What is "backblock"

Usage examples of "backblock".

The reader will understand, therefore, that when the genius and his mate proposed to start on Macpherson, they were laying out a capacious contract for the cast-iron canvasser, and were taking a step which could only have been inspired by a morbid craving for excitement, aided by the influence of backblock whisky.

He always has a backblock story or two which he thinks would be highly suitable for publication.

He told us the usual string of backblock lies, and then wound up by saying that out on the very fringe of settlement he had met an old acquaintance.

I may add that he was born at a place called Marathon, somewhere in the backblocks of New York State.

Away out in the backblocks in the borderland of savagery, the skin-hunters, drovers, station-hands, prospectors and other adventurous vagrants heard the rumours of the invasion which spread like wild-fire to the loneliest camps.

But their wants soon reduced them to stock-raiding and other predatory practices, with the result that in the end the whole countryside made common cause against them, and so the last phase of the fratricidal struggle deteriorated into a man hunt away in the backblocks north of Perth and the southern districts, full of heroic incidents, but devoid of historical interest except as far as serving, by reason of its sordidness and cruelty, to extinguish thoroughly any lingering sympathy which the coastal population might still cherish for the lost cause of Western Australia.

Away in the backblocks, on the contrary, one becomes a mere machine, grinding through hard tasks--not a pleasant change while so much is going on.

Horses whose training consisted mostly in being led round the circuit of these small backblocks meetings had placidly tramped their fifty miles from the last meeting.

We are going to a real backblocks race-meeting soon, it ought to be some fun and will give the boss his first crack at the racing game.

Australian backblocks racehorse is the gentleman adventurer of the turf family.

He seems to regard himself as an ambassador from the backblocks, and he lays down the law on all bush subjects in great style.

Marshy, the occupant, a lean old man who reminded Vaemar of a farmer in the backblocks beyond the Hohe Kalkstein, greeted them warily, taking no trouble to disguise the fact that both he and the house were armed, even though ten years after the end of the war on Wunderland a party of four young humans, two of them girls, and two young kzinti, did not look particularly threatening.

The sand had obviously been thrust backblocked loosely on either sideas if some door had opened outward from the building, pushing the sand drift before it.