English/Australian Dictionary please!

I love the way the Australians talk, they have some of the best phrases. Australia is a place where things are "too easy", where you can have "no worries", where everything is "heaps good" and success is greated with a "good onya".What I really love about them is the positiveness of their nature, how they downplay problems and big up everyday occurances. Lend someone a pen and I become a "legend' worthy of Homeric prose, worried about the end of the world, "she'll be right"

This was not always the case, as a new arrival to these sunny shores in my first week in my new role I was asked "How you travelling for the presso this arvo?" So stimied was I that I posted the phrase on Facebook to see if anyone could come back with a translation. My favourite had to be from a US friend who though I had been asked to go out and by a present for someone. But they now seem part of my world, and maybe there will come a time when I don't smile at the more outrageous like "Strewth", "Shelagh" and "Ripper" (but I doubt it), the time has already come when I have used some of them myself.

Good love em, those Aussies, they make me laugh!

(For those who want to know it meant "Are you ready for the presentation this afternoon?")

Show and Tell

So we had a visitor at the weekend, the lovely Bridget who I worked with in the UK was sent by the company I used to work for she still (just) works for to Melbourne for six weeks, I am assured that actual business took place. So she hopped on a plane and came and saw us at the weekend. I still can't get over the fact that the next major city, with more that 50,000 population requires a two hour flight to get to, Australia doesn't seem so big when reduced to a size that fits on one page!

So around 30 hours to play with then, I set about frantically planning the quickest, most actioned pack tour of Adelaide and surrounds. Then I realised that I was falling into the trap, and forgetting that friends and family really come to see you and not the location. And I also realised that I don't need to make visitors 'get' this place like I do, as if I were seeking their benediction that I have made the right move. So instead we sat in a pub on the sea front and gossiped, and I felt like a bit of the old home had come to the new home.

Why I avoid the English

When I moved to Australia I found this great facebook group ExpatsinAdelaide, where I met the people who have got me through the last two years in Aussiestralia. Now I am reflecting on it the thing I have loved most about this group and the friends I have made is that none of them are English. I have my bbqs with Canadians, Americans and Mexicans (though technically they are all Americans as they like to point out!) I grab a coffee in the city with my Fijian/Indian/Scottish friends. So why not the English? Well it’s simple, they whinge! Within two minutes it degenerates into a discussion on what products you can't get here, how this thing and that thing annoys them, how it’s not like home. Well, that’s the point isn't it? I love Australia, of course I miss friends and family, and the English countryside, but that's about it really. For everything I used to enjoy in the UK there has been something wonderful here that I have found. So while I don't get Robinson's Pink Grapefruit Barley water, I instead love the wonderful Turkish bread that I never saw in the UK. Every day I fall in love with something Australian, and embrace a little bit more of what it truly means to be a traveller.