So you have booked your tickets and you are on your way to “Gods own country”. It should not be to hard travelling around as every one speaks English. Well yes and no, on that one. Aussie speak is a mixture of slang and strine (rhyming words) e.g ‘butchers hook’ (to take a look), and once you leave the cities and tourist towns you will find it a lot more difficult to understand the locals.
Say for instance you arrive at a lovely country town that you have heard have horse riding to a waterfall nearby and you wished to find out more details. Now your first problem will be, how to find them. Firstly either go to the “local”(pub) or the general/hardware store or if really desperate the local “copper”(policeman). These are generally the brains-trust buildings of any rural town. Now armed with the necessary phone numbers and addresses you will “get on the dog and bone”(phone) and arrange your adventure. The person on the other end might tell you and maybe your “cheese and kisses, better half, old battle axe, old bag”(wife) and “billie lids, ankle biters”(kids) that you will need to definitely wear “jocks”(underwear) “long daks”(pants), “clod hoppers”(strong boots) and to bring your “ cossie”(swimmers), also to bring a “cut lunch”(means there will be a long walk). Should they then tell you not to worry about “tucker”(food) as there will be a “barbie”(out-door cook-out) with “bum nuts”(eggs), “snags”(sausages),”damper”(bread) and some “coldies”(beer). If they say something like “ I hope you can eat a dead horse” DO NOT PANIC, they only mean they hope your hungry.
Now if the locals at the pub tell you that that the owner of the horse rides is “as cunning as a shit-house rat with a gold tooth” then they mean he is underhanded and sneaky, so watch out.
So I hope this helps you along and enjoy your travels and whenever in doubt in Australia just smile, nod and say ‘great mate’.
