black stump

For the early settlers bushfires at regular intervals produced many blackened stumps of trees left on the landscape which quickly came to be used as markers in the terrain.  The significance of these is shown in an early dispute between the Crown (represented by Major Mitchell) and a squatter in the Woolloomooloo area of Sydney. The squatter appeared to have nothing to support his claim to his land and very vague ideas about the boundary lines.

The case was reported in the Sydney Monitor of 1831 where it was given the heading ‘Important Trial’.  In his evidence Major Mitchell said:

I could find no plan in the Surveyor General’s Office of that portion of the ground; I saw Mr West, who told me that the fences then up did not exactly run round his ground, but I resolved to mark his boundaries by the fence then up, and advised Mr West to agree to that measure; …. When I questioned Mr West, he said that the lines put down were somewhere about those marked by the Surveyor but that the fence was not an exact line with that marked by the surveyor and pointed out a black stump which he said had been marked by the surveyor as his boundary, and he made no claim beyond the boundary then pointed out.

So early in the piece we have this example of the way in which black stumps were used as reference points.

There is an amusing letter to the Editor in the Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser of 1837, in which the writer contradicts an account given by the newspaper of bushrangers between Bargo and Berrima along the Dog-Trap Road.  The writer says:

I think Mr Editor it would be as well when you again give insertion to such reports or statements, to ascertain their truth. Your informer I think must have met with some of the black stumps in the thick brush at Bargo, which his fears magnified into bushrangers …

In Robbery Under Arms the bushrangers arrange to meet at the Black Stump which is given a wonderful description in the novel:

Half-an-hour before sundown we rode up to the Black Stump. It was a rum-looking spot, but everyone knew it for miles around. There was nothing like it anywhere handy … We all drew rein round the stump. It had been a tremendous big old ironbark tree – nobody knew how old, but it had had its top blown off in a thunderstorm, and the carriers had lighted so many fires against the roots of it that it had been killed at last, and the sides were black as a steamer’s funnel.

The black stump becomes a marker in a hierarchy of geographical locators. There are the official ones, such as cities, towns, and finally homesteads. Once you get down to the homestead level there are known paddocks, and runs, and rivers,  and creeks, often identified as the two-mile creek, the six-mile creek, the nine-mile creek, and so on. Beyond that you are in territory where a black stump becomes an informal landmark.  And beyond that you are in trackless lands where there is no point of reference. You are beyond the black stump.

The black stump was such a well-known feature that it was used as the name for inns along the road and for at least one cattle station.  There are still hotels, motels and restaurants that are called the Black Stump.  In some cases they have laid claim to being ‘the original Black Stump’ though wherein that originality lies is a question.  There are a small number of towns which claim to have on show the original black stump, although the stump in question has usually been hoisted into town from somewhere out in the bush and dumped beside the pub by some obliging locals, probably in the 1980s when there was an enthusiasm for such Australiana.

These days the expression beyond the black stump is less likely to be heard, possibly because it is harder to find a place that is totally remote from civilisation and the internet.  There is less of a sense that there are the town dwellers on the one hand, and the residents of Woop Woop on the other.

On the other hand the expression of great praise — the best, the greatest, the biggest, etc., on this side of the black stump – that is still with us to some extent.  We probably no longer analyse the phrase but it rolls off the tongue quite satisfactorily and has the flavour of Australian idiom if that is deemed appropriate.