Our Aussie Blog

Here we are with some more Learn the Lingo Aussie slang.

• Blow in the bag – take a breathaliser test
• Booze Bus – police vehicle used to catch drunk drivers
• Buckley’s – no chance
• Chewie – chewing gum
• Daks: trousers
• Drink with the flies – to drink alone
• Lippy – lipstick
• Road train – big truck with many trailers (big buggers they are)
• Ropeable – very angry
• Shout – turn to buy – a round of drinks usually (“it’s your shout”)
• Battler – a hard working person who is only just making a living
• Chook – Chicken
• Grouse (adj.) – great, terrific, very good
• In the nuddy – naked
• Rage on: to continue partying – “we raged on until 3am”
• Spit the dummy – get very upset at something
• Sprung – caught doing something wrong
• Spunk – a good looking person (of either sex)
• Stone the Crows – Heaven forbid!
• Top End – far north of Australia
• Bonzer – great
• Counter lunch – pub lunch
• Exy – expensive
• It’s gone walkabout – it’s lost, can’t be found
• Rego – vehicle registration
• Snag – a sausage
• Strewth – exclamation, mild oath (“Strewth, that Chris is a bonzer bloke”)
• Ta muchly – thank you very much
• Throne or, on the Throne – toilet or, on the toilet
• Too right! – definitely!

Hope you enjoyed another round of Learn the Lingo…it must be your shout, I’m thirsty after that!!

This is a great poem by John Manifold about the Stringybark Creek incident involving Ned Kelly & the Kelly Gang.

STRINGYBARK CREEK

by John Manifold

Late one October afternoon
When rain was in the sky,
A horseman shouting witless words
Came belting madly by.

Straight for Benalla Town he rode
And shouted as he came;
But no one recognized the horse
Or knew the rider’s name.

Silence came down behind his back;
On countless cocky farms
The people watched the Wombat Hills
Not moving eyes or arms.

None knew, and not for days we knew,
That in the hour he passed
Lonnigan died, and Kelly’s hands
Were dipped in blood at last.

And Kennedy was yet to die,
And McIntyre in flight
Half –crazed upon a crazy horse
Would scour the range all night.

But silence fell on all the farms
As down the road they flew –
The horse that no one recognized,
The man that no one knew.

A couple of funny Australian jokes we found floating around the email! One is about beer (no shock on that topic!) and the other about Aussie slang – with a difference!

Beer Makes Wonderful Fuel

A 2007 study found that the average Australian walks about 900 miles a year. Another study found that Australians drink an average of 22 gallons of beer a year.  That means, on average, Australians get about 41 miles per gallon.

Not bad eh!

From the Editor – I think their estimation on beer consumption is a little low!

Australian Slang with a Twist!

The following are results from an OZ-words Competition where entrants were asked to take an Australian word, alter it by one letter only, and supply a witty definition.

You may need to be an Australian to understand!

• Billabonk: to make passionate love beside a waterhole.
• Bludgie: a partner who doesn’t work, but is kept as a pet.
• Dodgeridoo: a fake indigenous artefact.
• Fair drinkum: good-quality Aussie wine.
• Flatypus: a cat that has been run over by a vehicle.
• Mateshit: all your flat mate’s belongings, lying strewn around the floor.
• Shagman: an unemployed male, roaming the Australian bush in search of sexual activity.
• Yabble: the unintelligible language of Australian freshwater crustaceans.
• Bushwanker: a pretentious drongo, who reckons he’s above average when it comes to handling himself in the scrub.
• Crackie-daks: ‘hipster’ tracksuit pants.

And for the Kiwi’s amongst us:

• Shornbag: a particularly attractive naked sheep.

The second Monday in June in most of Australia is a public holiday known as the Queen’s Birthday Long Weekend.

The quirky thing is, the actual Queen’s birthday isn’t in June at all, it’s April 21st! The origins of the public holiday date all the way back to 1788 when Australia was settled by the British and Governor Arthur Phillip gave the convicts three days off to celebrate the birthday of King George III.

We continued to celebrate the reigning King or Queens birthday until 1936 when the states decided to have an annual holiday closest to the late King’s birthday (King George V) on June 3rd.

Oddly enough, although Australia has a public holiday to celebrate the Queen’s Birthday, the UK does not. I guess us Aussies are always looking for an excuse to have a day off work and celebrate!

Growing up, the Queen’s birthday long weekend was always our firecracker / fireworks night before the safety laws came in requiring a license to handle them. All I can remember is being taken to one of our relatives houses while we had a bonfire or fireworks display in the backyard. Back then, every second or third backyard seemed to have their own fireworks being set off – it certainly was a colourful night around the neighbourhood!

Now the Queen’s birthday holiday means a weekend trip away, maybe a picnic or BBQ on Monday with the family or in our case, a restful day off work.

Welcome to this week’s grab-bag of Aussie slang, it’s another list with no real theme, some of these are favourites of mine. Hope you enjoy them!

• As mad as a cut snake  – very angry.
• Bizzo – Business, as in “mind your own business”.
• Booze Bus – police vehicle used to catch drunk drivers.
• Coldie – beer.
• Give it a burl – try it, have a go.
• Heaps – a lot, e.g. “thanks heaps”, “(s)he earned heaps of money” etc.
• Mate’s rate, mate’s discount – cheaper than usual for a “friend”.
• Outback – interior of Australia.
• Pozzy – position – get a good pozzy at the football stadium.
• Ripper – great, fantastic.
• She’ll be Apples  – everything will be alright.
• Slab – a carton of 24 bottles or cans of beer.

• The Echidna is a mammal but a unique one at that, like the platypus it is the only other egg-laying mammal on the planet.
• The echidna lay eggs that have a soft shell and the female carries them in her pouch for two weeks when they hatch and only produce one egg at a time. Once hatched the young echidna remains in the pouch for approximately 50 weeks by which time the baby would have grown spikes. The baby is then transferred by the mother to a nursery burrow where she returns every few days to feed the baby until it’s about 7 months old.
• Echidna young are called Puggles.
• The echidna has a very long tongue, approx 18cm in length but it has no teeth. The tongue is quite sticky and as its diet consists of ants and termites this works quite well.
• When faced with attack, the echidna will either burrow to safety or curl up in a ball showing only the spikes covering its body.

At Australian Native T-Shirts we sell Echidna products such as pewter figurines, t-shirts and cute plush toys – click here to check them out.

Advance Australia Fair wasn’t always our National Anthem, originally it was ‘God Save the Queen’ (or King, if the ruling Monarch was a King), it was voted on at times, changed, then changed back and changed again and this time it seems to have stuck. It was officially declared the national anthem on 19 April 1984.

Of this song, only the first and third verses are normally sung and a lot of Aussies hoped ‘Waltzing Matilda’ would’ve been chosen for our national song.

Advance Australia Fair

Australians all let us rejoice,
For we are young and free;
We’ve golden soil and wealth for toil;
Our home is girt by sea;
Our land abounds in nature’s gifts
Of beauty rich and rare;
In history’s page, let every stage
Advance Australia Fair.

In joyful strains then let us sing,
Advance Australia Fair.

Beneath our radiant Southern Cross
We’ll toil with hearts and hands;
To make this Commonwealth of ours
Renowned of all the lands;
For those who’ve come across the seas
We’ve boundless plains to share;
With courage let us all combine
To Advance Australia Fair.

In joyful strains then let us sing,
Advance Australia Fair.

Why is it that ‘big things’ become iconic? In Australia, we’re no stranger to having big things dotted around the country, the first built was the Big Banana in Coffs Harbour which was built in 1964.

We have over 150 big things in Australia and they have become almost a cult phenomenon with people always stopping by to grab a photo of them. Quite a number of our Big Things here are even being heritage listed.

Now that’s quirky!!

Some of the more well known Big Things we have are:

• The Big Banana – Coffs Harbour NSW
• The Big Barramundi – Daintree QLD
• The Big Captain Cook – Cairns QLD
• The Big Cassowary – Mission Beach QLD
• The Big Cheese – Bega NSW
• The Big Croc – Humpty Doo NT
• The Big Dog on a Tuckerbox – Gundagai NSW
• The Big Earthworm – Bass VIC
• The Big Gold Panner – Bathurst NSW
• The Big Golden Guitar – Tamworth NSW
• The Big Guitar – Narrandera NSW
• The Big Gumboot – Tully QLD
• The Big Koala – Dadswells Bridge VIC
• The Big Lobster – Kingston SA
• The Big Merino – Goulburn NSW
• The Big Murray Cod – Swan Hill VIC
• The Big Ned Kelly – Glenrowan VIC
• The Big Penguin – Penguin TAS
• The Big Pineapple – Gympie QLD
• The Big Potato – Robertson NSW
• The Big Prawn – Ballina NSW

Let’s just have a bunch of different slang today to mix it up in this Learn the Lingo post.

• Amber fluid – beer
• Big-note oneself – boast or brag
• Clayton’s – fake or substitute
• Deadset – true, the truth
• Earbashing – nagging, non-stop chatter
• Hooroo – goodbye
• Lob, lob in – drop in to see someone (“the rellies (family) have lobbed”)
• Mickey Mouse – excellent, very good
• Never Never – the Outback, centre of Australia
• Ocker – an unsophisticated person
• Piker – Someone who leaves parties early or doesn’t want to socialise
• Ridgy-didge – original, genuine
• Shoot through – to leave
• Tee-up – to set up an appointment
• Whinge – complain
• Click – kilometre
• Compo – Workers Compensation Insurance
• Knocker – somebody who criticises
• Oz – Australia!
• Quack, or off to the quack – the doctor, or off to the doctor
• Scratchy – instant lottery ticket
• Strides – trousers
• Thingo – Wadjamacallit, thingummy, whatsit
• Togs – swim suit
• Wobbly – excitable behaviour (“I complained about the food and the waiter threw a wobbly”)