back o' Bourke
back o' Bourke adverb: at or to an extremely remote place.
Adverb
back o' Bourke (not comparable)
- At or to an extremely remote place.
- Mated in the Wild took the audience back o’ Bourke — to Central Australia to be exact.1979, Eric Reade, History and Heartburn: The Saga of Australian Film, 1896-1978, page 28
- Gilchrist has a head that would have passed unnoticed Back o′Bourke where they played cricket using termite mounds as stumps.2002, Garrie Hutchinson, Gilly the Great: The Best Australian Sports Writing, 2002, page 13
Proper noun
the back o' Bourke
- An extremely remote place.
- There were a few Aussies on site, but most preferred to work in or around Perth. The large majority would venture no farther than the coastal resorts, classing the back o'Bourke (back of beyond) as a “no-go” area.2007, Kevin Noble, Chris Foote Wood, Baghdad Trucker, page 93
- “Where ya headed mate?”
“In the back o′ bourke,” said Kate, “and we'll need roo bars and a rack.”2009, William Efford, Picaroon, page 238
Synonyms of back o' Bourke
Origin of back o' Bourke
From the town of Bourke in north-western New South Wales. By supposition, even further west and north than Bourke.
Questions about back o' Bourke
- What does back o' Bourke mean?
- Back o' Bourke means at or to an extremely remote place.
- What part of speech is back o' Bourke?
- Back o' Bourke can be an adverb or a proper noun.
Words near back o' Bourke in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: back o' Bourke (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-back-o-Bourke.ogg.
Cite this entry: “back o' Bourke.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/back_o%27_bourke. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.