backblock
nounEtymology From back + block.
1
Australia, New Zealand, Plural normally A remote tract of land in the interior; hence (in plural) sparsely populated country far from major cities and lacking conveniences common in urban areas.
- Near-synonyms: upcountry, interior, hinterland
- I speak solely for the backblock roads, and I contend that the time has arrived when the Government should turn its attention to the metalling of these roads.1931, New Zealand House of Representatives, Parliamentary Debates, volume 229, page 281:
3 more examples
- It has happened in other districts that new settlement has turned the old centres into isolated backblocks.1955, Helen Wilson, My First Eighty Years, page 185:
- Backblocks hardship is a very real thing, but Mary Scott expresses it somewhat too much in the Victorian ‘There′s a tear on your eye’ mode, little graves on the hillside and old servants, horses and dogs, faithful to the last.1991, Robin Hyde, Gillian Boddy, Jacqueline D. Matthews, Disputed Ground: Robin Hyde, Journalist, page 225:
- The weeping man was an emancipist who had a backblock in the next valley & sometimes came over to see his cobber the shepherd, both being Roscommon men.2001, Richard Flanagan, Gould's Book of Fish, Vintage, published 2016, page 82:
2
Australia, Excessive, Informal, Plural normally The most distally outlying suburb among a set of suburbs.
3
Land behind which fronts on water; land without a permanent watercourse.
- Related terms
- landlocked