Our Aussie Blog

• Wombats are a mostly nocturnal herbivorous marsupial mammal and live in burrows. They are the largest herbivorous burrowing animals in the world.
• A wombat warns off intruders with an aggressive display of head shaking, gnashing teeth and a guttural growl.
• When wombats are resting in a burrow, their metabolism slows to two-thirds of normal to conserve water and energy.
• The pouch of a wombat is backward facing to avoid it being filled up with dirt!
• They have a stout body, blunt head and broad paws with strong claws making it a powerful earth-mover, burrowing up to 2 metres a night. A typical burrow is about 50 cm high and 50 cm wide and can be up to 30 metres long with several chambers including nursery burrows.
• Wombats have the largest brain to body size ratio of any marsupial and their intelligence has been likened to that of a dog.

We sell a number of different wombat related products in our store, including pewter figurines and cute plush toys – click here to check the wombat range out.

Everyone has heard of the Australian kangaroo that hops across the earth at speed, but have you heard of a tree kangaroo?

• Tree kangaroos can leap 60 feet (18m) to the ground from trees without getting hurt.
• Instead of sweating, tree kangaroos lick their forearms and allow the evaporation to help cool their bodies.
• Young tree kangaroos are called joeys.
• Tree kangaroos move with agility in trees and can leap downward several yards to another tree or the ground. When they descend a tree more slowly, they back down.

• Australia was first called that by a local explorer, Matthew Flinders, who decided to promote the name “Terra Australis”, or “South Land”. It was not officially recognised until the then governor of the country, Lachlan Macquarie named it as such in a dispatch to London in 1817.
• Australia has the largest sand island on earth, Fraser Island, which is off the Queensland coast, 200km north of Brisbane.
• The world’s largest structure created by living creatures is the Great Barrier Reef, of the Queensland coast. It’s over 2000km long, and covers an area of nearly 260,0002km.
• Possibly the world’s biggest state, (of any country) is Western Australia. Covering over 2,252,0002km’s, (the western 1/3 of the Australian continent) it is bigger than all but a handful of countries by itself.
• The area of Australia that is covered by snow in winter is larger than the area of Switzerland.
• Australia is the richest source of mineral sands in the world.
• The famous Aussie Akubra hat is named that, from the Aboriginal word, which means ‘head covering’. They are made from rabbit fur.
• The first life-saving club in the world was founded in Australia, Bronte, Sydney, in 1903. It has since saved the lives of many surfers.
• The first official world surfing championships were held at Manly, Sydney, in 1964 and won by an Australian, Bernard ‘Midget’ Farrelly.
• Since 1896, the beginning of the modern Olympics, only Greece and Australia have participated in every Game.
• Australians are the world’s biggest buyers of 4WD vehicles.
• In the mid 70’s, Australians were the 3rd biggest beer drinker in the world.  (behind Germany and Belgium) In the late 90’s, we don’t even get into the top ten! (fortunately)
• 70% of the world’s wool comes from Australia. We have over 126,000,000 sheep, which use fully half the continent for grazing.
• Australia is the world’s biggest exporter of beef and veal.
• Australia is one of the safest places in the world, with a murder rate of 2 per 100,000 people. The US is up around 8 per 100,000.
• The most dangerous ants in the world are the Australian Bulldog Ant, (which is up to 4 centimetres long!) and is responsible for at least three deaths.

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.