Talk:Walkabout
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(In fact most Aboriginal cultures required people to visit certain sites at certain times and to engage in ceremonial meetings of many thousands of years standing. That this process could be dismissed as 'walkabout' is an indication of the unsophisticated approach non-indigenous Australians took to indigenous cultures and also perhaps the sense of humour of the Aborigines who coined the phrase.)
Does that even make sense?
If the Aborigines coined the phrase, how could the non-Aborigines be unsophisticated by utilising the term? That would only make sense if the non-Aborigines coined the term in the first place.
When I was a boy growing up in the 50s and 60s in the northeastern US I came to have the impression that "he's gone walkabout" was meant to imply that the native labor hadn't shown up for work with the implication both that they didn't have a grasp of a real work ethic, and that their cloesness to nature gave them the occational irresitable urge to go out into the wilderness. This manages to be both romantisizing of the natural state while dismissing it as primitive. It also brings the whole behavior pattern into the labor/capital debate so prevalent in the 20th century. So you could use it either in a dismisive, almost racist tone, or you could use it in a manner that implied a respect for the loyality of the one who had gone walkabout to his muze. Thus when used the term was marvalously ambigous.
[edit] See also
A similar explanation has been given to the origin of the ghost town of Walkaway. A settler got up and left in this instance. Fred 13:53, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
