It was a hard-cover book selling for $4.50, unless you wanted it posted and then it would cost $6.

On page 232 it had a photo of Harold Wyndham, who was the director general of education – that’s how old it is.

But I remember thinking “the bush” seemed a put down of all things away from Sydney

But I did think of “the bush” when I read in a Sydney newspaper a headline that referred tho the bush in unflattering terms, indicating that if you did not live in Sydney then you have not lived.

The headline produced at least one letter castigating the newspaper for implying that people should all live in Sydney.

The letter asked: What of the people who live in country towns?

I lived in Sydney for three months and I couldn’t get out of the place fast enough.

Anyway, my Australian National Dictionary says bush comes “frequently with the”.

It has several pages of bush’s definitions and one of its definitions is “the country as opposed to the town, rural as opposed to urban life”.

Then it had “people lacking in urban sophistication”.

I was looking for bush week. The only example I found in several pages of small type was “what do you think this is, bush week?”

The Macquarie dictionary had bit more information.

It said bush week was “an imaginary holiday time when country people come to town” and “a time when people are taken advantage of”.

The Dinkum Aussie Dictionary said bushweek (one word) was a situation where everything was a bloody mess. That was written by Crooked Mick.

Sidney J Baker has an attempt and quotes “what’s this, bush week?”

The word bush comes from the Dutch word bosch.

The Australian Dictionary of Insults and Vulgarities, compiled by Blind Freddy, says bush week can be explained as if an ignorant cockie behaved in the city as if he was still in the bush.

Around 1919 some people tried to organise a Bush Week to publicise the attractions of living in country towns, but nothing came of it.

Several other attempts have been considered with only minor success.

Sydney people, and I expect people living in other capitals, did not want to know what life was like in country towns.

Several other expressions contain the word bush.

They include going bush, bush work, bush craft, bush lawyer, bush telegraph, bushranger, bushwhacker, bushfire, bushed and about a hundred other terms that fill up several pages of my big dictionary.

About half of them are Australian terms.

A long time ago, well before the bush week attempt of 1919, Morris’s Dictionary of Australian words said the bush was any place well away from the influence of the big towns.

The book What’s Their Story says bush has produced more compounds than any other word.

It goes on to say bush has been referred to as a political constituency.

The book Sydney and the Bush contains a joint pastoral letter on page 95.

It condemns the principle of secularist education “because they are the seedlings of future immorality, infidelity and lawlessness”.

I still think they could have picked a better title.

Laurie Barber: I started writing this weekly newspaper column 23 years ago. It started because somebody at work asked me what a milliard was. I answered him to the best of my ability. Visit Lauriebarber.com, or email bword@midcoast.com.au.