Cooee! () is a shout originated in
Australia to attract attention, find missing people, or indicate one's own location. When done correctly—loudly and shrilly—a call of "cooee" can carry over a considerable distance.
The distance one's cooee call travels can be a matter of competitive pride. It is also known as a call of help, distinct amongst the natural sounds of
the bush
"The bush" is a term mostly used in the English vernacular of Australia and New Zealand where it is largely synonymous with '' backwoods'' or ''hinterland'', referring to a natural undeveloped area. The fauna and flora contained within this a ...
.
The word "cooee" originates from the
Dharug
The Dharug or Darug people, formerly known as the Broken Bay tribe, are an Aboriginal Australian people, who share strong ties of kinship and, in pre-colonial times, lived as skilled hunters in family groups or clans, scattered throughout much ...
language of
Aboriginal Australians
Aboriginal Australians are the various Indigenous peoples of the Australian mainland and many of its islands, such as Tasmania, Fraser Island, Hinchinbrook Island, the Tiwi Islands, and Groote Eylandt, but excluding the Torres Strait Isl ...
in the
Sydney area. The call was used by Aborigines to communicate with another person at a distance. 'Coo-ee' was typically expressed as a long loud call ending on a shrill rising inflection on the 'ee'. The call was later adopted by the colonial settlers and was widely used as a signal, especially in the bush. It means "come here" and has now become widely used in Australia as a call over distances.
History and usage
As Cooee is of Aboriginal origin, it is likely to have been in used by some Aboriginal peoples, for many thousands of years.
The first recorded reference to the Aboriginal 'coo-ee' call is in the papers of
Daniel Southwell, an officer of the
Royal Navy
The Royal Navy (RN) is the United Kingdom's naval warfare force. Although warships were used by English and Scottish kings from the early medieval period, the first major maritime engagements were fought in the Hundred Years' War against ...
and member of the crew of
HMS Sirius that sailed with the
First Fleet to Australia. He kept a journal and corresponded with his mother and uncle during his period in Sydney from 1788 to March 1791. Southwell's letters had many references to the Aborigines of the
Port Jackson
Port Jackson, consisting of the waters of Sydney Harbour, Middle Harbour, North Harbour and the Lane Cove and Parramatta Rivers, is the ria or natural harbour of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. The harbour is an inlet of the Tasman Sea ...
district and included a brief vocabulary of their language. In his papers Southwell listed the verb 'to come' as "Coo-sé, Cō-cé, Cō-eé, Cō-é".
Francis Barrallier
Francis Louis Barrallier (19 October 1773 – 11 June 1853) was a French-born explorer of Australia.
Life and career
Francis Barrallier was the eldest son of Jean-Louis Barrallier, a French marine engineer and Royalist supporter who escaped ...
, during his expedition in 1802, recorded the local Aboriginal people using the 'cooee' call near what is now
Oakdale, New South Wales
Oakdale is a semi-rural suburb or district in Wollondilly Shire in Sydney
Sydney ( ) is the capital city of the state of New South Wales, and the most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Located on Australia's east coast, the me ...
.
The explorer
Thomas Mitchell, recording an incident in 1832 where one of his men came unexpectedly upon a native camp, wrote that "his debut
asoutrageously opposed to their ideas of etiquette, which imperatively required that loud cooeys should have announced his approach before he came within a mile of their fires." He further explained in a footnote, that a ''cooey'' was "The natives' mode of hailing each other when at a distance in the woods. It is so much more convenient than our own holla, or halloo, that it is universally adopted by the colonists of New South Wales."
Mitchell's observation indicates that the use of Cooee was not confined to the coast and mountains near Sydney, but was used more widely, by Aboriginal peoples, and by the 1830s was also widely used by the settler colonists.
Author and
missionary
A missionary is a member of a religious group which is sent into an area in order to promote its faith or provide services to people, such as education, literacy, social justice, health care, and economic development.Thomas Hale 'On Being a Mi ...
to
Tasmania
)
, nickname =
, image_map = Tasmania in Australia.svg
, map_caption = Location of Tasmania in AustraliaCoordinates:
, subdivision_type = Country
, subdi ...
, Reverend
John West, reported in 1852 that "cooey" was "not unknown in certain neighbourhoods of the metropolis" (''i.e.'', London). In 1864, an English slang dictionary reported: "Cooey, the Australian bush-call, now not unfrequently heard in the streets of London". One of Sir
Arthur Conan Doyle's
Sherlock Holmes mysteries hinges on the use of "cooee". "
The Boscombe Valley Mystery
"The Boscombe Valley Mystery", one of the fifty-six short Sherlock Holmes stories written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, is the fourth of the twelve stories in ''The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes''. It was first published in the ''Strand Magazine'' ...
", first published in 1891, is solved partly because, unlike everyone else, Holmes recognises the call as one commonly used among Australians. In 1917, the Anglo-Welsh poet
Edward Thomas used "coo-ee" as the parting word with his wife Helen, on leaving for the
Western Front from which he never returned; a fact commemorated at a 2014 Remembrance service in
Glasgow
Glasgow ( ; sco, Glesca or ; gd, Glaschu ) is the most populous city in Scotland and the fourth-most populous city in the United Kingdom, as well as being the 27th largest city by population in Europe. In 2020, it had an estimated popul ...
.
The expression "within cooee" has developed within
Australian
Australian(s) may refer to:
Australia
* Australia, a country
* Australians, citizens of the Commonwealth of Australia
** European Australians
** Anglo-Celtic Australians, Australians descended principally from British colonists
** Aboriginal A ...
as slang for "within a manageable distance". It is often used in the negative sense (i.e. "you're not even within cooee", meaning not close to or, a long way off). Another example would be: "They realised they were lost and there was no-one within cooee". It is also use in the abstract (e.g. "How much do you think they spent redoing this place?" "Oh, I don't know, five thousand dollars?" "You're not even within ''cooee''—twenty-five thousand!").
The word ''cooee'' has become a name of many organisations, places and even events. Perhaps the most historic of these was the
Cooee March during the
First World War
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
. It was staged by 35 men from
Gilgandra
Gilgandra is a country town in the Orana region of New South Wales, Australia, and services the surrounding agricultural area where wheat is grown extensively together with other cereal crops, and sheep and beef cattle are raised. Sitting at t ...
,
New South Wales
)
, nickname =
, image_map = New South Wales in Australia.svg
, map_caption = Location of New South Wales in AustraliaCoordinates:
, subdivision_type = Country
, subdivision_name = Australia
, established_title = Before federation
, es ...
, northwest of
Sydney, as a recruiting drive after enthusiasm for the war waned in 1915 with the first
casualty
Casualty may refer to:
*Casualty (person), a person who is killed or rendered unfit for service in a war or natural disaster
**Civilian casualty, a non-combatant killed or injured in warfare
* The emergency department of a hospital, also known as ...
lists. They marched to Sydney calling "Cooee!" to encourage others to come and enlist. A poster read "Coo-ee – Won't you come?".
When they reached Sydney on 12 December, the group had grown to 277. To this day, Gilgandra holds a yearly Cooee Festival in October to commemorate the event. Other Cooee Festivals occur across Australia.
Richard White indicates the important means of demonstrating Australian nationality with the call taking on a consciously nationalistic meaning. He also documents its spread through the Empire, to New Zealand and South Africa.
[Richard White (2001), 'Cooees across the Strand: Australian Travellers in London and the Performance of National Identity', ''Australian Historical Studies'', Vol. 32 (116), April 2001, pages 109-127.]
Notes
:A.{{resize, John West (1852)
The History of Tasmania – Volume II Launceston, Tasmania: Henry Dowling (publisher), page 92. The full reference: "Like the natives of New South Wales,
'the Tasmanian Aborigines''called to each other, from a great distance, by the ''cooey''; a word meaning "come to me." The Sydney blacks modulated this cry, with successive inflexions; the Tasmanian uttered it with less art. It is a sound of great compass. The English, in the bush, adopt it: the first syllable is prolonged; the second is raised to a higher key, and is sharp and abrupt."
'Footnote 35''"A female, born on this division of the globe, once stood at the foot of London bridge, and ''cooeyed'' for her husband, of whom she had lost sight, and stopped the passengers by the novelty of the sound; which, however, is not unknown in certain neighbourhoods of the metropolis. Some gentlemen, on a visit to a London theatre, to draw the attention of their friends in an opposite box, called out ''cooey''; a voice, in the gallery, answered – 'Botany Bay!'"
References
Australian Aboriginal words and phrases
Australian slang
New Zealand slang