Black Stump

Download coordinates as: Black stump is an Australian expression for an imaginary point beyond which the country is considered remote or uncivilised, an abstract marker of the limits of established settlement.

[1] The case refers to vacant land at Woolloomooloo where a surveyor had difficulty in ascertaining the boundaries as he could not find a plan from the days of Governor Lachlan Macquarie.

The most common are: Another use of the phrase 'black stump' in the Australian vernacular, which relates more to the real object than an abstract concept of landscape, is the local term for the old State Office Block in Sydney (now demolished).

The high-rise building was dark-grey in colour and Sydney residents – “with the local talent for belittling anything that embarrassed them with its pretensions" – dubbed it 'the Black Stump'.

[4] The most prosaic explanation for the origin of 'black stump' derives from the general use of fire-blackened tree-stumps as markers when giving directions to travellers unfamiliar with the terrain.

An early use of the phrase from the Sydney journal Bulletin (31 March 1900, p. 31) seems to lend support to this explanation: "A rigmarole of details concerning the turns and hollows, the big tree, the dog-leg fence, and the black stump".

Robbery Under Arms, a fictionalised work by Rolf Boldrewood first published in 1888, refers to the Black Stump as an actual place "within a reasonable distance of Bathurst" and known to everybody for miles around.

Boldrewood says it "had been a tremendous 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 as black as a steamer's funnel."

Raffaello Carboni used the phrase 'black-stump' in his account of the Eureka Stockade uprising which he wrote in 1855, probably referring to a well-worn pipe: "Please, give me a dozen puffs at my black-stump, and then I will proceed to the next chapter".

In a list of persons who obtained licences to depasture stock beyond the limits of location in the district of Bligh for the year ending 30 June 1847 appears the entry "Launt Joseph ...

In May 1851, a notice was published by James M'Cubbin of Coolah, warning against trespassing by cattle or persons on his run "The Black Stump" in the district of Bligh.

[12] This Astro station was used as part of the survey to fix the position of principal towns extending from Brisbane to Boulia via Roma, Charleville and Blackall and enabled the mapping of Queensland on a more accurate basis.