Funny things Australians say

We've officially been in Australia for 2 months now, and I think I am starting to get a hang of their language.  They think it's English, but that is open to interpretation.

So this is a follow-up to my previous post about the Australian language Lost in Translation, and the new words and phrases I am learning.

• How you goin'?  This is the common greeting, even between doctor and patient.

• I reckcon...  People say this ALL the time instead of "I think".  And yes, it's pronounced "Ah reck-un" just as you would picture middle-American rednecks would say.

• America.  They say this instead of the USA, US, or like we say "the States".  I get asked at least once a week "Are you from America?"  or "Which part of America are you from?"

• Mate.  Everyone is a "mate", or "friend".  Best friends are "best mates".  Which leads to...

• She'll be right, mate.  I think this means "everything will be ok", or "don't worry".

• Drink driving.  This is what they call drunk driving.  Sounds funny to me.

• Swimmers or Bathers.  This means swimsuit or bathing suit.

• Furphy. A rumour or funny story.  Chris picked this one up during his Australian readings.

• Manky.  Probably derived from British slang, but this means "dirty".

• Daggy.   Really, really dirty.  This comes from the word "dag" which refers to the little bit of poo that hangs from a sheep's butt and gets matted into their hair.  Ick!

•  A cuppa.  A cup of tea.  Australians are true to their British heritage and drink primarily tea... and booze.

• Tea break and tea room.  Instead of our "coffee break", Australians take tea breaks in the tea room. 

• Tramping.  I must have made a funny face when I first heard someone give me advice on where to travel to.  "If you like to go tramping, there's a great spot...".  Apparently "tramping" means "hiking".

• Riding.  Cycling.  It took me a while to understand when I was asked "Do you ride?" 

•  Knackered.  Exhausted.  eg "At the end of the day, I'm absolutely knackered."

• Smart little Vegemites.  One elderly lady stated "Well aren't you all smart little Vegemites!".  Vegemite is a yeast-extract spread that Australians love to put on toast.  It's the Aussie version of the British Marmite.  See Chris's experience trying Vegemite in a previous blog by clicking on this link:  Vegemite? Vege-don't.

• Bali belly.  Traveller's diarrhea.  Australians like to travel to Bali for a sunny vacation - which is odd to me since Australia is sunny and full of beaches anyway.

• Tradies.  Tradespeople.  Somehow they sound a lot less tough if you call them "tradies", but still tuff in Australian  eyes.

•  Sparkies.  I heard this on a commercial today.  I think it means electrician, since it was about home renovation and they were listing other trades.

• Choc.  Australians are too lazy to say the complete word: CHOCOLATE.  In a TV ad for chocolate-flavoured Philadelphia cream cheese, not once do they say the word chocolate, OR cream cheese. Instead, the whole ad is about "Choc Philly".  I figured out what this "choc Philly" was when I saw the ad show a container of brown stuff that looked like the Kraft Philadelphia Cream Cheese container I know from home.  I sure hope I'm right about the brown stuff being chocolate though.

On another note, I just picked up a used bike on "gumtree.com", which is Australia's version of kijiji.com.  I rode the bike home about 6km along the coastal bike path.  The view was literally breathtaking.

One of the many beaches that line North Fremantle.

The bike path along the coast is lined with little sand walkways to the beaches.

Easter is coming up soon and I somehow got lucky and have a 5-day long weekend.  Since it's a public holiday, airplane tickets to go just about anywhere in Australia are at least 2 to 3 times the usual price, so we'll be staying in the area.  There are a few islands nearby we still need to visit.  Stay tuned for the photos!

If you're in jail at least it's not an old Australian jail

I told Amy we're going to Fremantle Prison for our anniversary.

 Spousal reaction notwithstanding, we ended up outside Fremantle Prison on a rainy, rainy day. Just like when Tim Robbins escaped from Shawshank. But less crawling out of a sewer pipe full of... you know.

Everyone at home said that Australians were all prisoners, which is a common misconception. In reality, some Australians were just never caught, so technically, they weren't all prisoners.

There were 3 tours available: the normal tour, the tunnel tour (where you get a jumpsuit and hardhat and get to crawl around in underground passages) or the famous escapes tour. We ended up on the escapes tour with a tour guide who was the first Australian I could not understand.

For realz, that girl on the left looks confused and she's FROM Australia.

This was taken in solitary confinement. It was converted into a bathroom by the art school which was set up in the solitary wing after the prison closed in 1991.

Our accented unintelligible but presumably knowledgable tour guide.

Your typical solitary cell.

A peephole

There's a trapdoor here which was once used by a prisoner to hide from the guards under the floorboards. He hid there for 3 days and nobody knew where he was. He was eventually found out when they smelled toast coming from the kitchen where nobody was supposed to be. They followed the smell to this room and found him and several crusts under this trapdoor.

No unauthorized access unless you use the dog door.

 

At times during the tour, you can really feel how hopeless prisoners must have felt.

No escape to be had. Home is thousands of kilometers overseas. Things must have been so bleak...

So bleak...

And then the guide starts talking and you're like I can't tell if he's talking or just eating a bowl of peanut butter out loud.

Back when this jail was started they used to keep boys in here. The youngest one was 7, in for stealing bread.

There was also a women's section of the jail. This razor wire wall was how they kept the women from breaking into the men's side. According to the guide, the men never escaped into the women's section. I didn't research it, it's what the guide said. I think.

Death row. It has since been turned into offices. I'm not sure what that says exactly about the people who work their office jobs in this cell block, but I think it's hard to deny that it says something.

 

Cell 17 on death row. Or 18. You'd think they would clear up that kind of thing on this block.

DEATH ROW CELL 26

Death row cell 24. Also a massage parlor that offers aromatherapy. The leaves on the door totally make me not think of people getting the chair.

The yard. This is where inmates would be sent for exercise while they were quarantined prior to being released into the prison population. One inmate managed to make it to the doctor's office where he stole some sedatives and poured it into a guard's soup on a rainy day. After the guard passed out he stole his uniform and escaped.

One prisoner passed his time drawing on the walls of his cells, subsequently covering up his drawings with oatmeal so he wouldn't get in trouble for defacing prison property. It wasn't until a few years after his death that his drawings were discovered.

The pamphlet called him the Michaelangelo of Fremantle Prison, but there is no evidence to suggest he used nunchuks.

Bon Scott of ACDC fame stayed here once.

Nobody noticed the door on the right was installed upside down. Or maybe nobody cared. Probably nobody cared. It's a serious problem here.

Parole office

Catwalk where the guards would supervise working prisoners. Once there was a large regatta in town and all the guards left the prisoners working on a garden outside the walls while they watched the sailing on the other side of the prison. Needless to say, eventually the prisoners just dropped their tools and ran for freedom.

The small round hut in the middle of the photo is a "pissoir". Interestingly, although the jail was closed in 1991, the cells still used bucket toilets until the end because inmates kept smashing any chemical toilet that was installed.

Jailbirds.

Vegemite? Vege-don't.

This week's adventures left us with a bad taste in our mouths. Well, more like my mouth. See the following for our first encounter with the Australian treat, Vegemite

IT BEGINS

Amy has it on good authority that the best way to eat it is to butter up some toast. Butter it up again. Then one to two more butterings, before the final pre-buttering stage is started. Only after can Vegemite be applied in thicknesses not exceeding that of a wet sheet of Kleenex.

Docking procedure in 5...

4...

3...

2...

1...

Docking failed.

Abort.

Abort.

Abort.

Aborted.

The best thing I can say about it is that it tastes.

If you want to know what it's like you should mix a cup of soy sauce and active yeast, soak some toast in it then eat it. I'm sure you'll have an authentic reaction to the experience.

Speaking of experiences, neither of us has ever been to a comic-con before. There's one every year steps from our apartment in Toronto but we've never bothered to see what it's like inside. It just so happens that this week the Australian ComicCon was doing its leg in Perth, so we decided to see what's up.

(In case you don't know, comic cons are conferences where fans of comics, science fiction and fantasy media get together and celebrate their love of comics, science fiction and fantasy media. Sometimes they get dressed up.)

It was a three day weekend affair ending on Sunday. We took the train to Perth and for a minute, we didn't know where to find the conference center where the comic con was taking place. Then we saw a guy wearing a "It's all fun and games until someone gets vaporized" t-shirt who had a really scraggy beard and looked like he might benefit from a screening mammogram program. We followed him for 3 blocks and lo and behold...

THE CON.

 I thought by Sunday all the nerds would be tired out from lugging their replica Conan the Barbarian swords around, but I was wrong. The line up was HUGE. I'd neglected to make note that the cosplay contest didn't start until after we got there. Also, it was autograph and picture time with con celebrities William Shatner, Richard Dean Anderson (MacGyver), Jason Momoa (Conan), and somebody from the Rocky Horror Picture Show.

But my favourite celebrity was Australian Batman.

He's just like normal Batman except he says "No worries, mate".

Card playing area. There is a man in a duck suit. At the same time, I know why and I also don't know why.

 There was a guy passed out on the floor near the lazer tag arena. The people with him said he was fine, just had a little too much stimulation and cherry Coke. I don't know if that really was the problem, but Amy understood. She had some kind of absence seizure when she saw this rotating Exorcist ice cream clown head.

snap out of it wife

Star Wars riff raff. I think from right to left they are a Tusken Raider, a TIE fighter pilot, and ahhh I can't find them on Wookiepedia so I dunno.

Did somebody call the Ghostbusters? Anybody?

After wandering around a while we both got tired and decided to call it quits. There weren't as many people dressed up as I thought there would be and it was really crowded. I was standing behind one guy dressed up as Darth Maul and his friend dressed up like a Wookie who were looking for their companion. "Don't worry," I heard Darth say. "This will get his attention." He lit up his lightsaber and waved it around in the air. Unfortunately, there were like a thousand other glowing lightsabers being waved around. I don't think Darth and Wookie ever found their friend...

But on the way home Amy found some goggles. She's going to take some swimming lessons.