I’ve decided the Australian dialect is the quintessential Valley Girl speak. They shorten all their words and the ones they do finish they end on a higher pitch. Australians have yet to find a word they can’t just shorten and put a ‘Y’ at the end. Breakfast is breaky; expiration is expiry, expensive is exy and the list could go on forever.
The first couple of weeks I spent most of my day behind a cash register wondering what the hell was just said. Instead of saying thank you after a transaction there would be a good on ya, cheers, thanks mate, beauty, or my favorite ta. Yup, ta, the shortest and most common way possible to say thank you in Oz.
I like to think of myself as seasoned and having figured everything out by now but that’s far from the truth. Yesterday a woman came in asking for rubbers and I gave her condoms. Turns out rubbers are erasers. Before that it was an old man wanting thongs. No, not the sexy panties but flip flops. I think I might be hopeless. They have the luxury of Hollywood and can pretty much understand everything I say. I have Mad Max and Crocadile Dundee, the Hollywood version of Oz. Yeah, I’m screwed but that’s half the fun.
Your life seems exciting. I want to work in Aussieland!
ReplyDeleteTrust me it's 90% boring. But the slows times are as good as the fun times. You can get a Holiday Travel work visa here until you're 30 so you have plenty of time. Just get the visa and show up and work and travel for a year. If you work 3 months on a farm you can get the visa extended for another year. And there are always cheap flight to SE Asia you can hop on while you're here.
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