back of beyond

First attested in the Scottish novelist Walter Scott’s The Antiquary (1816; see quotation).^[1] It is quite possible that Scott anglicised a rural expression rather than coined it himself—something he did numerous times with other phrases.^[2]

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the back of beyond

1. (chiefly British, Ireland and Australia, informal; usually with in, sometimes at or to) A very remote place.
   • 1816, [Walter Scott], chapter II, in The Antiquary. […], volume I, Edinburgh: […] James Ballantyne and Co. for Archibald Constable and Co.; London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, →OCLC, page 36:

     [Y]ou, wi’ some o’ your auld warld stories, that the mind o’ man canna resist, whirl’d them to the back o’ beyont to look at the auld Roman camp—[…]

   • 1882, Rolf Boldrewood, Robbery Under Arms:

     It was a regular outside bush township, and though the distance oughtn't to have much to say to people's honesty, you'll mostly find that these far-out back-of-beyond places have got men and women to match 'em.

   • 1920, Margaret Pedler, The Hermit of Far End:

     "I thought I should like to go near the sea — to some quite tiny country place at the back of beyond."

   • 1941 January, C. Hamilton Ellis, “The Scottish Station”, in Railway Magazine, page 3:

     To the "Sou' West" we owe such jolly little back-o'-beyond stations as Whithorn and Portpatrick.

   • 1969, Patsy Adam-Smith, Folklore of the Australian Railwaymen, Melbourne: Macmillan, page 151:

     We began to take Santa Claus to the kids at the isolated sidings for the same reason men all over Australia on the lines back o' beyond did [...] we didn't want them to miss that magic.

• beyond the black stump
• See Thesaurus:remote place