["Willy Willies", The Sydney Morning Herald, Saturday 30 March 1912, page 5]
Willy Willies.
By O.H.
"Willy Willy" sounds a frivolous term to apply to a vast cyclonic hurricane that sweeps with irresistible force across land and sea, and leaves in its wake disaster, destruction, and death. But on the north-west coast of Australia nothing is better known, nothing more keenly dreaded, than the willy willy. Pearlers In the tropics are prone to define a willy willy as a "hurricane, cyclone, typhoon, tornado, aud whirlwind rolled into one." That gives some slight idea of the awful irresistibility of the visitation, and the wholesome respect in which it is held. Prospectors on the Kalgoorlie side, and stockmen in the interior, generally apply the same term to the whirling dust storms that now and then send picturesque columns of red dust high into the cloudless blue. But these are merely playthings of the wind, harmless and trivial compared to the fierce and devastating willy willy of the coast.
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