Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A hot north wind prevalent in southern Australia.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun Orig., at Sydney, a cold and violent south or southwest wind, rising suddenly, and regularly preceded by a hot wind from the north; -- now usually called southerly buster. It blew across the Brickfields, formerly so called, a district of Sydney, and carried clouds of dust into the city.
  • noun By confusion, a midsummer hot wind from the north.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun Australia A hot, dry, dusty wind of southern or central Australia.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From the location name Brickfield Hill, after the hill in Surry Hills (now in inner Sydney) from the direction of which a hot wind blew into Sydney in its early days. The term spread to Melbourne by circa 1850, and to central Australia by circa 1900, then to Western Australia.

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