Word Of The Day: Billabong

Billabong

1 Australia

a: a blind channel leading out from a river

b: a usually dry streambed that is filled seasonally

2 Australia: a backwater forming a stagnant pool

(Definition from AP Stylebook’s partnership with Merriam-Webster)

My Connection

When I was but a wee child in the early 80s, my parents used to play various records on our record player, which we would sing and dance to. One of the songs they often played was called Waltzing Matilda, a song that featured a number of very interesting Australian words that I thought at the time were nonsense words. However, I soon found that my father, who knew everything else about life, also knew what all the words in the song meant.

Now, you have to keep in mind that this was way before the first line of code that would someday begin the program for Google’s search engine found its way into the furthest reaches of any programmer’s mind. And even though we did, in fact, have a full set of beautiful Encyclopedia Britannicas and a full-size hardbound dictionary, my father needed to consult neither of these resources to answer my questions regarding the meaning of words like coolabah, swagman, jumbuck, and billabong. He just knew.

A billabong, he explained, was a river. I don’t think he went into any more detail about that particular word than that at the time, because frankly, there wasn’t much need to go into a detailed explanation of a word like that with his two-year-old audience. Nonetheless, he explained the whole sordid tale behind that song to me, and the experience solidified itself as one of my first memories of having a detailed conversation about a song with my father.

Over the many years that followed, we talked about songs or singers almost every time we hung out together. But the one music-related conversation I’ll never forget – the one that will always stick with me for the remainder of my life – will be one about the billabong.

And so, dear readers, I present to you this poem:

Ebb And Flow

Dry dirt crumbles to decay;

Only the dead live there.

Water is a dream undreamt;

There’s nothing there to dream it.

Yet soon (not soon enough for me),

The rains will come,

And what once was dry and barren

Will be filled up to the brim,

And life will come from far around

To live and drink within.

For such is the way of the billabong.

Such is the way of the land.

Such is the way of life.

Author's Note: I wrote this story as a contest entry for the Part B: The A-Z of Unusual Words contest. I hope you enjoyed the read. I'd love to hear what you think, so please feel free to leave a comment, click the heart, and subscribe!