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CooeeCooee! (IPA /ku:'i:/) is a shout used in the Australian Outback mainly to attract attention, find missing people, or indicate one's own location. When done correctly — and this means loudly and shrilly — a call of "cooee" can carry over a considerable distance. The call began as an Aborigine custom, and has now become widely used in Australia. It was known among White settlers there in colonial times. One of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes mysteries hinges on the use of "cooee!". The Boscombe Valley Mystery is solved partly because, unlike everyone else, Holmes realizes that it is an Australian word. This leads to a suspect. Inevitably, an expression within cooee of has developed. It means "not far from", and seems to be confined to Australian English. The word cooee has become a name of many organizations, places, and even events. Perhaps the most historic of these was the Cooee March during the First World War. It was staged by 35 men from Gilgandra, New South Wales, 766 km northwest of Sydney, as a recruiting drive after enthusiasm for the war waned in 1915 with the first casualty lists. The men marched to Sydney calling "Cooee!" to encourage others to come and enlist. When they reached Sydney on 12 December, the group had grown to 277 men. To this day, Gilgandra holds a yearly Cooee Festival in October to commemorate the event. Australia also has many cooee calling competitions.
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