page_title: The bush
section_title: New Zealand
hierarchical_section_title: The bush / Usage by country / New Zealand
caption_attribution_description: English: Bush close to Lake Gunn, Fiordland, New Zealand, photographed by James Dignan (User:Grutness) in November 2000.
context_page_description: "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 area must be indigenous to the region, although exotic species will often also be present.
  The Australian and New Zealand usage of the word "bush" for “forest” or scrubland, probably comes from the Dutch word "bos/bosch", used by early Dutch settlers in South Africa, where it came to signify uncultivated country among Afrikaners. Many English-speaking early European settlers to South Africa later migrated to Australia or New Zealand and brought the term with them. Today, in South Africa Fynbos tends to refer to the heath vegetation of the Western Cape and Eastern Cape.
context_section_description: In New Zealand, Bush primarily refers to areas of native trees rather than exotic forests, however, the word is also used in the Australian sense of anywhere outside urban areas, encompassing grasslands as well as forests.
  Areas with bush (i.e. native forest) are found in both the North Island and the South Island, some of it bordering towns and cities, but the majority of bush is found in large national parks. Examples of predominantly bush clad areas are Whanganui National Park, on Taranaki volcano, on which the bush extends in a uniformly circular shape to the surrounding farmland, and Fiordland in the South Island. Much of Stewart Island/Rakiura is bush-covered. In the North Island, the largest areas of bush cover the main ranges stretching north-northeast from Wellington towards East Cape, notably including the Urewera Ranges, and the catchment of the Whanganui River. Significant stands remain in Northland and the ranges running south from the Coromandel Peninsula towards Ruapehu, and isolated remnants cap various volcanoes in Taranaki, the Waikato, the Bay of Plenty and the Hauraki Gulf.
  From the word comes many phrases including:
  bush-bash – to make one's way through the forest, rather than on a track or trail (cf. American English "bushwhack[ing]", "bushwack[ing]", or "bush-whack[ing]").
  bush shirt – a woolen shirt or Swanndri, often worn by forest workers.
  bush lawyer – the name of a number of native climbing plants or a layman who expounds on legal matters.
  bush walk – short day walks (hikes) in the bush
  going bush – to live in the bush for an extended period of time, which may include "living off the land" by means of hunting or fishing.
  Bushman - Used in the 19th century for New Zealand loggers. The term still stands for someone that lives in the bush as a means of preferable lifestyle.
caption: New Zealand's bush is variable in appearance, but generally the term connotates densely forested areas, like this one around Lake Gunn in Fiordland.
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