20 Australian-isms we miss (and a few we don't)

The other day, I was flipping through my thesaurus-- not that I flip through my thesaurus as a pastime or anything, that would be nerdy!-- for another word for "grow" and, well, I stumbled upon "grouse". "Growwwwwse!" A little voice in my head chimes, with an Aussie accent. Unfortunately, my thesaurus didn't list the Aussie slang meaning of "grouse", which we only ever heard in Melbourne and was a favourite word of ours while living over there. While "grouse" here in Canada refers to a funny-looking bird, or can mean 'to complain'; in Melbourne, it meant "excellent". Here are some other Aussie-isms we're sad to have left behind (but still secretly use at home):

Heaps: Meaning 'lots', or 'very'. As in, "There were heaps of people at the game." Or "Yeah, it's heaps good."

Bogan: Another one we heard lots (heaps) of times in Melbourne, describing an 'unsophisticated person', sort of the Aussie equivalent to 'trailer trash'. "That style is really bogan."

Top shelf: The best. Like, "Megan is top shelf."

Fair dinkum: This was once defined to us by a teenage girl working at the IGA, home of 'Fair Dinkum Prices' as, "It's like saying, 'bloody oath'." [insert blank looks from grocery-shopping Canadians.] "Or like, 'True', or 'For real'. Uhhh, only old people say this." Maybe that's why it's so much fun to say.

Stickybeak: Nosy person. "My, that Bessie is a stickybeak!"

Good on ya!: A great way to say "Well done!" We still use this one a lot.

Champers: Champagne (though not the true-blue French kind, more like sparkling wine). As in, "I can't wait to have champers at the Melbourne Cup!"

On the piss: Drunk. As in, "I got on the piss last night."

Belly full of piss: Hung over. While we first worked in Port Douglas as housekeepers, we were appalled to learn this was a perfectly good excuse not to come into work on a Saturday. "Where's Amy?" the boss asked. "Oh, she's got a belly full of piss," said Amy's partner-in-crime, Anneliese. "Ahhhh," said the boss. "So hopefully she'll be in tomorrow then?"

Taking the piss: Making fun of someone (or 'ripping on someone'). i.e . 'Andy fell down the stairs on the way into the pub last night, and everyone spent the entire night taking the piss out of him.'

Bottle shop: The place where you buy booze. Also sometimes just called 'the Bottle-O', though this is the name of one of the many bottle shop chains around. It's so confusing to get back to the highly specific--and separate-- Beer Store and LCBO. Not that we ever really grasped the drive-thru bottle shop concept (what's so wrong with just shutting off the car and walking into a shop?).

Furphy: A rumour. As in, "That bloke's telling a furphy!" Here's a funny little bit of history on the furphy.

The Bush: The countryside, or anywhere outside the city. As in, "He had a house in the bush."

Dunny: Outhouse, outdoor toilet. We were privileged to have one of our own for a few weeks-- complete with gargantuan spiders inside-- while living "in the bush".

Bunyip: 'Mythical bush spirit' is how our Lonely Planet defines it. We were always hoping to meet one.

Flat out: Very busy or fast. To quote one of our managers at the bank: "I was flat out like a lizard drinking!" Hint: It has absolutely nothing to do with lizards being kind of low to the ground.

Hoon: A hooligan, a punk; or more specifically, someone who makes a sport out of street racing. I was tickled pink whenever one of my news stories received a headline like "Local hoons out in full force Saturday night" when writing for the Port Douglas newspaper. Also can be used as a verb to describe cruising in a vehicle: "I'm bored. Let's go for a hoon." Street racing is actually getting to be a huge problem in Oz, and governments are implementing 'Anti-hoon legislation' as we speak. Too bad the word is so much fun!

Ute: A vehicle that's half pick-up truck, half car. Short for 'utility vehicle', the ute is everywhere in rural Australia (including in the hands of hoons), unfortunately minus the kitsch factor its American cousin, the El Camino, has.

Knackered: Tired. As in, "What a long list. I sure am knackered from writing this blog."

****

And then there's a few words we don't miss:

Bundy: Short for Bundaberg rum, a specialty of Bundaberg, Queensland. Its polar bear logo (come on, polar bears? In Australia?) was everywhere in Oz, including on numerous men who felt the need to wear Bundy gear from head to toe, and on bumper stickers. As in, "Get me a Bundy and Coke!"

Vego: Short for vegetarian. Even more annoying is "vegie" for vegetable (where did the other "g" go?)

Tomato sauce: What the Aussies call ketchup. Talk about a confusing first grocery store experience!

Rubbish bin, or 'bin': We call it a garbage can. It made for plenty of hilariously confusing "Who's on first?" kind of moments in the offices we worked in when we would ask if we should just file this or that document into one of plastic bins on someone's desk. "Trays, these are trays!" we would get. ¡Ay ay ay!

Thongs: The Kiwis (New Zealanders) call them 'jandals'; us North Americans call them flip-flops. No matter how long we had stayed in Oz, we could never, ever get used to calling our poor shoes by this name!

If you're craving a bit more Aussie, be sure to watch Australia (the movie with Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman). We just watched it again for nostalgia's sake-- the first time we watched it was in an open-air cinema in tropical Broome, WA, right near where the movie took place-- and it was just as awesome as our first viewing, though without any planes flying overhead or geckoes on the screen this time around. -D.

A Tale of Two Cherry Farms

Hooray! The cherry-pickers are on a three-day weekend! But unfortunately their internal clocks can't be readjusted and they woke up at 6:30am this morning anyway. Yarrrrr.

The countdown is on, and we now have only three more weeks of harvest work in Stanthorpe until we're eligible for our second year work visas in Oz. Cherry picking hasn't been bad at all, in fact, we're pro-stars at it now and spent our week getting shuffled to wherever the work is at the time-- between our original farm (Beaver's) and our new orchard (Cherry Park), where we started two weeks ago.

The two farms are right across the highway from each other, and have their pros and cons. At first, we were overjoyed to start at Cherry Park, where we were promised 5 weeks of employment (all we need for the visa) and there are tons of cherry trees, a nice lunchroom, and a really nice family running it. There were a lot of us working there at first, but since they all sucked at cherry-picking, suddenly it's down to us and an Aussie hunting enthusiast, Dave. We get to cruise into the orchard in the farm ute (see "Autosluts" photo below) and aside from the odd spider, tree frog, and one big resident frill-necked lizard, we're left alone to do our picking (and snacking). Not bad!

But then, this week the folks at Cherry Park told us we're going to work a day and a half at Beaver's farm... OK, whatever, as long as we're getting paid. Beaver's trees are coated in pesticides and fungicides (our hands get SO dirty there, and we're afraid to eat the chemical-laden cherries), but the manager, Peter, is a cool guy who cracks us up and doesn't make us pick the cherries by colour or any of that business. AND there are no mouldy cherries or spiders waiting in the branches (the only survivor we met was a green caterpillar!). We have the run of the whole orchard as their only 2 workers-- a little spooky-- and can goof off as we please. Not to mention we get paid more there!

But Beaver/Peter's orchard only had so many trees (it's mostly apples, which get harvested in January), so it was back to Cherry Park. We felt kind of like baseball players being traded from team to team by our agents... really, we're pretty sure they're just trying to keep us busy so we don't skip town on our days off. We're bittersweet about being back at Cherry Park, as the schedule keeps changing and we honestly think the owner, Graham, has no idea what's happening out in the field (after having part-shares in the farm for years, he finally took it over this year). Part of us wants to make lots of money and part of us just wants to sit around and play lots of Tropico, while ticking off our visa weeks without working too much.

Not to mention our only co-worker, Dave, is a piece of work too-- if he's not talking about cherries (85% of the time, too much shop-talk!), it's about hunting. Don't get us wrong, he's a very nice guy, just a little hard to relate to. If he were a North American, he'd be from the heart of Texas. He drives a 4WD with his spare tire on the back decorated with a logo for "Longbow Hunters". He tells us proudly, "This is the only country in the world where you can knock on someone's door and they're totally cool with hunting on their property," (that's his weekend activity). He says he likes to shoot animals with a longbow "because it's more humane than with a gun". Hmmm. One day in the car ride to work-- yes, we carpool with him-- there was a little too much shooting talk and Dayle mentioned she was a vegetarian. Dave called her a "greenie" and tried to further justify his hunting by saying everything he shoots is "feral". (though in other parts of the world we think "feral" may refer to something else, in Australia, everything that's not a koala, crocodile, goanna, or emu-- anything native Australian-- is feral. Thus, it's OK to shoot apparently.) And Dave shoots feral pigs, deer, cats, boars, camels (well, he hopes to someday). Even kangaroos, though they're not feral, "There's just so bloody many of them," says Dave.

"Well, you know what else is feral in Oz??" Adrian thought, and quickly bit his tongue-- "White people!". Somehow we both think he'd find a way to justify that too.

Fighting Ageism Across The Outback... and other adventures

Hello all! We're in the pleasantly-named town of Emerald, writing to you from the Tropic of Capricorn. We thought we were in the Outback again but it might still be too "urban" here. Later today we're off to Carnarvon Gorge National Park, to go try out our new hiking boots and see some cool Aboriginal rock art. Hopefully there will be lots of lizards and no dingoes (we've managed to hit school holidays by accident, so we also hope it won't be overrun by rugrats).

It's been a while... since we last wrote we've made some progress south. The scenery has gotten much drier and hotter, but we're still enjoying the camping life. The accomodation has been okay (anything from beachside caravan parks to roadside rest stops) Lately we've come across a few cranky caravanning seniors, who come storming out of their trailers if we've parked "too close" to their shade tree. There was one especially awesome dude in a place called Carmila Beach who came out at this FREE rest stop by a beach, hands on hips, and was like "are you going to pitch a tent there?" and we're like "no, we have a van" (duh). and he's like "well, what time are you leaving in the morning? because I need to get my caravan out that side right threr" (points to the big open free sand patch we have parked in, that somehow he has laid claim to). we kindly move back a bit while the old cranky dude watches us the whole time, since we're sleeping definitely in the next day and are not moving for his big gas guzzler. Without a thanks or anything, him and his wife drive off to town later that night, and he says "Well, I suppose that will work." and from then on he became the "mayor of Carmila Beach" (and we've encountered a few more mayors of free rest stops since then too). We've found that going off the main backpacker trail on the coast means fighting with these caravan lifers sometimes... but it's also good for laughs when they eat our dust and we blare whatever hiphop we can find to play on our crappy stereo! (gotta keep up stereotypes, yo!) The funny part is, we met a great couple in Ravenshoe, wheat farmers from Western Australia who were in their 50s, tops, and they even said they've gotten attitude from the really old folks-- like 'you aren't old enough to be living this kind of life' attitude. Strange!

Things we've noticed/love lately:
-Big things- We're starting to see some goodies... the big cassowary, the big cane toad (ugly!), the big mango (so big, Dayle tripped down some stairs looking at it. Her knee is still healing)
-We love Utes! They're like cars mixed with pick-up trucks, and "Ute" is short for "utility vehicle" or something. There are old clunky ones everywhere, and then some people have sparkly shiny bright coloured ones, like sportscars. We're currently compiling a ute photo album, for all the hoons to check out (see next)
-Our current favourite Aussie term is "hoon"... which we've read means delinquent, but it also has to do with street racing (ie. "hooning around"). Maybe Daisy can be our hoonmobile...
-People (maybe hoons!) like to hang big gutted fish from the roadsigns marking creeks and rivers. ew!
-Sugar cane is king (never thought of Oz as a cane farming country but it's everywhere!)
-Either the wood here is really hard to burn or we're really out of practice with our campfires. We sit shivering and jealous of all of our neighbours whenever there's a firepit.
-Kookaburras are really cute... until they swoop onto your table and steal a chunk of pancake (they did this to Adrian not long ago!) Yarrrrr!
-The Chaser-- A guy on ABC TV (like CBC back home) made big news here when him and his TV show team crashed the APEC meetings in Sydney saying they were the Canadian motorcade (who weren't even in the country yet)... and they got through tons of security as a prank and basically just stirred things up. Check out his show if you can... he rocks!
-Our favourite thing of all is our little tiny radio that we bought for $20. We're in touch with the world again-- country stations, top 40, and really bad comedy shows. Yippee!
Catch you soon... xoxxo, D&A
PS. We just put up lots of new pictures on Flickr (ok, the scuba ones are old now but we found them in the van finally!)