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Re: YAEPT: Australian Milo

From:Keith Gaughan <kmgaughan@...>
Date:Saturday, July 1, 2006, 15:14
Tristan Alexander McLeay wrote:

> You pronounce "wattle" correctly --- I don't know about "WATCOM" or > "Wapping", but I would've said them the same too. (I have no idea what > "wattle and daub" means, to me, wattle is a kind of tree and its > flower, and the source of the green & gold of Australia's sporting > colors.)
Wattle and daub is a building material humans all around the world have been using for a few millennia at this point. Wattle consists of a woven lattice of some strong but flexible material, such as branches, wooden stakes, &c. and acts as the skeleton for the walls. This is then covered--daubed--with a mixture of clay, dung, and straw, smoothed over, and when dry, whitewashed. The technique was still in use here in Ireland up until the early 20th century, but pretty much fell out of use after the 1900s. The cottage my father grew up had wattle and daub partitions though the outer walls were made of stone. I checked, and the origin of the name of the Australian tree comes from the above meaning as it was used to make wattling. K.

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Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>