Aaah, the familiar ordeal of intercontinental air travel. We’re currently queuing up to check in to our flight out of the country, having said goodbye to our hosts in Perth, the Simpers.
It’s 6am, and either the memory of entering the country in the same manner or perhaps the mild dementia brought about by pitting sleep depravation and caffeine against each other is making me all nostalgic for our trip. Jude has talked extensively about the oddities of Aussie culture but I’ve kept my mouth shut until now. So here is, in no particular order, the things that I loved about Oz.
Stuff that Aussies say
I’m not talking about funny slang words that they use, Jude has written about those. I’m talking about sentences that would never leave the mouth of a Brit.
Some of my faves:
- after I waited a couple of minutes at a festival portaloo, a man in work overalls emerged with a hose slung over his shoulder, patted the wall of the loo twice and said “she’s good to go mate”
- when ordering food in an outback pub, the barman says “one moment, I just gotta go back there and check that the chef is still sober”
- overheard in a bar, coming from an elderly gentleman in an Akubra and vest: “So my fuckin daughter is a fuckin real estate agent for fuckin Ray White, and she’s coming up this weekend to fuckin sort out my fuckin flat rental. Apparently if you take the right fuckin photos, you get fuckin twice as many fuckin people fuckin interested in renting the fuckin place”
Fun fact: the swear words dropped arbitrarily into sentences to provide a bit of breathing space in the same way that “er…” does are called “incidental expletives”
Public barbies
Any sufficiently wealthy country provides certain services for free, because the thought of somebody going without the service is more horrible to imagine than the idea of losing money in providing it. Most western countries include emergency sea rescue in this category. Australia includes barbecues.
Walk into any park in Australia and you’ll likely find a free gas BBQ, serviced and cleaned by the council:
Primary colour landscapes
That is, assuming that you subscribe to an additive colour model where the primary colous are Red, Green and Blue, not the subtractive Cyan, Magenta and Yellow. That would be well weird.
Bombing down dirt roads
Being in the middle of nowhere
This was the lagest settlement for about 200 km in any direction.
Charlie the Challenger
Our trusty battered old 4×4
Goodbye Charlie, you will be missed. *sniff*
