the ancestral law of the Yolngu people, providing the moral basis for human existence; it also lays down the rights that people have in property, land, sacred objects, and designs. Art is part of this ancestral inheritance, intimately connected to the land. There is a symbolic symbiosis between the Gumatj and the crocodile. It is only in preparation for conflict that the Gumatj will kill and eat crocodile; otherwise, they are its guardians. Individual paintings represent different ancestral events associated with the journey of the crocodile ancestor and the spread of fire. The crocodile was involved in a great fight with a stingray in the waters of Caledon Bay. The crocodile had seized and eaten a child of the stingray, and in anger the stingray lashed out with his tail, striking the crocodile in his back leg and wounding him severely. The fight between the crocodile and the stingray has been incorporated in Yolngu law as the basis for a Gumatj Makarrara, or peace-making ceremony. A person accused of responsibility for a person's death must face an ordeal where he has to avoid spears that are thrown at him, just as the crocodile had to twist and turn to escape the flailing tail of the ancestral stingray. At the conclusion to the ceremony the accused may be speared in the leg, both as punishment and as an end to hostilities.

gumboot - a contraceptive sheath; a condom.

gumleaf - the leaf from a tree of the Eucalyptus family. Traditionally used by Aborigines as a musical instrument by holding against the lips and blowing to create a resonant vibration. Originally used in the imitation of bird-calls.

gummies - gumboots worn in agricultural areas and during wet weather. gumnut the seed capsule of a eucalyptus tree.

Gumnut Babies - May Gibbs' first book about Australian bush fairies published in 1916 in Sydney, followed by a series of five small books by published during World War One, each with a different flower baby theme. Australian fairy tales as such do not exist although there are fanciful characters in Australian history, such as the gumnut babies, Snugglepot and Cuddlepie; Tiddylick, a Dreamtime frog; and the Bunyip, a mythical beast of unknown shape, size or proportion.

gumption - resourcefulness; enterprise.

gumsuckers - Victorians in colonial times.

gun - a worker, especially a fruit-picker or sheerer, who excels above everyone else.

Gun's Gully - a long-running comic strip featuring Ben Bowyang philosopher and farmer.

Gunai - variant spelling of Kurnai.

Gunbarrel Highway - a network of desert roads built in the 1960s to service the Woomera Rocket Range and the atomic test sites at Emu and Maralinga. The highway took its name from the "Gunbarrel Road Construction Party" which surveyed and built the roads. Now popular with tourists, particularly those in 4WDs. It is impossible to drive the entire length of the original Gunbarrel Highway because some sections of it have been abandoned and other sections pass through Aboriginal land with restricted access.

gundabluey - 1. a cloudburst or rainstorm. 2. Acacia victoriae, a wattle producing edible seeds. Once a staple Aboriginal food, it has recently received attention as a marketable native food source. It is very widespread through inland and some coastal areas, grows quickly and yields fairly large, edible seeds. This seed could be a useful ingredient in diabetic diets, as the carbohydrates are absorbed quite slowly.

Gundagai - a town made famous by folklore and several songs. After World War II, with American servicemen in Australia, came When a Boy from Alabama Meets a Girl from Gundagai. Just north of the town stands the Dog on the Tuckerbox monument, which is a tribute to the pioneers of the Riverina region, and a group statue of the family of Dad and Dave characters from the novel by Steele Rudd. Dad and Dave was a long-running Australian radio serial (which used On the Road to Gundagai as its musical theme) and the subject of several Australian movies. Gundagai has a population of less than 3000. Lying on a flood plain of the Murrumbidgee River, the town suffered its worst flood in 1852 when 89 people were believed to have drowned. The New South Wales town lies along the Hume Highway about 390km south-west of Sydney, between the towns of Yass and Holbrook.

Gunditjamara - variant of Gunditjmara.

Gunditjmara - a tribe of the Western District of Victoria, the traditional owners of the area now known as Mount Eccles National Park (Budj Bim). The Gunditjmara lived in a village built in stone and practiced aquaculture by establishing eel and fish traps and elaborate dams and channels to manage the wetlands at nearby Lake Condah. They had eel farms and even an eel industry which exported produce across the country. For thousands of years Gunditjmara people built extensive water channels, fish traps and round stone huts from the basalt rocks which erupted from Mount Eccles 27,000 thousand years ago. Squatters began grazing sheep at Portland on Gunditjmara lands between 1834 and 1838 but the settlement was resisted with full force. The squatters who lived between Framlingham and Lake Condah in 1842 appealed to the Governor for protection. Over two months during 1842, two Europeans were killed, plus eight horses, three guns, almost 2500 sheep and 180 cattle were taken. From this time the owners of the lands and waters bounded by Warrnambool, Portland, Heywood and Hamilton became known as "the fighting Gunditjmara". The Europeans by themselves were unable to defeat the Gunditjmara. They recruited Aboriginal men from the Bunwurrung and Woiwurrung, who lived near Melbourne, and used them as a Native Police Corps between 1842 and 1846, with devastating results for the Gunditmara. The Budj Bim National Heritage Landscape in this area has been listed as a Heritage Place on the National Heritage List.

Gundjeibmi - variation of Gunwinggu.

Gungarde - a community of Aboriginal people living in and around the area of Cooktown, Far North Queensland.

Gunnedah - a town on the Namoi River in the north-west of NSW, boasting one of the largest koala populations west of the Great Dividing Range. Located in the New England Tablelands, Gunnedah is within day-tripping distance of the Warrumbungle, Kaputar and Coolah Tops national parks, and the town of Tamworth.

Gunnedah Basin - forms the central part of the Sydney-Gunnedah-Bowen Basin system which extends along the eastern margin of Australia. The Gunnedah Basin covers an area of just over 15,000sq km and comprises rocks of Permian and Triassic age. The basin is in part unconformably overlain by the Jurassic-Cretaceous strata of the Surat Basin. Until recently the Gunnedah Basin has been only lightly explored for petroleum. There are however, in the order of 120 coal exploration wells drilled in the basin, many of which were drilled to basement. Recently, the Gunnedah Basin provided the first commercial conventional gas flows in New South Wales.

gunnel - var. of gunwhale.

gunny - short for gunny sack.

Gunwinggu - an inland tribe south of Jungle Creek and on the headwaters of the East Alligator River, Northern Territory. They do not practice circumcision. Inland hordes north of Oenpelli are called Mangaridji, and it is likely that the Unigangk listed by Capell (1942) is a name for those who live on the upper waters of the East Alligator River. The Mangaridji at Oenpelli were traditionally the occupiers of local rock-shelters and are said to have become extinct before 1951. It is claimed they were in fact responsible for the work in the Oenpelli painted caves.

gunyah - in the Aboriginal language of Dharruk, a bush hut made from stringybark.

gunyang - Solanum vescum, one of the kangaroo apples. In the first year after a fire it arises from long-held seed stores in the soil, and is abundant. But it thrives for only a short period; regular burning is necessary for continued fruit production. Once an important fruit for the Kurnai in Gippsland. Now found on the edges of rivers and creeks between Perth and Cape Riche, Western Australia.

Gupapuyngu - (see: Yolngu Matha/Gupapuyngu).

Guratba - the Aboriginal name for Coronation Hill within Kakadu National Park. It is believed by the Jawoyn, the traditional owners of the region, to be their responsibility to protect this sacred site. Defilement or destruction of this or various other sites in the region causes a disturbance of their creator, Bula, who lies dormant beneath the land. This disruption triggers a chain-reaction affect