Summing Up Our Australian Adventure

We have been home for a week and are now able to look back on our Australian trip with a little more perspective.  We are no longer consumed by thoughts of the pandemic and getting home.  We are now able to look back and appreciate our 54 days in Australia.

We more fully appreciate how large Australia is and how much time it would take to see “everything”.  Despite our limited travel, we have still seen more of Australia than the majority of Australians.  Tasmania is still a foreign land to most.  While many have completed the Great Ocean Road, very few have done the journey to Broken Hill.  As one of our Australian hotel hosts stated, “why would you go there?”  Even fewer have ventured north of Perth to experience the west coast. (The flies may have something to do with that!)

We now better understand the need to pay attention to the time of year chosen for Australian travel.  Australians travel south for the summer and north for the winter.  For us, that means if we want to see those northern areas in the tropics, we must go to Australia in our late summer and fall, their winter, spring.  If circumstances favour us, we will make a return trip in the fall months to experience the Great Barrier Reef, Cairns, and points north.

We have now come to some general conclusions about our Australian experiences:

Australians are genuinely nice people.  Everyone seems interested in your travels and ready to make offerings to make it even better.  Folks are proud of their country and pleased to share it with visitors.  This even includes the Bogans.

Uber was almost everywhere we traveled in Australia.  Its existence simply makes travel much more manageable and less stressful.  The anxiety of landing in a new place and stressing how to get from the airport to the hotel doesn't exist.  One has only to walk to the place for Ride Share Pick Up and press the Uber app.  There is no need for local currency and you know the name of the person picking you up. 

After a few weeks in-country most of us were no longer filled with fears of snakes, insects, and sharks.  Most Aussies have not seen snakes outside of enclosures and pictures.  Everyone follows the credo of "don't walk in the tall grass" without making lots of noise.  Shark patrols of ocean beaches are evident and do not slow the locals down from enjoying the sea.  The presence of these natural phenomena should not be a deterrent to travel in Australia.

Tasmania is a hidden gem even for Australians.  It is still considered a little “backward” by many Aussies but is beginning to be appreciated for its moderate climate and great outdoors.  

It is relatively cheaper to travel in Australia than Canada.  Most of our time we were getting our Aussie dollars for .90 cents.  If there are taxes, they are included in the price.  The best part is “no tipping”.  Service is great and there is no 15 to 20 % in additional costs.

It is nice to travel to a place so different from home but where everyone speaks English.  It is a different kind of English but relatively easy to understand.  The only word I used that never seemed to connect with the locals was the word, “water”.  I never had an Aussie understand me the first time around.  Aussies pronounce water, “wadda” and if you continue to use a "t" they will persist in looking at you as if you had just arrived from another planet.

Very few folks are called by their given names.  All names are shortened and some are chucked altogether.  Randall is the proper name of one of our party.  At home, Randall is too formal and he is known as "Randy" or simply "R".  Our friends in Australia called him "Dougie".  To say "I'm Randy" was not a phrase suggested for public use. 

We can conclude that the universal greeting in Australia is, “How ya goin” regardless of region.  Never once did I hear the Aussie cliché, “G’Day”. 

We did manage to pick up some of the Aussie slang.  According to Google, the slang is often characterized by making words as short as possible; the story goes it developed by speaking through clenched teeth to avoid blowies (blowflies) from getting into the mouth.

Here are a few slang terms we heard in no particular order of importance:

Bogan: redneck, an uncultured person.

Bottle shop: liquor store

Chook: a chicken

Esky: cooler

Mozzie: mosquito

Sickie: sick day.

Stubbie: A stubbie holder is a polystyrene insulated holder for a beer.

Ute: pickup truck

There are a few slang terms we thought we would hear but didn’t.  We never heard anyone say “put a shrimp on the Barbie”, “Fair Dinkum” or “Good onya, mate!”

Well that is it until next time providing the world gets back to normal and we are ever to leave our house again.