BABINDA, Qld (bă-bin-dă), 17 21S 145 56E, a town (pop. 1288) in mulgrave Shire. Babinda is 1710 km by road north of Brisbane. It stands on the russell river not far from the coast and close to mount bartle frere (map 5). The name ‘Babinda’ is derived from binda, a Yidiny Aboriginal word meaning ‘waterfall’. The region is given almost entirely to the cultivation of sugar cane and there is a large sugar mill in the town.

BACCHUS MARSH, Vic. (bak-ŭs), 3741S 144 26E (map 15), a town (pop. 7640) and shire (pop. 9342) on the north-western fringes of metropolitan Melbourne. The town took its name from Captain William Henry Bacchus, whose house, ‘The Manor’, still stands there, though the first settler was Kenneth Clarke in 1836, two years before Bacchus. Previously it had been Woiwurung Aboriginal land. During the goldrush days Cobb & Co. coaches used the town as a stopping place. Manufacturing takes place there today, but increasingly it is becoming a dormitory suburb of Melbourne. Novelist and story writer Peter Carey was born there. Bacchus Marsh was incorporated as a shire in 1856. Other localities within its boundaries are Myrniong and Parwan.

BACKSTAIRS PASSAGE, SA, that part of investigator strait which separates kangaroo island from Fleurieu Peninsula on the mainland (map 9). It varies in width from 11 km to 13 km. Matthew Flinders discovered it in 1802 and wrote: ‘It forms a private entrance, as it were, to the two gulphs [sic. He was referring to st vincent gulf and Investigator Strait.] and I named it Backstairs Passage.’