6 vols. Beadle, N. C. W. (White, Gordon J., editor) (1995). Botany in the Backblocks: From 1939. University of New England Dept.
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Lindesay, V. 1980. The Inked-in Image: a social and historical survey of Australian Comic Art Hutchinson, Richmond. . See 'Rural and Backblocks humour', p. 57. Jolliffe also published detailed sketches of slab structures still standing, to preserve Australian heritage.
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A district nurse was appointed to serve the backblocks of the Uruti Valley in 1909. This was the first district nursing service in New Zealand. The Uruti tunnel links the Uruti Valley with the main highway. It was completed in 1923 and is the longest and most unstable tunnel in Taranaki.
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Best Play by a Māori Playwright: Renae Maihi for Patua. Best Play by a Woman Playwright and The Play Press choice for submission to the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize: Hannah McKie for Mary Scott: Queen of the Backblocks. 2014: Elisabeth Easther for Seed. Runner up: Pip Hall for Mule and Nancy Brunning for Hikoi.
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Unk White's 1960s sketches of Tyrrell's Vineyard in the Hunter Valley include a slab hut dating from 1858.White, C.J. ('Unk') 1960. Newcastle and Hunter Valley Sketch Book Rigby, Adelaide. p. 26 The 'backblocks' humour of Australian cartoonists of the Smith's Weekly school such as Alex Gurney, Percy Leason, Stan Cross and Eric Jolliffe often included slab huts as a backdrop to their gags.
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Much of his work, including poetry, sketches, short stories and articles, remains uncollected. Sorenson's Life in the Australian Backblocks (London, 1911) is an account of bush life by a writer with practical knowledge of the subject. He also wrote stories featuring Australian wildlife. He was a member of the Royal Australasian Ornithologists' Union and the Royal Zoological Society of New South Wales and the Fellowship of Australian Writers.
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The term evolved into American slang to refer to the countryside or isolated rural/wilderness area, regardless of topography or vegetation. Similar slang or colloquial words are "the sticks", "the wops", "the backblocks", or "Woop Woop" in Australia, "the wop-wops" in New Zealand, "bundu" in South Africa (etymologically unrelated to "boondocks" or "bundok"), and "out in the tules" in California. The diminutive "boonies" can be heard in films about the Vietnam War such as Brian De Palma's Casualties of War (1989) used by American soldiers to designate rural areas of Vietnam.
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In 1953 "Reedy River", an Australian musical written by Dick Diamond featuring bush and Australian folk music, opened first in Melbourne and then as an amateur production at the Sydney New Theatre, and the Bushwhackers were engaged to provide the musical accompaniment for the Sydney version, which saw the addition of one song "Widgegoeera Joe" (alternate title: "The Backblocks Shearer") which Meredith had collected earlier that year from a bush singer named Jack "Hoopiron" Lee.McKenry, Keith. 2014. "More than a Life: John Meredith and the Fight for Australian Tradition." Rosenberg Publishing, 488 pp.
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It is the training group of Murray Halberg, Peter Snell, Barry Magee, Bill Baillie, Jeff Julian and Ray Puckett known as Arthur's Boys which captures the history of this era. They all trained together and were made Olympians by the end of the 1960s training off the famed Waitarua run through the challenging backblocks of Auckland. With strong coaching a theme during the clubs lifetime, the club is associated with two great coaches, both inaugural inductees of the New Zealand Athletics Coach Hall of Fame: Arthur Lydiard (ONZ,OBE) and through Arch Jelley, OBE, (coach of 1976 Olympic 1500m gold medallist John Walker) the club continued its success producing Olympians, International and National champions through to the turn of the century. The late 1990s and into the 2000s saw the club's senior membership dwindle to social membership as organisational politics led to the senior membership amalgamating with College Rifles Harrier Club to form Auckland City Athletics Club with the goal of rivaling larger Auckland regional athletic clubs.
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The story opens with Mustafa of Mudge, a turbaned desert monarch with blue whiskers, who collects lions. Mustafa demands one more lion — he already has nine thousand nine hundred and ninety nine and a half lions, but there are no more lions in Mudge, and Mudgers are forbidden by Ozma, on penalty of death, to travel beyond the desert borders of Mudge. However, when Notta Bit More, a clown from the circus in Stumptown (somewhere in the humdrum backblocks of the United States of America), and a serious-minded orphan boy called Bobbie Downs (but renamed as Bob Up, by the cheerful Notta) drop into Mudge together, this seems to Mustafa to be his chance to send a non-Mudge person out to bring the famous Cowardly Lion to be the ten thousandth lion in Mudge. Using a magic ring, he enchants Notta and Bob and compels them to set out on a quest to capture the Cowardly Lion.
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