{"id":659058,"date":"2026-05-09T03:48:17","date_gmt":"2026-05-09T03:48:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/659058\/"},"modified":"2026-05-09T03:48:17","modified_gmt":"2026-05-09T03:48:17","slug":"origin-of-australian-term-willy-willy-links-back-to-pilbara-first-nations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/659058\/","title":{"rendered":"Origin of Australian term ‘willy-willy’ links back to Pilbara First Nations"},"content":{"rendered":"

Growing up in Western Australia’s remote Pilbara, Ngarluma Yindjibarndi man Patrick Churnside would often hear talk of the weather phenomenon known as a ‘willy-willy’.<\/p>\n

The term, used widely across Australia, describes a vortex of wind picking up dust and loose bush, like a miniature cyclone seeming to appear out of nowhere.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Macquarie and Oxford dictionaries trace the word back to the Yindjibarndi language word ‘wili wili’, now used daily by Australians around the country.<\/p>\n

It is one of many Aboriginal words widely accepted into the Australian English language, without many realising.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Patrick Churnside is a Ngarluma Yindjibarndi man. (ABC Pilbara: Kelsey Reid)<\/p>\n

“Wili wili, that language is common across many different languages of this region,” Mr Churnside said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He remembered songs and stories about willy-willies, and said elders would sing the songs near waterholes in Roebourne.<\/p>\n

\"Wide<\/p>\n

Roebourne is in WA’s north-west, about 1,500km north of Perth. (ABC News: Kelsey Reid)<\/p>\n

“Wili wili, I guess, was one of the languages in the song form of tjaabi,” Mr Churnside said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Mr Churnside said tjaabi was a dance-type or musical song that told stories.<\/p>\n

“If the reference to willy-willy was named in a song, it was about the big cyclone time,” he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“As a young fellow in the school days, I would hear the old people talk about ‘big wili wili, they’re coming now’, meaning to say, the big wind is coming now, but with the wind also comes the rain.”<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Patrick Churnside says willy-willies were often sung about in songs. (ABC News: Kelsey Reid)<\/p>\n

Willy-willy by name, willy-willy by nature<\/p>\n

The Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) does not have an official name for the weather event, but said it used different names.<\/p>\n

“We just talk about dust devils or whirly winds, but I definitely have heard willy-willies as well,” senior meteorologist Dean Narramore said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“It’s all the same thing. It’s just a brief spin-up or rotation of air over paddocks.”<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

A willy-willy near Whim Creek, Pilbara, Western Australia. (Supplied: Coral Stanley-Joblin)<\/p>\n

Willy-willies more commonly occur in warmer months, caused by differential heating often happening in paddocks and open spaces.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“They form generally on hot, sunny days with only light winds, where you have the air rising,” Mr Narramore said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Sometimes when it arises you have air rushing in to replace that air, and on those boundaries or those differential areas, you can get little spin-ups, which is like the willy-willies we see.”<\/p>\n

Wangka Maya Pilbara Aboriginal Language Centre senior linguist Travers Eira said the use of the word had been recorded in English as far back as 1894.<\/p>\n

“Its [use is] going to be longer than that, because that means it’s been in written records from at least 1894,” Dr Eira said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Dr Eira said the word was likely used within multiple languages from the Pilbara region.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Within a language family, there are a lot of words held in common,” Dr Eira said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“For instance, at Wangka Maya, we have it in our Yinhawangka dictionary, but the word has also been recorded as far away as New South Wales.”<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

The weather bureau says willy-willies often form over large paddocks and plains.\u00a0 (ABC News: Charlie Mills)<\/p>\n

Dr Eira suggested the term ‘willy-willy’ may have stuck because of its self-descriptive nature.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“One thing that occurs to me is that one of the kinds of words that tend to get picked up are onomatopoeic words,” Dr Eira said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Possibly willy-willy could be seen in something like that category.<\/p>\n

“It’s not that it sounds like a willy-willy, but the word describes quite nicely the motion of the wind that is actually visible when it’s got material collected up in it.”Shared ‘Australian’ language<\/p>\n

University of Western Australia School of Indigenous studies emeritus professor and Whadjuk Noongar elder, Len Collard, said more Aboriginal language words were used in English than people realised.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Len Collard is a professor in Indigenous Studies at the University of Western Australia. (Supplied)<\/p>\n

He theorised the exchange of languages began when the English first came to Australia and met its First Nations residents.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Both the language speakers in their own language wouldn’t have understood each other,” Dr Collard said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“So the English had to meld with, in this case, the Noongars or with the Yindjibarndi or with the Kooris or Murris \u2026 and so we come up with a language called ‘Australian’.<\/p>\n

“The way Australians speak is a hybrid, or maybe even a mongrel mixture of foreign languages like English and other ones, as well as the various Aboriginal languages, which, from what I understand, there’s at least 500.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

Dr Collard said there were many Aboriginal words used in English \u2014 in particular, words that would not have existed in English before colonisation.<\/p>\n

“Cobber is a Noongar word, which means what? A friend,” he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“What’s the English word for quokka?<\/p>\n

“Well, there is no English word, it’s a quokka.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Growing up in Western Australia’s remote Pilbara, Ngarluma Yindjibarndi man Patrick Churnside would often hear talk of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":659059,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[64,63,61838,318467,233115,134,190769,45,110861,111962,318468,318466,318469],"class_list":["post-659058","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-bom","tag-dust-devil","tag-dust-storm","tag-entertainment","tag-roebourne","tag-wa-news","tag-weather-events","tag-weather-phenomenon","tag-whirly-wind","tag-willy-willy","tag-yindjibarndi-language"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/659058","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=659058"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/659058\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/659059"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=659058"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=659058"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=659058"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}