Australia

[Akhenaten]

I think that's an extremely optimistic estimate. Consider that Australia has approximately the same land area as the Continental United States (but with only 10% of the population) - I don't think nine days would be enough.

Not a snowball's chance in hell. I will wager 20 Nubians and a Solar boat it cannot be done.

Well doing a couple of calculations - guesstimates really - this is what I came up with

Cooktown to Brisbane = 2 day

Brisbane to Sydney = 1 day

Sydney to Melbourne = 1 day

Melbourne to Adelaide = 1 day

Adelaide to Perth = 2 days

Thats a total of 7 days, and you are only two thirds the way around, with easily the worst part of the trip in front of you

Yup. The bit where everything tries to maim, kill and eat you.


To be fair though, HBS only asked a hypothetical, based on the sort of calculations used above.

Her(?) real question was whether the road went all the way around, to which I think we may answer "yes", for certain values of "road".


Cheers,

Dave

 

[Akhenaten]

Over proof rum, the telecom blokes had a deal going with the suppliers and we used to get it for peanuts off them, beautiful stuff.

It's amazing what the GST doesn't cover, eh?

OP rum good. Make Mungo brave. Also give Mungo many headaches.

If you drink enough rum, Queensland makes sense.

One war cemetery at Adelaide River, think about 400 Ks south of Darwin is an emotion filled experience, some of our finest youths lay in the beautiful kept grounds. I never checked but think it's on a ley line by the feel of the place, still have to grit my teeth when I think of them. A bead tree grows there(seeds bright glossy red and hard).

Near enough. The Adelaide River War Cemetery is only 116 km South of Darwin, on the Stuart Highway.

It is as you say, a very emotion-stirring place.

Incidentally, the civil cemetery next door is the resting place for the people who were killed when the Darwin Post Office was bombed during WWII.

The second WW soldiers done us proud too. I still have a few .303 rounds from WW1 and the PTB aren't getting them, not the cases anyway. Most of the thing we talk of are never seen by tourist, pity.

Well it keeps the touros from being shot by crazy old buggers runnin' around the bush with rifles, at least

Coming back to central Qld, Winton a great place what with it's Matilda display and all the dino bits worth a look then one can go to Lark Quarry about 45 Ks out and see the imprints in the rock(once mud) of a big mother chasing a mob of little ones. Could be were the Bunip stories come from.

Yup. I had a link to the Winton Dinosaurs earlier and here comes another one.


Ooh! Bunyips!


Cheers Mate

 

[Akhenaten]

I was only nineteen...

Moving words. Thank you for posting them for us.


Cheers,

Dave

 

[Akhenaten]

"A stoush has erupted between two indigenous groups over the traditional ownership of Canberra."
A "stoush"? Wot's that, all then? Rhyming slang from "A boot in the toush"?

It is the same as a biff

A shade less vigourous than a donnybrook, but you usually have those with the trouble and strife.


Cheers Cobbers,

Dave

 

[lionking]

If your grandfather enlisted in Victoria he likeley belonged to the 4th, 8th, (possibly the 9th) or 13th Regiments of Light Horse.

He was from Sydney, as I was originally. Any links to NSW regiments would be appreciated.

 

[arthwollipot]

Fair crack of the whip me old cobber! (sic) I came late to the thread. Don't poke me eye out for pointing out the bleeding obvious.

Um, yeah.

The use of the term "koori" is disputed, let's put it that way. There are definitely some indigenous Australians who would cause a stoush if it were used to refer to them.

And personally, I use "hey dude" or "hey man", or sometimes just "duuuude", but then again I did grow up in the 80s.

 

[Akhenaten]

Sorry if I'm hogging the thread but I'd like to explain the Beveridge brothers a bit better.

They were two old cattle men in NE victoria and it was their mother who looked after Ned Kelly. They owned large tracts of land and took cattle up to the high plains every summer; hard tough bush men. I remenber them as old men and Siddy Beveridge told me stories as a kid.

One story was of a pack of dingo's that tried to pull his horse down on the high plains. Their main home was in the Buckland (near Porepunkah) and when Siddy was 80 he was still rounding up cattle on the high country, (not only his own) but by then most were trucked down so Siddy got the last load on its way then nugged his horse and took three days to ride home sleeping in the saddle. The horse knew the way home.

Sadly the stupid greenie Gov. have stopped the cattle grazing rights so now it's a huge fire hazard. They would sell three rail trucks of cattle a week to Melbourne but only two went on the books.

My Uncle swapped a .45 colt for a .303 which got handed down to me when I could just pick it up. Loved shooting rabbits with it using dum dums. (Why am I deaf?)

Don't know if the town of Beveridge was named from there family? Maybe.

Good story Bob. Thanks.

I've been researching Beveridge a little, but there's not much to find. The family records are pretty good for when they were in Scotland in the 1700s, and it seems that some of them went to America, and some to Australia.

I'm stuffed if I can discover anything about the Australian branch of the family, so I'm going to head down to Beveridge and see what I can find out. I'll take some pictures, if nothing else, and maybe sample the Guinness to make sure they're still doing it right.

This is all I can add, at the moment:

Redreaming the Plain

The town was named after Andrew Beveridge, a Scottish pastoralist who in 1845, after four years in the colony, left his daughter in charge of the sheep and set up the Hunters' Tryste Inn, an unusual bluestone building that now combines the functions of a hotel, eating-house, post office and general store.

There's a book about the history of the area called Pretty Sally's Hill, a history of Wallan, Wandong and Bylands by J. W. Payne (Kilmore, 1981) and there's a copy of it in my local library, so that should be helpful.


Cheers,

Dave

 

[MG1962]

A shade less vigourous than a donnybrook, but you usually have those with the trouble and strife.


Cheers Cobbers,

Dave

But a smidgen worse than an outright blue, but possibly not as serious as a set too, though that would depend on the level of fistycuffs

 

[Akhenaten]

Fair crack of the whip me old cobber! (sic) I came late to the thread. Don't poke me eye out for pointing out the bleeding obvious.

Um, yeah.

The use of the term "koori" is disputed, let's put it that way. There are definitely some indigenous Australians who would cause a stoush if it were used to refer to them.

And personally, I use "hey dude" or "hey man", or sometimes just "duuuude", but then again I did grow up in the 80s.

Yeah. I really did go off half-cocked at the start, and I was using my own (limited) exprerience rather than fact-check.

I really do appreciate you and Moby pointing out my error and I'll be more specific in future when posting about indigenous Australia.


Re-reading, my post, it was a bit over the top, and I apologise. You are, of course, entirely correct.


Cheers Dude, (me too, sort of )

Dave

 

[Sideroxylon]

All this Strine lingo reminded me of the word map project on the ABC website.
http://www.abc.net.au/wordmap/default.htm
Hitting the map search and browsing around is a fun way to explore it.

ETA: I love the colour of Strine. For example:

"blind mullet"

Untreated faecal matter released into waterways Compare blind trout, Bondi cigar, Bondi shark, brown trout, Werribee trout.

 

[MG1962]

All this Strine lingo reminded me of the word map project on the ABC website.
http://www.abc.net.au/wordmap/default.htm
Hitting the map search and browsing around is a fun way to explore it.

ETA: I love the colour of Strine. For example:

"blind mullet"

Untreated faecal matter released into waterways Compare blind trout, Bondi cigar, Bondi shark, brown trout, Werribee trout.

That is a cool website - I was interested under the regional entries, for the North Coast of NSW - "Not sighted off Nobbies" was not mentioned. It is one of the most enigmatic of sayings. Seemingly connected to Nobbies headland in Newcastle. But who they were looking for or who was doing the looking has never been explained.

 

[Akhenaten]

But a smidgen worse than an outright blue, but possibly not as serious as a set too, though that would depend on the level of fistycuffs

This is all starting to sound like a game of Rugby Union, at which Australia excels.


Cheers, footy fans,

Dave

 

[Akhenaten]

All this Strine lingo reminded me of the word map project on the ABC website.
http://www.abc.net.au/wordmap/default.htm
Hitting the map search and browsing around is a fun way to explore it.

ETA: I love the colour of Strine. For example:

"blind mullet"

Untreated faecal matter released into waterways Compare blind trout, Bondi cigar, Bondi shark, brown trout, Werribee trout.

I love that site. Thanks for the linky.

Something about it struck me as I was looking through the words. There seem to be some 'Strayan phrases which can only be defined in terms of other 'Stryanisms, like:

Mocca Chick, a female bogan.

I assume this is a reference to the moccasins (ugg boots in Winter) that the girls wear in places like ___________________ .


On a more personally disturbing note, I realise what an ocker I am. It seems like ½ my vocabulary comes out of a slang dictionary.

Your point about the colour of the languge is noted. When I post in a more "international" English, the result seems very flat and lifeless to me, and I have to resist the urge to keep putting in moties to make up for the lost meaning of the fair dinkum words..

That is a cool website - I was interested under the regional entries, for the North Coast of NSW - "Not sighted off Nobbies" was not mentioned. It is one of the most enigmatic of sayings. Seemingly connected to Nobbies headland in Newcastle. But who they were looking for or who was doing the looking has never been explained.

My Mum's family are from Newcastle. I'll ask her.


'ooroo, kangaroo.

 

[arthwollipot]

I assume this is a reference to the moccasins (ugg boots in Winter) that the girls wear in places like ___________________ .

Queanbeyan.

I find it interesting that Australia doesn't have distinct regional accents. I can't tell by your pronunciation whether you're from Perth or Brisbane. I might be able to tell you whether you're from Cremorne or Redfern, and I could probably tell you wether you were from Perth or Mintabe. But this has more to do with socioeconomic status and quality of education than purely location. I probably wouldn't be able to tell whether you're from Mintabe or Meekathara.

What Australia does have is regional idiom. It's not that people pronounce words differently in different places, but that they use different words for common concepts. For example, a bogan in Canberra can be called a "Charnie", as in someone who lives in Charnwood (the highest-crime suburb in Canberra). But you wouldn't expect someone from Sydney to understand the idiom, even though that person would pronounce it identically.

 

[Sideroxylon]

On a more personally disturbing note, I realise what an ocker I am. It seems like ½ my vocabulary comes out of a slang dictionary.

Your point about the colour of the languge is noted. When I post in a more "international" English, the result seems very flat and lifeless to me, and I have to resist the urge to keep putting in moties to make up for the lost meaning of the fair dinkum words..

It’s like that for me most of the time. It’s nice to talk to a fellow Aussie to trot out expressions that used to come so naturally. I don’t say "bugger" anymore – it’s a bit embarrassing to explain that one. Calling someone a bastard as a term of endearment doesn’t go down well around here either.

 

[Wildy]

Meh. I've been watching too many Pommy shows to the extent that I'm more likely to use their insults rather then Australian ones.

 

[lionking]

All this Strine lingo reminded me of the word map project on the ABC website.
http://www.abc.net.au/wordmap/default.htm
Hitting the map search and browsing around is a fun way to explore it.

ETA: I love the colour of Strine. For example:

"blind mullet"

Untreated faecal matter released into waterways Compare blind trout, Bondi cigar, Bondi shark, brown trout, Werribee trout.

What a brilliant dictionary. I could spend hours on it and learn words and meanings I never thought existed.

But as former Bondi lifesaver (club champion 1967, but I'm not putting tickets on myself at all) I can categorically confirm that Bondi cigars were a reality at that beach. Not now, thankfully.

 

[proudnonbbeliever]

OH NOES!!eleven! That's tragic.

I wonder if termites ever get as pissed as crickets.


Yes, Beenleigh sorted the men from the boys alright. And teh sheilas couldn't get far enough away to start with

Do I correctly recall a wheat-beer brewery at Beenleigh? And a lion park at Yatala?


Cheers,

Dave

I don't think anything anything got in the old distillery without coming out 70 proof, my liver sure diid. I know of a carleton brewery at yatala (yummmm). Dunno about historically in the area of beenleigh though. As to lion park do you mean grrrr lions or the lions association? I don't know but I can ask my dad, he's been a beenleigh boy a fair while and knows a lot of the history.

 

[Old Bob]

An intresting spot up the road from where Dave lives between Wangaratta and Myrtleford the road (I believe) goes through a ancient crater. As you start to climb from Everton to Gapstead you are in it. Google maps show a circle depression washed out on the Wang end. Interestingly gold is all around but none in the depression area. The ridge around seem to me to be rubble. Back towards Wang.(Everton) my parants had a property for awhile that was taken up by a Dr Grant who was(Hume & Hovel) Hovels brother in law, his name is (was)scatched into a window pane on the remains of the first homestead complete with ghost. Called the station "The Grange" Plenty of tiger snakes Dad got over 200 feet of snake one summer. The Wraith boys from Harrietville who Dad bought it from sold snake skins to New Zealand and for easy skinning nailed the snakes through the head to the shed wall leaving dozens of dried heads - should have got a photo. Darn, just run out of home made Vodka.

 

[SimonD]

The second WW soldiers done us proud too.

"[A] batch of some 50 or 60 Australian prisoners were marched off close behind us — immensely big and powerful men, who without question represented an elite formation of the British Empire, a fact that was also evident in battle."
Lt. Gen. Erwin Rommel

A history of Australian troops in WW2
http://www.awm.gov.au/atwar/ww2.asp

(I think) one of the greatest moments, when reserve troops saved the country from being invaded (well, saved PNG from being invaded which would have allowed the Japanese to setup a base to invade Australia)

Kokoda
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kokoda_Track_Campaign

For such a small country (in population) our contribution was enormous and we served in nearly every front, including having men posted in Iceland, helping protect the Russia coast line.