G'day Allan C,

As Sandra has already noted, the Germanic-derived "crutch" is much more common in Australian usage than the French-derived "crotch (from 'croche' = "hook"). My desktop Oxford Concise Australian Dictionary has listings for the Australian / (mainly) sheep industry terms:

Crutch: Noun - Hindquarters of a sheep / verb: 'clip wool from about the tail of a sheep to prevent fouling, and esp. to prevent blowfly strike. / noun: Crutcher ...

Crutchings: Noun - Wool clipped from the hindquarters of a sheep.

There were a number of large migrations of Germanic people ... mainly getting away from Bismarck's attempts to :unify" them ... during the 19th century. I believe quite a lot of their rural usages quietly slipped into the Australian variety of the "English" language.

Rgegard(les)s,

BobB