Trying to find the meaning of: Mooldarbie

When we were kids, my brother David and I were helping our father tidy up a hole on the Orroroo Golf Course. As usual we were mucking about, throwing clods of dirt at each other that may, or may not have morphed into stones as our battle progressed.

    Tired of that and probably because we ran out of suitable material, or Dad had had enough of our fighting, we decided to explore the creek behind the hole. I think at that time it was the eighth. We were climbing down the rock face and into the deep gorge, considering our age at the time, it is probably more of a ravine. Acacia bush clung to the sides where clay gave their roots a chance to take hold and they were full of insect nests that we thought were filled with the itchiest of crawlies.

   We only had a few steps to go until we sunk into the reeds that protruded from the narrow creek bed. A grey scrubber kangaroo burst from under a rock ledge and bounded up the path toward us. we dived for cover and our screams echoed down the gully. The smell of sheep manure mixed with dust and a mob of newly shorn wethers shot up the hill on the other side.

   Dad's voice boomed louder than I'd ever heard him. 

   'Get back up here now, before the Mooldarbies get you.'

   I had never heard anything like it and the word has always haunted me and what is a mooldarbie?

I used the word, in Kundela, when Joe is rescuing the girl from the bikies. I wrote it again in chapter Thirty Eight of Les Gillespies Gold and needing to check the spelling searched the internet. It seems I have spelled it wrong in Kundela, so apologies are in order and if I have offended anyone, I'm sorry.

  Today I found the word in a letter to the editor from the Adelaide Advertiser, 17th August, 1871. Mooldarbie means devil as I suspected, but the way it rolled from Dad's tongue and echoed across the valley and down the plain still makes the hair on my neck prickle.

Check the article from 1871 here: http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/28603868