 Le Brun, who spent parts of his youth at Canowie in the late 1850s, took an interest in the Aboriginal vocabulary of the district, and in 1886 was among the laymen who made submissions on this topic to a book by Edward Micklethwaite Curr (1820-1889).Le Brun's vocabulary has in recent times been attributed to the Nukunu near Spencer Gulf, but he himself states it originated from "forty miles east of Port Pirie", which places it near Canowie, with which he was intimately familiar, and is therefore the vocabulary of the Ngadjuri people.Their word for water, "cowie" or "kowi", appears quite frequently as a suffix within Ngadjuri-based nomenclature of the region, such as Yarcowie, Canowie, Caltowie, Warcowie, and Booborowie.