dinner camp

English

Noun

dinner camp (plural dinner camps)

1. (Australia) A midday break for a meal and rest taken by drovers and their livestock.
   • 2010, Brian Taylor, A Swag of Memories: Australian bush stories:

     Looking at that brownie cake reminded me of a most unusual happening when we had come back to the mill for dinner camp in the middle of the day.

   • 2011, Herb Wharton, Cattle Camp: Murrie Drovers and Their Stories, page 6:

     I remember one day on dinner camp, we was all relaxing as the horses fed around us, when all of a sudden the station horses took off.

   • 2012, Bobbie Buchanan, In the Tracks of Old Bluey: The Life Story of Nat Buchanan, page 58:

     Dinner camp was generally a casual affair.

   • 2013, Elspeth Young, Third World in the First: Development and Indigenous Peoples:

     Eventually they arrive, and set up dinner camp under a tree in the dry creekbed, close to a soakage where, with only a little effort, fresh water can be obtained from under the sand.

2. (Australia) The location of the temporary camp created for dinner camp.
   • 2001, Michael D. Blackstock, Faces in the Forest: First Nations Art Created on Living Trees, page 117:

     Even if they had a camp where they meet, and their trapline is divided like this, but if they have a dinner camp here, that's supposed to be in their boundary.

   • 2014, Jennifer Green, Drawn from the Ground, page 186:

     In the new space the narrator draws four new elements representing the shade camp or 'dinner camp' where some of the women and children are waiting.

   • 2018, Steve Hawke, Valley:

     He found her name on this last leg between dinner camp and the station yards.

   • 2020, F. S. Dellenbaugh, A Canyon Voyage, page 79:

     Not more than two miles below our dinner camp we reached a locality where the stream doubled back on itself forming a vast and beautiful amphitheatre.

Further reading

• “dinner camp”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.