billabongn.

1836 T. L. Mitchell Jrnl. 11 Apr. in Three Exped. (1838) II. ii. 30 A small watercourse, then dry, and named Billibang, skirts the eastern side of the hill.]

1865 W. Howitt Hist. Discov. Austral. I. 298 Their way on was intercepted..by..what the Major calls..anabranches of the river, but which the natives call billibongs, channels coming out of a stream and returning into it again.

1866 W. Landsborough Explor. Austral. vi. 31 In the south, such a creek as the Macadam is termed a billy-bonn, from the circumstance of the water carrier returning from it with his pitcher (billy) empty (bong, literally dead).

1896 H. Lawson While Billy Boils 91 While out boating one Sunday afternoon on a billabong across the river.

1911 C. E. W. Bean ‘Dreadnought’ of Darling xiv. 133 Australian rivers..often have a long arm or two wandering off into the plain, and either coming back to the river again in the end or else straying off for perhaps a hundred miles and ending nowhere in particular. Those arms are what they call billabongs.

a1917 A. B. Paterson Waltzing Matilda 1 Once a jolly swagman camped by a billabong.

1950 ‘N. Shute’ Town like Alice iii. 81 You get a sandy billabong, and you'll get water there by digging.