Hoons, Chooks and Pashing

There is a great chapter in every guide book which relates to language. My Australian one says that ‘Strine’ (a word used to describe Australian-English) “can sound like a profound Cockney intonation piped through the nose.” They certainly seem to elongate their vowels and substitute t's for d's much like the Cockney accent, but there are some words which just don’t compute, things that I have had to question and, in extreme cases, look up. Here are some of them. I’m sure there will be more.

arvo: afternoon. “I’ll see you in the arvo.” 
chook: chicken. Fast food places like Red Rooster will serve you a whole chook, and delicious it is too. It’s like a fast food version of Nando’s, if you can imagine such a thing. 
daggy: uncool, out of style. “I know it’s a bit daggy, but I collect antique chamber pots/play chess on my own/listen to James Morrison” etc.
dinkum: meaning honest or true. If you heard “is he fair dinkum?” that would mean “is he for real/is he serious?”
hoon: hooligan, generally reserved for shouting at young people on loud motorbikes.
ocker: an unsophisticated country type who is really, really Australian, to the point where you would probably have to squint a little to understand them. I’m not yet sure whether this term is used affectionately or as a bit of an insult.
pash: kissing, full on, with tongues and everything.
pokie: a slot machine, like a one-armed bandit. Some bigger bars seem to have entire rooms dedicated to these, not to mention large numbers of gamblers and their small change.
schooner: the largest beer glass in Queensland, which is the maximum amount that you can be served in a bar and is smaller than an English pint. The glass size below a schooner is called a ‘pot’.
servo: service station. This habit of abbreviating words is popular, which seems to add to the somewhat casual informality of the place. I wasn’t sure whether ‘servo’ was just one of those slang terms which becomes part of the vernacular but is not generally embraced outside of local communities, but thankfully I stand corrected. I have spotted road signs with ‘BP Servo’ written in big letters, which I find completely endearing.
sluggos: small swimming shorts, like Speedo’s. In February, opposition leader Tony Abbott was photographed in sluggos as he competed in a swimming competition (pictured above), causing many to criticise the politican for using the opportunity as a publicity stunt. That may be true, but I don’t think he looks all that bad in what is certainly a difficult look to carry, especially when you consider the David Cameron equivalent.
smoko: break time at work, which used to relate to a cigarette break but now seems to embrace all worktime restbites.
stickybeak: to take a look, as in to ‘stick your beak’ into something. A bank clerk said this while I was opening an account and trying to get my brain around all the different rates of interest and saver deals open to me, so throwing in a word like stickybeak certainly didn’t help.
stubby: a small bottle of beer, a larger bottle is called a ‘tallie’ and a can of beer is a ‘tinnie’.
stubby holder: a fabric or foam case to keep your stubby or tinnie cold, which is an essential outdoor item. The better novelty ones usually have comic, beer-related quips written on the side, things like “if it’s not at your local, then move house,” and so on.
Tim Tam: a chocolate biscuit, like the McVities Penguin bar. There is a really adventurous way to eat these with any hot beverage - simply bite off the corners of opposite ends and slurp your drink through a specially designed air pocket which runs through the chocolatey centre. And yes, people actually do this. It’s mucky business, and takes dunking to a whole new level.

But if you want to get your head around some of the country’s most famous linguistic luxuries, then simply consult their adopted national anthem, Waltzing Matilda, written by the bush poet Banjo Paterson in 1887. It’s full of such rich verse that, even today, it takes a little bit of decoding, particularly for an Englishman. For example, here are the opening lyrics:

Once a jolly swagman camped by a billabong
Under the shade of a coolabah tree,
And he sang as he watched and waited 'til his billy boiled
“You'll come a-Waltzing Matilda, with me”

Now, firstly you will need to know what a swag is in order to understand what a swagman would be doing with one. A swag is a waterproof bed, and a swagman was the name given to a traveller living hand to mouth and working from farm to farm. He’s camped by a billabong (a lake), under a coolabah tree (a eucalyptus tree, the like of which are found across Australia), waiting for his billy (a portable kettle) to boil, singing to himself about carrying his matilda (a bag containing all of his belongings).

Similar to the British national anthem, people will struggle to recite all of the verses to this popular folk song, but if you read it all, you'll notice that things don’t turn out too grand for our jolly swagman. He steals and eats a sheep, only for the farmer to alert the authorities and have him arrested, but before the police catch up to him, he commits suicide by drowning himself in the billabong. Paterson concludes his lyrics with the spirit of the swagman haunting the site: And his ghost may be heard as you pass by that billabong, "You'll come a-Waltzing Matilda, with me". Spooky.

I hadn’t realised until reading up on the history of British colonialism in Australia that, throughout the 80 years that they were sending convicts here (160,000 in total), different allocated states and islands were used to separate the various classes of criminal. The first ships would arrive from Portsmouth into New South Wales on 26 January 1788 (now the celebrated Australia Day) after a journey of eight months, which adds a little perspective on the 24 hour flight that it takes today. They docked in Sydney and, over time, the city would form the designated home for solely those charged with petty theft and embezzlement. For really violent sorts who were fond of escaping, these were sent to an island (of course) off the coast of Victoria, which was then called Van Dieman’s Land, named after Anton van Diemen, governor of the Dutch East Indies who sponsored Abel Tasman’s journey to the island in 1642, later to be rechristened Tasmania in his honour. As for the ‘worst kind of felons’ - those who were deemed so bad that any free settlers wishing to live near them were banned from doing so inside a 50 mile radius - well, where do you think they were sent? Yep. That would be Queensland.

What they would have found, of course, were acres of tropical wilderness, enriched soil for vegetation and fine grazing for livestock, and underfoot, an abundance of natural, profitable resources from coal to gold. Compared to the squalor of an overcast, over-populated Britain, you can’t help but feel that these were some of the luckiest prisoners in the world.

A booming economy was waiting to be exploited here, although life was by no means easy, and you wonder whether Joseph Banks, the president of the Royal Society (pictured) who came up with the whole penal colony idea in the first place, had really thought it through carefully enough. The temperatures during the summer months in Australia would prove far too hot for the prisoners to work, and being city folk, they had little experience on how to cultivate crops or work on the land. As a result, and despite such obvious potential, those first fledgling steps in their new habitat would result in famine and hardship. Then there was the small matter of the natives, but that’s a whole other story, and one that I promise to come back to.

So there seems to have developed a north/south divide along the east coast between Queenslanders and those from New South Wales, who consider some northern folk to be, well - and putting this in the nicest possible way - bonkers. Whether this links to its colonial history, who knows, or maybe its just something about the heat. I couldn’t possibly pass judgement on this, being as I’m yet to spend any time in New South Wales, so I mention all of this merely as an aside to the real story that I wanted to discuss, which concerns the locals at my farm here in Bundaberg. All of them perfectly pleasant, but a select few perhaps meeting this prescribed assumption.

Like Mavis, who on my first day introduces herself as ‘Billy’ - she prefers it, she tells me, which is absolutely fine, although everyone else still calls her Mavis, which certainly puts one at risk of huge social embarrassment. There is a young girl, perhaps a similar age to myself, who has outwardly refused to engage in any form of prolonged conversion, and seems idly happy to spend her lunch breaks staring into a wall. The teenagers, however, are all smiling workhorses and much better at the job than me, like Joel, who didn’t get on too well at school and left in Year 10. There’s a slightly wild eyed look about him, especially when he laughs and tells me “why should I go to school when I’ve got a PS3 at home and a 50 inch plasma screen?” A tough decision for any 16 year old, certainly.

The ever-charming Bill Bryson has looked into other reasons why Queenslanders are allegedly “madder than cut snakes” in his brilliant book, Down Under. “For almost two decades the state was under the control of Joh Bjelke-Peterson, an eccentric, right-wing state premier who at one time seriously entertained the notion of blowing up parts of the Great Barrier Reef with small atomic bombs to create shipping channels.” There are anecdotes denoting the ‘crazy’ behaviour of Queenslanders in most Australian books, like the one Bryson explains, about an American tourist asking for salad to go with his meat and potatoes while staying at a Queensland hotel. The waitress turns to the other guests in disgust and says, “this bastard thinks it’s Christmas.” “In a word,” he concludes, “Queensland has a reputation for being a place apart.”

Now I would like to stress at this point that I am in no way suggesting that these select Queenslanders are indicative of a whole state, and with an area as large as Queensland it would be completely absurdist to suggest so. But they certainly don’t act as an exception to the rule, and that’s all I’m saying.


AU Tube: Understanding Australian TV
‘Santo, Sam & Ed’s Cup Fever’ (SBS)

All of the World Cup games on SBS are preceded by this comedy show, recorded live from Melbourne in front of a studio audience. I’ve caught it a couple of times this week and it is funny, in places, like an extended version of the 2 Good, 2 Bad section at the end of ‘Match of the Day 2’.

Here, a deadpan trio of established comedians (Santo Cilauro, Sam Pang, Ed Kavalee) host a round up of the day’s results with an extended look over the more absurdist moments from the previous day’s games. This includes excerpts of convoluted commentary, officials falling over, plenty of references to the vuvuzelas and a regular gag like Take On My Nuts, featuring the ‘hilarious’ image of a wall of players protecting their groins. The boys are clutching at straws a bit here, so lets hope there is a contingency plan for when the tournament reaches the later stages and the gags, as well as the games, start to dry up.

Better are the pre-recorded skits, like the Socceroo player Mark Bresciano’s Cup Diary, which has the midfielder commenting more on what he had for lunch rather than his training (trust me, it's funnier than it sounds), and then when it stops being silly to talk to special guests, like Dutch legend John van 't Schip who featured on last night’s show. The hosts suddenly prove themselves as not only gag blowers but also, reassuringly, big fans of the game, which certainly helps.

The SBS coverage might not be the slick, revolving, multicoloured stat fest that something like Sky would be rolling out, or the come hither homeliness of the cuddly Beeb, but at least they’re showing all of the games live, even repeating full matches at more sociable hours, as well as putting together a more serious round up of highlights. So this show acts as a nice alternative look at a sport which, we were led to believe, the Australians don’t even particularly like.

But let’s not forget that I am writing all of this as a frustrated England fan, and given our goalless draw with Algeria was so painfully dull that, at one point, the director chose to instead focus on a bird which had rested on one of the goal nets, then perhaps laughter is the best and only medicine.

Jungle Fever

What most people know about the koala is that it’s not a bear but a marsupial, like a possum or a kangaroo, characterised by its pouch for housing their joeys. It was the colonialists who spotted a similarity to bears, which surely begs the question as to whether they had ever seen a bear close up or just far, far away. Because koala’s are small, tree dwelling fur-balls who, rather boringly, sleep for up to 18 hours a day. Then they invariably eat eucalyptus leaves for their remaining five to six hours of the day, before falling asleep again. These guys turn sloth into an art form.

You can hold a koala at the Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary, on the border of Queensland and New South Wales, near the beaches on the Gold Coast. The place is a bit like Jurassic Park, shepherding tourists on a miniature train through giant birdcages, animal themed adventure parks and seats fashion from giant plastic crocodiles. Audio guides blurt out information from speakers hidden amongst the bushes. I’m not completely sold on the idea, especially considering the number of, say, lorikeets and parrots you can see just walking down the streets. In fact, head up to North Queensland and you can see most of these animals, albeit outside of their cages and not quite in such a family friendly environment: crocodiles aren’t penned in to makeshift fences but free to devour lagoon-dwelling tourists; tall red kangaroos leap into passing vehicles; a small wallaby, grazing in the bush, might suddenly find itself grappled into the talons of a passing eagle. Yes, Queensland is a wild place. This glorified zoo sanitises danger, like a visitors room at a high security prison, only with better coffee.

Having said that, the Australians are fierce on conservationism, and the sanctuary are currently raising money for their wildlife hospital appeal. It costs $600,000 a year to run the hospital, treating up to 30 animals a day, and they’re planning to build a new one to meet up with the increasing demand of troubled wildlife. The effects of their work can be seen across the park, like their wedge-tailed eagles, who can no longer fly after being rescued from a roadside accident. They’re one of the largest birds of prey in the world with a wingspan of over 7ft, but they would have otherwise been discarded due to their injuries. The sanctuary also provide homes for a number of endangered species which, tragically, will undoubtedly die out during our lifetime. A disheartening thought, especially considering the tree-kangaroo, which is a small, auburn coloured creature with an elongated tail and an astoundingly blasé approach to heights. They can survive a fall of around 60ft, which is quite baffling, but they can’t quite counter the growing effects of habitat loss from deforestation.

They have Tasmanian devils there, too, although being expert scavengers, they’re quite hard to spot. These dog-like, meat-eating animals were considered a pest and hunted into the 1940s, but now face an even larger threat to their existence: the devil facial tumour disease, a form of cancer which only effect these little creatures and, as yet, has no known cure. But the sanctuary are working on this, which is just as well: the disease has allegedly caused a 50% decline in numbers and, since 2009, the Tasmanian devil has been placed on the world’s most endangered species list, something which increases every single day.

From July 2008, it became compulsory for those migrants under the age of 30 who were wishing to extend their work visas to Australia to undergo three months (88 days) of specified regional employment. The initiative, in theory, helps local businesses with an affordable and constant stream of labour to help meet the high demands of peak seasons, especially on farms where, in northern Queensland, everything from cherry tomatoes to figs, grapes, peppers, bananas, macadamia nuts and sugar cane all thrive in lush, abundant fields. Crops are harvested in huge numbers, or intensively farmed inside greenhouses promising fresh produce all year round, and once picked they are then packed and shipped to outlets across the continent. Here, in Bundaberg, the city relies on the land for the majority of its employment: from the many local farms which surround the region and the coastline, to the huge sugar plantations which help to produce the region’s best known export, rum.

But not everyone is in agreement that the new visa scheme works, particularly the backpackers themselves, who often feel exploited and forced to work in somewhat undesirable conditions. I’ve heard stories of terrible living quarters, where suffering employees are too scared to complain unless they lose their minimum wage, to anecdotal evidence of workers dying of dehydration in sheds where, during the sizzling summer months, temperatures can reach over 50 degrees. But the farmers aren’t happy, either, and who can blame them: those under 30 and looking for a second year in Australia are usually university educated or gap year students whose history of manual labour was when they once worked part time on the cash desk at Dixons. They don’t want to be there, which only acts to frustrate the land owners even more. I’ve spent this week working intermittently on the Marcon family plantation, where capsicums and courgettes are picked, priced and packaged for shipment to locations like Sydney and Melbourne, and the motto here seems to be, “however fast you think you’re working, work faster.”

It’s repetitive, draining at times, but the husband and wife who run the farm are adamant that they will not be employing backpackers. The workforce is predominantly made up of locals from the Bundaberg area, both male and female, young and old, creating a communal atmosphere and hard work ethic that I’m sure is lacking on the other farms. Alan, 17, works here full time, along with many of his co-workers, and when he’s not lifting crates of green peppers he’s surfing or riding his BMX. He is following in a family tradition which has forever been a staple of the lives of the people in northern Queensland, steeped in a respect for the land and the fortunes that it brings. So it’s small wonder that when I tell Alan that I’m from England, he replies, “English, eh? Well, we don’t get many backpackers here.” The Marcons have set a precedent in which I’m sure many other local farmers will follow if migration into the country continues to increase.

For further evidence of Australian’s stern conservationism, just look at Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s decision to take Japan to the International Court of Justice for their continued whaling in the Antarctic, whose seas have long since been declared as a whale sanctuary. In their defence, the Japanese are allegedly hunting for ‘scientific’ purposes, rather than commercial. Quite what ‘scientific’ reasons these are will be made clear when the countries meet in The Hague, although justifying the deaths of over 2,000 whales a year won’t be easy: unless these scientific reasons extend to building a giant Frankenstein’s sea monster for some kind of covert military operation, reanimated with the head of a dolphin, the tail of a thousand tuna fish and all fashioned out of condemned orca bits.

That’s a disturbing image, but Japan are keen to defend the barbaric practice on traditional hunting lines, while ordinary Australians think that the mammals should just be given a break. The fact that the decision was one of Rudd’s 2007 campaign promises has met with some derision from the local press, who see its fulfilment as a piece of savvy politicising considering that Rudd will be fighting for re-election later in the year. And what if Australia lose the battle in court? It’s unlikely, but embarrassing nonetheless.


AU Tube: Understanding Australian TV
‘State of Origin: New South Wales v. Queensland’ (Win TV)

Wednesday saw the first of three big ‘football’ (read: rugby) matches between these two giant states of Rugby League, which is disproportionately popular here on the east coast, to the extent where normally placid and well-meaning Australians lose their minds for 80 minutes, screaming at the television and shouting obscenities. I know this to be true after watching the game in a house in Queensland, where every crunching tackle and physical exertion is met with a loud and patriotic yelp. The State of Origin games are a big deal, where every year rugby players forgo their club colours in favour of the state from which they were born, thus creating an almost tribal encounter which seems to garner more national pride (and division in equal measure) than when they play for the national team. So you would think that they could come up with more flattering names for the sides: NSW are the Cockroaches, QLD are called the Cane Toads.

But Queensland are clearly the better team, which helps, winning albeit not particularly comfortably, just like they have done for the previous four years. It was a great game, and I don’t even particularly follow rugby, but it is a shame that commercial station Win TV (or Channel 9) seem so eager to promote Ford’s half year sale that they even show their adverts during the game. Granted, this only happens when play stops after a try, but such trigger happy commercialism reminds me of watching TV in America, which is perhaps the closest equivalent to looking after a hyperactive child.