January 26th is Australia Day, so I’d thought I’d share with you insights on being an Aussie.
First the lingo. We’re a little lazy in our speech and tend to shorten everything; perhaps this derives from trying to keep the flies out of our mouths or maybe we just like to conserve energy. We particularly like to shorten our mates’ names even when the name has few letters to begin with, so Alan becomes Al or we’ll just call you affectionately by your surname. We take the short cut when pronouncing our cities, with Brisbane being Brisbin and Melbourne being Melbin. We also like to add an O to our slang – arvo (this afternoon), avo (avocado), journo (journalist), rego (vehicle registration), yobbo (akin to redneck). We don’t curse, we swear and the only time you hear us mention God is when we’re swearing. If we ask you to bring a plate there had better be food on it and if we tell you something is BYO then bring your own grog. We eat biscuits not cookies, lollies not candy, chips not fries and use mobile phones not cell phones.
We wear our thongs on our feet, our hearts on our sleeves and zinc on our nose. We say what we think and we believe in free speech. We throw eggs at our pollies, we don’t shoot at them and we don’t understand why Americans think they’re free when they have to carry a gun with them.
We like to have a barbie but never with a shrimp or a prawn but with real red meat like steak or sausages and we like drink it down with a cold beer. If we can watch the cricket at the same time it’s bliss. A burger has to come with beetroot or it’s just a rissole on a roll. We love our vegemite but to others it’s like salty oil.
We love our beach and bush and if you’re scared to go in either because of sharks, snakes or spiders you’re a wimp.
We tell ourselves we’re an egalitarian lot though you can clearly divide us into bogans (like yobbos), dinks or yuppies, but never attempt to segregate us.
We know that Australia is the best country in the world but unlike Americans we don’t like to brag about it because we want to keep this secret and our country to ourselves.
We’re outwardly racist but in reality anyone can be our mate. Most of us are bitzers (a bit of this and a bit of that) anyway.
The test of a true Aussie is to be able to cheer Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, Oi ,Oi ,Oi and get all the Aussies and the Ois in the right places.
The latest trend is tattoos and many of us are inked. So if you’re skilled at laser surgery this is the place to be.
The only wish I have for Australia Day is that we don’t celebrate it on invasion day so our indigenous folk can also celebrate this wonderful country without having to shed a tear.
I’m proud to be an Aussie!
Image Credit
“Boxing Kangaroo” from The IPKat.
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