Australia Felix
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English[edit]
Etymology[edit]
From Australia + Latin felix (“fortunate, happy”). Proposed as a name for parts of Victoria (Australia) explored by Thomas Mitchell (1792-1855).[1]
Proper noun[edit]
- (historical or literary) A name for the comparatively lush areas of western Victoria, Australia.
- 1839, Thomas Mitchell, Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Volume 2, Gutenberg eBook #13033,
- I named this region Australia Felix, the better to distinguish it from the parched deserts of the interior country where we had wandered so unprofitably and so long.
- 1851, Henry Saxelby Melville, The Present State of Australia: Including New South Wales, Western Australia, South Australia and New Zealand[2], page 59:
- Victoria, known as Australia Felix, is bounded on the north and north-east by a straight line drawn from Cape How to the nearest source of the Murray River ; on the west by the eastern boundary of South Australia, or the 141° of east longitude, from the River Murray to the sea coast, and along the coast, including the adjacent islands, to Cape How.
- 1839, Thomas Mitchell, Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Volume 2, Gutenberg eBook #13033,
References[edit]
- ^ “The White Hat Guide to Australian Place Names”, in (Please provide the book title or journal name)[1], 2006 January 9 (last accessed), archived from the original on 3 April 2015