The phrase is the dialect of South West aborigines that AJ (Jack) Bussell, compiled almost 100 years ago.

Though his original notes are in the Battye Library, local identity Rob Breeden, has fastidiously sorted and typed them into sequence and updated them in a bound volume and this week presented a copy to Jack's grandson Vern Bussell and his family.

Called Aboriginal Words, Stories & Legends, they are from Jack Bussell's handwritten notes compiled about 1920 of the Wardandi and Bibbulmun tribal areas of WA's lower South West.

"The late AJ Bussell claims he was the last of the 'whitefellas' to fluently speak the correct local dialect of the lower South West aborigines' origins," Rob said.

He knew Mr Bussell, who was born in 1865 at Wallcliffe House, destroyed in the recent bushfires. He died in 1940.

"The family later moved to Cattle Chosen their family home on the banks of the Vasse River and then to a small home in Fairbairn Road a few doors from where I grew up," Rob said.

"He taught me about local aboriginal culture. I've always had an interest in bush tucker, bush craft and aboriginal things, and as Jack just lived up the road from me I was always talking to him and my interest gradually grew over the years."

Rob said it was an aboriginal dialect that probably had been long forgotten, even by descendants of those who once spoke it. However, that was understandable as there were about 240 aboriginal language groups in Australia, and there were some 850 dialects at white settlement in 1788.

He said there were many letters in the alphabet that did not exist in the aboriginal dialect.

"Busselton Historical Society urged me to put them together for posterity and I finished them about six weeks ago. The Department of Environment and Conservation offered to print them for me because they thought it would help their local rangers.