transcripts Archives - Aussie English

AE 1300 – Learn English with a Short Story: Piss-Up at the Pub

Peter — Wed, 23 Oct 2024 08:00:00 +0000

AE 1300 - Learn English with a Short Story

Piss-Up at the Pub

Learn Australian English in this expression episode of the Aussie English Podcast.

These episodes aim to teach you common English expressions as well as give you a fair dinkum true-blue dose of Aussie culture, history, and news and current affairs.

In today's episode...

G’day, sport! Ever wondered what it’s like to sink a few cold ones at a classic Aussie pub?

This episode throws you headfirst into the action with a hilarious story about Mick, an American bloke experiencing his first true blue Aussie pub crawl.

Get ready for a wild ride as Mick navigates a world of “piss-ups,” “schooners,” and “yobbos,” all while trying to avoid a “biffo” and learn the sacred art of “shouting a round.”

Packed with colourful Aussie slang and laugh-out-loud moments, this episode is your guide to surviving (and thriving!) in the Aussie pub scene.

So grab a “brewski” and settle in for a ripper of a yarn – it’s gonna be a pisser!

Don’t forget to download this episode’s FREE worksheet!

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Get yours here at https://aussieenglish.com.au/shirt

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Transcript of AE 1300 - Learn English with a Short Story: Piss-Up at the Pub

G'day you mob, and welcome to Aussie English. I am your host, Pete, and my objective here is to teach you guys the English spoken Down Under. So whether you want to sound like a fair dinkum Aussie or you just want to understand what the flippin' hell we're on about when we're having a yarn, you've come to the right place. So sit back, grab a cuppa and enjoy Aussie English. Let's go.

G'day, mate. Have you ever wondered what kind of slang and expressions Aussies use at the pub, or when drinking a beer or two? In this episode, you're going to learn a whole bunch of slang, advanced expressions and collocations related to drinking culture and pub culture in Australia.

Don't forget to grab the free worksheet for today's episode. You can download it via the link in the description. It has a full transcript of the short story. We will study in depth today a glossary with all of the interesting vocab from the story, and a 20 question quiz at the end. A multiple choice quiz for you to test your comprehension. So go grab that. It's free. Just click it and you can download it. Don't forget you can listen to this episode as a podcast episode. So if you're not able to watch a video but you still want to study, go and check it out on the Aussie English Podcast. It'll be linked below in the description, but you can find it via any good podcast app as well.

Now lastly guys, I want to say thanks for all the kind comments and words of encouragement from the last episode that we did, where we were looking at a Day at the Beach. That was the first time I had done this structure with a story like this, and you guys seem to love it. So I'm so happy to be doing a second episode. And I asked you guys if you had any suggestions for future episodes. And here's one of those comments. I got this from Mr. PK 266. "Great story! How about camping and exploring the outback with a couple of animals and critters. And two, a diving expedition in the Great Barrier Reef."

Now, next week's episode is going to be number one that he suggested here, a camping and exploring episode about the outback, with loads of animals. So that's a little cheeky preview for next week's episode. But without any further ado, let's get into today's episode.

So today's episode is called Piss Up at the pub. And as a little preview, in Australian English slang, we have loads of terms, expressions, vocab related to 'piss' and you will see that in this episode.

Anyway, let's play the story through. After the story I'm going to go through line by line. We'll read it out, we'll practice the vocab, we'll talk about what things mean in each line, and then I'll play the story for you again, so that hopefully the second time you'll understand almost everything, if not everything, that you hear. Okay, so are you ready to rock? Let's go.

Mick pushed open the door of the Rusty Roo. Feeling a mixture of excitement and nerves. It was his first Friday arvo at an Australian pub, and as an American, he wasn't sure what to expect. The place was already chockers, filled with blokes and sheilas all having a proper piss up. Mick had heard about the legendary Australian pub culture, but nothing could have prepared him for what lay ahead.

As his eyes adjusted to the dim lighting, Mick spotted two blokes at the bar, Tommo and Davo, both dressed in high-vis work shirts, clearly having knocked off after a long day. Already a couple of drinks in, they waved him over with big grins plastered on their faces.

"G'day, mate! You're new 'round here, eh?" Tommo greeted, raising his glass. "Let's grab a brewski. It's time to get on the piss!" Mick furrowed his brow, trying to keep up. "On the what?"

Davo chuckled, leaning in close. "Means we'll be drinking tonight, mate. On the piss all night long!" Still unsure of what he'd gotten himself into, Mick nodded, eager to fit in.

Tommo had been quick to take charge, ordering the first round of beers for the group. As they waited, the barmaid, Shazza zipped past them with a full tray of beers, expertly weaving through the crowded pub like it was second nature. She looked completely swamped, barely keeping up with the mountain of orders that just kept coming in.

"Bloody hell. Shaz is flat out like a lizard drinking tonight," Davo remarked, casually leaning against the bar. "The place is going off like a frog in a sock!"

Moments later, their drinks arrived, three pints of cold beer, each glistening under the warm pub lights. Mick grabbed his pint and with a grin raised his glass. "Cheers!"

"Good on ya, mate!" Tommo cheered, clinking glasses with Mick. "Ah! A pint's just what the doctor ordered. None of that schooner or pot stuff tonight. You Yanks love your oversized drinks, anyway, right?"

"Yeah, you could say that." Mick replied. They all took long, satisfying sips, and Mick felt the tension in his shoulders melt away as the beer settled in. It was only when Tommo set his glass down and looked at Mick with a grin that he realised something was coming.

"All right, Mick, you know the rules, right?" Tommo announced with a hearty slap on Mick's back. "It's your shout next!"

Mick blinked, confused yet again. "My what? What do I need to shout?"

Davo burst into laughter. "Not 'shout' as in 'yell'. If it's your shout, it means it's your turn to buy the next round of drinks, mate. No tight arses allowed in this pub."

Mick chuckled nervously, trying to mentally calculate how many rounds he'd be expected to buy before the night was over.

Before he could ask what to order next, the door swung open with a loud bang, and in stomped Big Pete, a massive bloke with a reputation for causing trouble. He was the kind of yobbo everyone knew to avoid after a few drinks.

Big Pete's eyes immediately locked onto a man sitting across the pub- Gazza. With a smug grin, Big Pete made a beeline for him.

"Oi! Gazza!" Big Pete hollered, his voice booming across the room. "You old bludger! Still supporting that useless footie team of yours?"

Gazza glared up at him, clearly unimpressed. "You're full of it, Pete. Don't you start taking the piss out of my team!"

Mick, feeling lost again, turned to Tommo. "Wait, what does taking the piss mean? As in, taking his beer off him?"

Tomo smirked. "No, mate. If someone's taken the piss, they're making fun of you. We Aussies love a bit of piss-taking!"

Before Mick could respond, Davo leaned in with a grin. "And while you lot are watching Big Pete take the piss, I'm off to take a piss." He winked at Mick as he strolled off towards the bathroom.

Mick turned to Tommo with a quizzical look. "So, I gather Davo means he's going to the bathroom?"

Tomo chuckled. "Spot on mate. There's a huge difference between taking a piss and taking the piss."

Mick smiled, shaking his head in disbelief. "You Aussies really love the word piss, don't you?"

"Too right," Tomo replied with a laugh. "After all, it's a pisser of a word!"

Meanwhile, the pub started to buzz as the banter between Gazza and Big Pete heated up. Mick could feel the tension rising, but Tommo and Davo seemed completely unbothered.

"She'll be right," Davo reassured Mick as he returned from the bathroom. "Happens every week."

But the argument suddenly escalated before anyone could stop it, Big Pete lunged at Gaza, swinging a fist at him and knocking over a full tray of beers in the process. A full-on biffo erupted in the pub, with blokes swinging punches left and right.

"Crikey! Pete's as mad as a cut snake tonight!" Davo shouted over the chaos, clearly enjoying the spectacle.

Mick froze, unsure of what to do. He'd never seen anything like this back in the States. Punches were flying, beer was spilling everywhere, and the pub had turned into a battleground.

"Just another Friday night, mate," Tomo yelled over the noise. "Things always get a bit loose after a few rounds!"

As Mick ducked under the bar to avoid the chaos, a pint of beer splashed all over him, drenching his shirt. One bloke in the corner was already blind drunk, stumbling around, completely out of it.

That's when Shazza had had enough. "Oi! Knock it off, everyone!" she shouted. "Rack off, Pete, or you're banned for life! I'm not cleaning up this mess again, ya drongo!"

Shazza marched over her face red with fury, glaring at Big Pete as she added, "Now, piss off!" Realising he was seconds away from being banned from the pub for good,

Big Pete backed down, muttering one last insult as he stormed out. "Oh, you're weak as piss, Gazza!"

The fight fizzled out, and the pub slowly returned to its usual rowdy but slightly calmer state. Tommo slapped Mick on the back, laughing. "Fair dinkum, mate, you handled that well. Didn't run off like a wuss. Nice one!"

Mick, still dripping in beer, chuckled awkwardly. "So, is this a normal Friday night?" Davo smiled back. "Bloody oath, mate! Things always get a bit full-on around here. But it's all good fun, especially when you're on the piss with mates."

As they settled back down at their table, Shazza, seeing Mick soaked and looking out of sorts, took pity on him and brought over another beer. "Don't worry, love, this one's on the house," she said with a kind smile.

Mick grinned, finally starting to understand the rhythm of Australian pub life. He raised his glass with a newfound sense of belonging. "I'm starting to get the hang of this, I think."

The next morning, Mick woke up with a pounding headache and a foggy memory of the night before. He groaned, grabbing his phone and shooting a quick text to Tommo. "I'm feeling awful this morning, mate." He rubbed his sore head.

Tommy replied almost instantly. "Haha! Reckon you'll need the hair of the dog."

"Dog hair? What are you talking about now, Tommo?" Mick asked confused.

"Hair of the dog, mate. A drink in the morning to get rid of the hangover." Tommo replied. "Meet us at the pub later for a recovery drink."

Mick chuckled despite the throbbing in his head. He was still learning the ropes, but after surviving his first piss-up, he knew he was well on his way to becoming one of the locals.

Okay, so hopefully you enjoyed that guys. Hopefully there was loads of new vocab for you to learn. Loads of slang. Um, hopefully it was a fun story as well. Let's dive into the transcript and just go through line by line. So today's story is called Piss Up at the pub. Let's do it.

"Mick pushed open the door of The Rusty Roo, feeling a mixture of excitement and nerves." So, The Rusty Roo. The rusty kangaroo. This is the name of the pub.

"Feeling a mixture of excitement and nerves." Like, 'nerves', as in you're nervous, right? So there's sort of two, I guess. They're contrasting. You're excited, but you're also a bit nervous.

"It was the first Friday arvo at an Australian pub, and as an American he wasn't sure what to expect." So it was 'the first Friday arvo'. 'Arvo' is Australian slang for 'afternoon'.

So, "Friday afternoon at an Australian pub and as an American, he wasn't sure what to expect. The place was already chockers, filled with blokes and sheilas all having a proper piss-up."

So, 'chockers', we learnt this last week and this means 'really full'. You can use it in terms of people, like a place is 'chock full of people'. You can also say 'chock a block' or 'packed'. It's got loads of people, but we can also use it about items, right? Like as we talked about last week, if you've got an esky that's full of drinks, if it's 'chockers full', it's very, very full.

"Filled with blokes and sheilas." So these are two Aussie slang terms for men and women. 'Blokes', men, 'sheilas', women. The only thing to mention here is that you can kind of use 'sheilas' more often as a man, as long as you're not referring to a woman directly. I don't think women would enjoy being called 'sheilas' directly. For some reason, it has a bit of a negative connotation. It probably comes from the past, when, you know there was a bit more sexism in Australian society, and 'blokes' would often talk about women as 'sheilas' and yeah, they didn't like that.

But, you know, sometimes it can be used to sort of add a bit of Australian, Australian-ness, to the way that you speak or a story you're telling or something you're reading.

So, "Filled with blokes and sheilas, all having a proper piss-up." So, 'a proper piss-up' here would be like a proper party or event with lots of alcoholic drinking, right? So, a 'piss-up' is an event. A party where everyone's drinking alcohol. 'A piss-up'.

"Mick had heard about the legendary Australian pub culture, but nothing could have prepared him for what lay ahead." So, 'lay ahead' is like, 'to come'. What's to come? "Nothing could have prepared him for what's to come." Doesn't matter what you told him. Doesn't matter what you showed him. He wasn't going to be prepared for what 'lay ahead'.

"As his eyes adjusted to the dim lighting, Mick spotted two blokes at the bar. Tomo and Davo, both dressed in high-vis work shirts, clearly having knocked off after a long day." So there's quite a bit going on here. 'Two blokes at the bar', two men at the bar. The 'bar' will be the part of the pub where people will be serving drinks behind it, right. That's the 'bar' within a pub.

We can also use 'bar' to mean a place where you can go and buy drinks like an event, an event, a venue that maybe has events. But typically at a pub, the 'bar' is going to be the the table, the bench, the thing behind which all the drinks are and the people that are working there behind that bar.

"Tommo and Davo". So, quite often in Australian English we add /o/ to names to make them nicknames. So 'Tommo' is almost certainly short for 'Tom'. Well, Tom is shorter than Tommo. The name Thomas will be reduced to 'Tommo', and 'Davo' will be short for David or Dave, right, Dave-oh.

So we do this when we're talking about friends and we give them nicknames and it's just a bit of informality. So just be used to the fact that Australians may have nicknames that end in things like E, O and A as sounds, right.

"Both dressed in high-vis work shirts." So these are 'high visibility'. They're usually bright orange, bright yellow, you know, fluorescent colours. They might be reflecting white, you know, have that really reflective stuff on them as well. And they're used by people who work usually as like tradesmen. Uh, they could work with large machinery, all that sort of stuff. It's so that they can obviously be highly visible at work.

So, "Both dressed in high-vis work shirts, clearly having knocked off after a day at work" or "a long day." Sorry, "a long day". "Clearly having knocked off after a long day already. A couple of drinks in, they waved him over with a big grin with big grins plastered on their faces."

So, "already a couple of drinks in". The idea here would be it's a few drinks 'into the night', 'into the evening', 'into the arvo', 'into the piss-up', 'into the party'. So they've been there for a while and there are a few drinks in. They've had a few drinks.

"They waved him over". That's like, 'G'day, mate, come over here, come and sit with us'. You're waving at someone and telling them to come over. You 'wave someone over'.

"With big grins plastered on their faces." "Plastered on their face". 'Plaster' is the stuff that we have on the wall behind here, right? And if you 'plaster something onto something', or 'something is plastered on something', it's like it's squashed or like spread all over that thing. So if you have 'a grin plastered on your face', it's like you have a 'huge grin all over your face'.

"G'day, mate. You're new around here, eh?" So, that's a little way of saying 'Hello. G'day, mate.' That's a common greeting in Australian English. 'G'day, mate'. 'G'day, mate'.

'Mate', we use to be informal, friendly, and we use it to refer to other people, typically men. But you can use it on women too.

"You're new 'round 'ere, eh?" So there's some interesting stuff going on here. "You're new." So, 'you' 'are' 'new'. 'You are new around here'. So we shortened 'around' to just 'round'.

"You're new 'round 'ere" and then "eh" at the end of the sentence can be used by Australians. Typically, sort of, in Queensland, you will hear it everywhere. But I definitely remember when I travelled to Queensland, loads of people did it almost like a tick. That they were always saying /a/ at the end of all sentences. But he's used it here as a way of turning the phrase into a question, right? It's kind of like a tag question. "You're new 'round here, eh?" So it's sort of like, 'are you?'.

"Tommo greeted raising his glass", so he raised his glass up. "Let's grab a brewski. It's time to get on the piss." A 'brewski'. This is an interesting slang term. 'Brew', right? If you 'brew' beer, you make beer. It is the 'brew'. You 'brew' beer at a 'brewery'. It's a very hard word to say. And 'brewski' is just a slang term for, I guess, a beer, a drink, you know, 'You want some brewski?'.

"It's time to get on the piss." If you 'get on the piss' or if you are 'on the piss', you're drinking alcohol. So if you had someone, maybe in your family who's always drunk, you could say, 'Oh, he's always on the piss', 'he's always on the piss'. And remember, 'piss' typically means like urine. If you were to sort of translate it literally. So like, 'wee', 'pee', 'piss', um, but we use it informally for alcoholic drinks in Australia. So you'll hear this all the time. 'Oh, I'm going to get on the piss tonight with some mates.' 'I'm going to go to the shops and buy some piss.' 'Are you guys coming to the piss-up?'.

"Mick furrowed his brow, trying to keep up. On the what?" That's me doing my best American accent. So if someone 'furrows their brow', it's usually this idea, right? That they're sort of looking confused. They're frowning. They're kind of like mhm. So, "He furrowed his brow, trying to keep up", trying to understand what the person was talking about, what he said, right. "On the what?" Or 'on the what' if I use my American accent, 'on the piss', right?

"Davo chuckled, leaning in close."

So he's leaned in. "It means" or "Means we'll be drinking tonight, mate. On the piss all night long." So, 'the whole night we're going to be drinking'.

"Still unsure of what he'd gotten himself into, Mick nodded, eager to fit in." So 'to fit in' is to feel part of the group, right. You want to feel like you're one of everyone in that group. You want to 'fit in'. I guess it's like being a 'fit'. You know, if you put a puzzle piece into a puzzle and it fits, it fits in that spot. And that's the idea of you, I guess, socially here, you want to fit in with everyone else.

Tommo had been. "Tommo had been quick to take charge, ordering the first round of beers for the group." If you 'take charge', you 'take control', right? You're 'in charge'. You're 'in charge of something'. So, "Tommo took charge". He 'took control' of what was going on.

"Ordering the first round of beers for the group." A 'round of beers' is like if you were there with three mates at the pub, getting on the piss, and you want to get 'a round of beers', you 'get a beer for everyone'. So it's sort of like, I guess around the table. If you had like three people sitting at a table, you're 'getting beers for everyone around the table', so you're getting 'a round of beers'. We use that a lot in Australia.

"As they waited, the barmaid Shazza zipped past them with a with a tray full of beers, expertly weaving through the crowded pub like it was second nature." I don't know why I didn't highlight some of this vocab in here. It's really interesting. 'Barmaid'. This is a word for someone, usually a woman who works at a bar, right? They're a 'barmaid'. I guess the male version would be 'barman'. Uh, 'barmaid'. 'Shazza'. 'Shazza' is a common Australian. A common Australian nickname for 'Sharon'. Anyone with 'Shar' at the front of their name? I guess so, 'Shazza'. It'll typically be 'Sharon' though.

Trying to think, are there any other names that start with Shar? Sharon? Cheryl? Dunno. Yeah. Shazza, Shazza is probably just short for Sharon.

"Zipped past them", so she went past really quickly. Like 'zip', "zipped past them with a tray full of beers, expertly weaving her way through the crowded pub like it was second nature." So, if you 'weave your way through something', it's like there are many obstacles and you're going around them, 'weaving yourself around' those obstacles.

And if something is like 'second nature' to you, it's like it's 'natural'. You know, you you've done it your entire life. It's so natural for you to do. You don't even have to think about it. It's 'second nature'. Don't know why we say 'second nature' as opposed to just 'first nature'. I don't know if there's 'third nature'. 'Second nature'.

"She looked completely swamped, barely keeping up with the mountain of orders that just kept coming in." So if you're 'swamped'. "She looked completely swamped." This is the idea that you are very, very busy with a lot of work. So if you went to work, you worked in an office and all of a sudden all this paperwork got piled up on your desk by, you know, all of your colleagues. You're 'getting swamped'.

I guess the idea being that all this stuff is piling up on top of you so we can use it literally. You know, you can get 'swamped with paper' like that, but it can also be figurative where if Shazza has heaps of these orders coming in and she's having to run around and deliver stuff and pour drinks, she can also be figuratively 'swamped' with the amount of work that she has to do.

"Barely keeping up with the mountain of orders that just kept coming in." So 'mountain' here, we're using again figuratively, to talk about how much she's got coming in, how much work she has, how many orders are coming. Is a 'mountain' of these orders right? They're coming in. They just 'kept coming in'.

"Bloody hell. Shaz is flat out like a lizard drinking tonight, Davo remarked, casually leaning against the bar." So, 'casually leaning'.

"The place is going off like a frog in a sock!" So I wanted to include a bunch of these really cool Australian expressions. 'Bloody hell'. This is an exclamation. Shows shock, surprise, that you're surprised. It shows that you're impressed. 'Bloody hell. Wow.' 'Bloody hell. Wooh!' 'Bloody hell.'.

"Shaz". Now 'Shaz' is a shortened version of 'Shazza', right? So her name would probably be Sharon. It gets turned into Shazza, but it can be further shortened to just Shaz.

"Flat out like a lizard drinking." If you're 'flat out'. 'Flat out like a lizard drinking', you're incredibly busy. 'Oh, man. I have been flat out all day'. 'Flat out like a lizard drinking.' You can say either of those. You can shorten it to just 'flat out', or you can say 'flat out like a lizard drinking'.

"Davo remarked casually, leaning against the bar. This place is going off like a frog in a sock." This is a great Australian expression, and it means for something to be very wild, often a party. Um, it could be a person too. 'They could go off like a frog in a sock'. And the idea would be they're a bit crazy. They're wild. You know, if someone got really drunk and was going crazy at an event, you could say, 'Oh, Pete's going off like a frog in a sock'. And I think the idea would be, if you put a frog inside of a sock, it's not going to be happy. It's probably going to lose its shit, right? It's going to it's going to go crazy. It's going to 'go off like a frog in a sock'. It's going to go wild.

"Moments later, their drinks arrived. Three pints of cold beer, each glistening under the warm pub lights." So 'moments later', 'very quickly after', 'very soon after', moments later. "Only a few moments later, their drinks arrived." 'Three pints'. A 'pint' is probably about this size, right? This is my drink that I'm holding up to the camera. I think it's about 500ml. I'm not sure how many fluid ounces that is for you guys in the US, but it's about half a litre, although it's ounces. So it's. What is that? Imperial? It won't be exact, but it's one of the common sizes of drinks. It's the largest size of drink you can order from a bar that is like for a single person.

We tend to have things, at least here in Victoria. Jugs will be like a litre in something that you can then pour out into multiple glasses. You'll have pints, you'll have mids- or no mids isn't us. I know all these words. What have we got? Pots, pints. And then there's also mids and schooners in different places in Australia. Anyway, let's keep going.

"Mick grabbed his pint and with a grin raised his glass. Cheers!" Again, me doing my American accent. "Good on you, mate. Tommo cheered, clinking glasses with Mick." 'Good on you, mate'. Another great Australian expression, meaning 'well done'. 'Good job'. 'Good on you, mate'. 'Oh, good on you. Well done'.

"Ah, a pint is just what the doctor ordered. None of that schooner or pot stuff tonight." I'll finish it because it all makes more sense. "You Yanks love your oversized drinks anyway, right?" So, 'a pint is just what the doctor ordered'. If something is 'just what the doctor ordered', it is 'perfect'. It is exactly what you wanted. 'Oh my God, that was just what the doctor ordered'. That was exactly what I wanted.

And then he says, "None of that schooner or pot stuff tonight." The idea being 'none of those smaller drinks'. I don't want those smaller drinks. I want a big drink, you know? I want a big drink. "None of that schooner or pot stuff tonight". None of that.

"You Yanks". 'Yanks' is short for 'Yankee'. And I think we got this from the either the Second World War or the First World War when Australia was fighting with Americans. It's probably the Second World War, and many of them were known as Yankees. And I think that goes back to the- is this a civil war in the US? You had like the, is it the Union and the Yankees? There was like North versus South, and I think Yankees was were the Southerners. Americans, correct me if I'm wrong. Anyway, Australians will often refer to Americans as Yanks. It's not meant to be like an insult or offensive. It's just a sort of informal, friendly way of saying, you know, American, these Yanks.

Uh, 'oversized drinks' would be really big drinks. So Americans are renowned for having drinks that are always huge. You know, you go to McDonald's and you end up leaving with, like, a gallon of coke. And our large would be like, you know, the size of a pint. So Americans, especially with takeaway and like drinks, coffees, all that sort of stuff, they tend to have like maxed out their sizes. You know, bigger is better.

"You could say that again, Mick replied." You can say that when someone really agrees with you. 'You can say that again'. So if someone says, 'Oh man, that was the best movie I ever saw. What did you think?' And you agree with them? You could say, 'Man, you could say that again.' 'You could say that again'. You know, like, 'I agree with you, it was the best movie that I've ever seen too. You could say that again'.

Um, or maybe, you know, my son farts, you know, and he'd come home. He does that a lot at the moment. Um, he farts and my wife's like, 'Geez, it stinks in here'. And I might say, 'Yeah, you can say that again'. You know, my eyes might be weeping. It's just horrible. Like, 'you could say that again'.

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Let's keep going. "They all took long, satisfying sips." So like, um, a 'long, satisfying sip of their drink'. "And Mick felt the tension in his shoulders just melt away as the beer settled in." So 'melt away' is for it to just disappear. To dissipate. So that tension in his shoulders, you know, he's relaxing as the beer settled in. So I guess as he started feeling the effects of the beer.

"It was only when Tommo set his glass down and looked at Mick with a grin that he realised something was coming. All right, Mick, you know the rules, right? Tommo announced with a hearty slap on Mick's back. It's your shout next!"

So, 'All right. You know the rules, right?' This is like you would know what's meant to be done. You know 'the norms' here. You know 'the cultural norms', what we do here, the rules. And then "It's your shout next". 'Your shout'. It sort of gets explained in the story. If it's your shout, usually with regards to drinks, it's your turn to pay. It's your turn to buy someone a drink.

So in Australian culture you'll go to the pub. If you're there with mates, one person will go up to the bar and buy a round of drinks for everyone, and then the next person will go up and it's their shout, it's their turn. And it's just a way of obviously being friendly, being generous, but also just saving time so that every time you guys want to get a drink, you don't all have to go to the the bar to keep buying drinks for yourselves. One person can do it at a time, and you usually do it until everyone's paid.

You know, um, one of the worst things culturally you could do in Australia is go out with your mates. Everyone else shouts everyone in the group, and then you bail. You leave, before it's your shout because you don't want to fork out money, you know. So that's that's something that some people do. But that is a massive faux pas. Don't do that.

"Mick blinked, confused yet again. My what? What do I need to shout?" 'My what?' So, what do you mean? It's my what? Your shout. It's your shout. It's my what? What do I need to shout? Like, to shout?

"Davo burst into laughter. Not shout as in yell. It's your shout. If it's your shout, it means it's your turn to buy the next round of drinks, mate. No tight arses allowed in this pub." 'Tight arse' is a kind of rude, informal way of saying someone who doesn't want to spend much money. If you're a 'tight ass', you don't like buying expensive things. Whether for other people, whether for yourself. You just don't like parting with money. You don't like spending money.

The idea being that, yeah, I guess you- for whatever reason, we've decided your butthole is very tight. 'Nothing can come out', right. 'Tight ass'. That's a common one in Australia, I love that. 'Oh, man, he's such a tight ass'. 'That guy's a tight ass'.

"Mick chuckled nervously, trying to mentally calculate how many rounds he'd be expected to buy before the night was over." So, 'mentally calculate', to think in his head. How many rounds of beer am I going to have to buy? Oh my God.

"Before he could ask what to order next, the door swung open with a loud bang and in stomped Big Pete, a massive bloke with a reputation for causing trouble." So, if you 'stomp in', the idea here is that you're 'stomping' your feet down on the ground, right? You're, you're 'stamping' your feet on the ground, making a lot of noise.

You 'stomp into a place' and it's usually because you're angry, right? You don't stomp in happily. It's usually you're angry.

'A massive bloke'. A massive 'man', "with a reputation for causing trouble". This would be 'to make problems'. To cause problems somewhere. To cause trouble.

"He was the kind of yobbo everyone knew to avoid after a few drinks." A 'yobbo' is kind of like an uncouth, unpleasant person, you know. Loud. They swear, they're just not friendly, you know? 'Yobbo' right. 'Bit of a yobbo'.

"Everyone knew to avoid after a few drinks." So the idea being being here, that if Pete comes in and he has a few drinks, you better avoid him. Because after a few drinks, after he's had a few drinks, he turns into an unpleasant person.

"Big Pete's eyes immediately locked on to a man sitting across the pub. Gazza." So another one, Gazza will be a nickname for Gary, right? 'Gary'. 'Gazza'. So, his eyes 'locked on'. He saw the man and 'fixed' his his eyes. He was 'staring at'. He was 'glaring at' this person, his eyes 'locked on' to poor old Gazza.

"With a smug grin, big Pete made a beeline for him." So, a 'smug grin'. This would be like your sort of have this, uh, evil kind of look on your face, right? Like, mmm. Or you could be pleased with yourself. Yeah. It's it's. Yeah. You, you sort of be wary of people with a smug grin, right. Or, 'Oh, here it comes'.

And if you 'make a beeline for something or someone', you go 'straight to that thing' without deviating, right? So a bee flies in a straight line towards a flower. You know it's not. It can fly there. It's not impeded by other obstacles. So if you 'make a beeline for something', you it's like you move in the line of a bee straight to that thing.

"Oi! Gazza! Pete hollered, his voice booming across the room." 'Holler' is like, 'yell'. He 'hollered'. And that's something Americans will use quite a lot, 'to holler'. 'Just give me a holler', you know, 'holler'.

"Oi! Gazza! Pete hollered, his voice booming across the room." 'Booming'. He would be like, 'very loud', right? Boom. Like an explosion.

"You old bludger. Still supporting that useless footy team of yours." A 'bludger' is like a lazy person, so he's kind of using it here as an insult, 'You old bludger'. "Still supporting that useless footy team of yours." 'Footy team', a 'football team'. This could be rugby or AFL in Australia.

"Gazza glared up at him, clearly unimpressed." So this would be like 'to look back angrily', 'to glare at someone'.

"You're full of it, Pete. Don't you start taking the piss out of my team." So, if someone's 'full of it', it's like they're 'full of lies'. They say garbage. What they say is not the truth. 'Oh, you're full of it, mate'. So anything you say is just trash, garbage, rubbish. You know.

"You're full of it, Pete. Don't you start taking the piss out of my team." So, if you 'take the piss'. The idea here is you make jokes, you tease, you belittle. Um. So, Big Pete's making fun of Gazza's footy team. He's 'taking the piss out of' the team.

You can do both. So it can be a normal sort of. Well, I guess it's a phrasal verb. 'Take the piss'. But it can be a phrasal verb with a preposition 'out'. You 'take the piss out of someone' or 'out of something' if you want that object after it. But you can also just 'take the piss'.

"Mick, feeling lost, turned to Tommo. Wait, what is taking the piss mean? As in, taking his beer off him?" So here, the idea is that Mick has heard 'take the piss' and having just learnt earlier that 'piss' means 'alcohol', 'beer'. He's thinking, What do you mean take the piss? Why is this guy just said take the piss out of him? Is he going to take his beer away from him? You know what does he mean? Taking the piss?

"Tomo smirked." This is kind of like, similar to smug grin. It's kind of like, you know he's laughing.

"No mate. If someone's taking the piss, they're making fun of you. We Aussies love a bit of piss taking." So the cool thing I've tried to do here is use 'taking the piss' as a verb, a phrase, a verb phrase, right? 'Taking the piss', 'to take the piss'. But then also use it as a noun, 'piss-taking'. So, 'Pete likes partaking in a lot of piss-taking'; this is the noun. 'He likes to take the piss'. And that is the sort of verb phrase that we're using there. So 'piss-taking' is to sort of 'tease people' or 'to tease someone'.

"Before Mick could respond, Davo leaned in with a grin. And while you, and while you lot are watching Big Pete take the piss, I'm off to take a piss. He winked at Mick as he strolled off towards the bathroom." So, 'to take a piss', that would be to go to the toilet to urinate, to wee, to do a pee, to do a piss, to take a piss, to have a piss. You can use all of these number ones. Number ones? Yeah. Number ones. When you go to the toilet.

"Mick turned to Tomo with a quizzical look." So, he's confused. He's you know, What? "So, I gathered Davo means he's going to the bathroom? Tommo chuckled. Spot on mate. There's a huge difference between taking a piss and taking the piss." 'Spot on'. We use this to mean 'exactly right'. You are, you know, 'perfect', 'spot on'. That is it. That is correct. That is exactly right.

"Spot on, mate. There's a huge difference between taking a piss and taking the piss." It's amazing how just changing the article can completely change the meaning, right? 'Taking a piss', going to the toilet to urinate, or taking the piss. Um, joking around, making fun of someone.

"Mick smiled, shaking his head in disbelief." Like, 'Oh man, are you serious?' This is, you know, confusing.

"You Aussies really love the word piss, don't you?" So I'm trying to do my best American accent, but give me a break. Americans are going to be watching this, you know, vomiting.

"Too right! Tommo replied with a laugh. After all, it's a pisser of a word." So, 'too right'. Again, this is similar to 'spot on'. 'Exactly correct'. You know, you're correct. You're right. Too. Right, mate? "Too right, Tommo replied with a laugh. After all, it's a pisser of a word." If something is a 'pisser'. Again, Australian slang for 'incredibly funny'. 'Man, it is an absolute pisser of a word'. It's a word that is very funny. It's a 'pisser'.

"Meanwhile, the pub started to buzz as the banter between Gaza and Big Pete heated up." So 'buzz', if the pub starts 'buzzing', I guess there's a lot of activity, right? Maybe it sounds like a beehive, with all that buzzing going on, because there are so many people here in this case, you know, arguing, fighting. There's a lot of noise going on.

'Banter'. If you have 'banter' between people, it's kind of like, uh, what would you say? Insults going back and forth.

It can be friendly-ish. It can be really nasty banter, is that kind of back and forth conversation type thing between two people. So here, Gazza and Pete are obviously having a heated argument, a heated fight. Things are 'heating up'. They're getting worse, right? They're intensifying.

"Mick could feel the tension rising, but Tommo and Davo seem completely unbothered." So, 'unbothered'. They didn't care. Nothing bothered them. "She'll be right, Davo reassured Mick, as he returned from the bathroom. Happens every week." So, 'she'll be right'. A great Australian expression for ah, 'it'll be okay'. 'Nothing to worry about'. No worries. She'll be right. There's no she. It's just the phrase we use, right? It's the same as 'it'll be alright'. It'll be fine.

"Davo reassured Mick as he returned from the bathroom. Happens every week." Now this is really cool. We've done. I think it's elision again, where we've dropped the pronoun. 'It happens every week', and we do this when using spoken English all the time, when the context is obvious. So he's talking about obviously this fight between Gazza and Big Pete, or a fight at the pub in general. And he's trying to say 'this happens every week', 'that happens every week'. 'It happens every week'. You don't have to include that pronoun or demonstrative pronoun at the start, 'that' or 'this', and you can just say "happens every week", right? 'Happens every week'.

"But the argument suddenly escalated." So it suddenly got worse, right? It suddenly intensified. "Before anyone could stop it, Big Pete lunged at Gazza, swinging a fist at him and knocking over a tray, a full tray of beers in the process." So, 'lunge' is to, like, jump forward at someone. Um, Big Pete's jumped at Gaza swinging a fist, throwing a punch at him and knocking over a full beer. A full beer of trays. A full tray of beers in the process.

So in the process is like while he's trying to do this thing, in the act of doing this thing, whilst this thing happened, he spilt these, um, these beers. Beers of trays, these trays, this 'tray of beer' over. "A full-on biffo erupted in the middle of the pub, with blokes swinging punches left and right." So, 'full-on', 'full-on' is like very intense. So a 'full-on biffo', 'biffo' is Australian slang for a fight. A 'full-on biffo' is an intense fight, like, Whoa! It's full-on, this fight. This biffo is full on.

"Erupted in the middle of the pub", sort of like exploded, suddenly occurred. It erupted. "With blokes", 'men', "swinging punches left and right." 'Left and right'. If 'something happens left and right' or you 'see something left and right', the idea is that it's everywhere. It's on the left, it's on the right, it's all over the place. But the argument. Oh no, we did that bit already. Let's keep going.

"Crikey! Pete's as mad as a cut snake tonight! Davo shouted over the chaos, clearly enjoying the spectacle." 'Crikey', this is something you would have heard Steve Irwin say all the time back in the day. He made it famous, I think, in the US. 'Crikey' is a way of showing shock or surprise, or being impressed. Similar to like 'bloody hell'. 'Wow'. There's a whole bunch of these that we use in Australian English, you know. 'Blimey'.

"Crikey! Pete's as mad as a cut snake tonight." If you're 'as mad as a cut snake', it could be that you're angry, but it could also be that you're crazy. 'He's mad as a cut snake'. The idea being that if you cut a snake in half, it's gonna go berserk, right? It's gonna lose its shit. For good reason. And, um. Yeah, if you're as mad as a cut snake. Another great Aussie expression for 'crazy angry', um, 'off your tree'. You know, there's loads of these ways of- 'having a few roos loose in the top paddock'. We've got heaps of them!

"Dave shouted over the chaos." So the idea being there's chaos everywhere. All this stuff's happening, and he shouts over the top of it so that other people could hear. "Clearly enjoying the spectacle." So the 'spectacle' is this thing that's happening that's worth watching, right? He's a 'spectator'. He's watching the spectacle. He's 'spectating'. Um, yeah. Spectacle.

"Mick froze, unsure of what to do. He'd never seen anything like this back in the States." 'In the States', 'the States'. This is the United States of America, and we shorten this quite often. This isn't just Australian, this is just English in general to the States, you know. 'Where are you from?' 'Oh, the States'. It's just a short version of The United States of America or The United States.

"Punches were flying, beer was spilling everywhere, and the pub had turned into a battleground." So when something's 'flying', the idea is that it's all around in the air, right? So people are flying. Well, punches are 'flying', people are 'throwing punches'. The idea is there's punches happening everywhere. You know, all these people are fighting.

"Beer was spilling everywhere and the pub had turned into a battleground." A 'battleground' is a place where a battle takes place, right? That's the ground on which a battle occurs. "Just another Friday night, mate, Tomo yelled over the noise. Things always get a bit loose after a few rounds!" So, 'things always get a bit loose'. That would be like a little wild, a little crazy, loose, you know, as opposed to, I guess, uptight. Tight, more formal. Formal, informal, sort of like tight and loose. We use that comparison in English. You know, you can be uptight or you can be laid back and loose, if that makes sense.

"After a few rounds", a few rounds of beer, a few rounds of drinks. "As Mick ducked under the bar to avoid the chaos, a pint of beer splashed all over him, drenching his shirt." If you get 'drenched', you get 'very wet'. You get saturated. You get covered in water, right? 'Drenching his shirt' so he had a beer spill on him, splashed all over him, and it drenched his shirt.

"One bloke in the corner was already blind drunk, stumbling around completely out of it." If you're 'blind drunk', you are 'incredibly drunk'. I guess the idea being that you can barely see, you know, you're that wasted, you're that inebriated. You are that, um, intoxicated that you can't see properly. You're 'blind drunk'. "Stumbling around", you know, unable to walk properly, falling over.

"Completely out of it." If you're 'out of it', it's that you're not there like consciously, you know? So like, yeah, if you get drunk and you pass out or you're, you know, you can barely function. You can barely walk, you can barely talk, you are out of it. It's kind of like you're not 100% conscious. You're not 100% there.

"That's when Shazza had had enough." Right, 'to have had enough', to not want any more. Like, that's that's enough. That's going to suffice. No more. She's had enough. "Oi!" Well, Shazza doesn't have a low voice.

"Oi! Knock it off, everyone!" Knock it off! Stop it! Cut it out! Knock it off! "She shouted. Rack off, Pete, or you're banned for life! I'm not cleaning up this mess again, you drongo." 'Rack off'. This is a bit of an outdated slang term that you know older generations may still use.

It was very popular in the 90s and the early 2000 in Australia. And it means go away, piss off. "Rack off, Pete, or you're banned for life." You can't come back here ever. You know, you get a lifetime ban. "I'm not cleaning this mess up again, you drongo." 'Drongo' is like an informal, not to offensive way of calling someone an idiot. Moron. You know, drongo. You idiot. You drongo.

"Shahzza marched over, her face red with fury, glaring at Big Pete as she added, Now, piss off!" Again, I've tried to use piss here in a way that Australians will use this. If you tell someone to 'piss off', you're telling them to 'go away'. It doesn't have anything to do with beer, doesn't have anything to do with urine or going to the toilet. It means 'get out of here', piss off, piss off.

"Realising he was seconds away from being banned from the pub for good, Big Pete backed down." So he's sort of like 'surrendered'. He 'gave up'. He was like, All right, all right. I'm backing down. "Muttering one last insult as he stormed out." If you 'mutter something', it's like you 'say it under your breath'. You say it softly. Like you know he's muttering. "One last insult". So one last offensive thing, "as he stormed out". It's kind of like, is he, he raged. He got angry and stomped again out of the pub. He stormed out.

"You're weak as piss, Gazza!" 'Weak as piss'. So again, using 'piss', if something is 'weak as piss', it is 'very, very weak'. It's not very strong. So we're saying together, you know You're weak as piss, Gazza. You're weak, you're you're a wuss. You're, you know, shitty person. You're weak, you're weak is piss, Gazza. Weak is piss. So you can use it in English, Australian English in particular to just mean very weak. You can use it about people.

You could use it about drinks. So you could get a beer and just be like, This beer is weak as piss, you know, it's almost like, I guess we're liking likening it to urine, having no alcohol in urine. And you could just, you know, although I don't know why you would drink it. You say that, you know, urine is weak as piss because it's piss. There's no alcohol in it. So if a drink doesn't have much alcohol or it's not very strong, you can just say, oh, it's weak as piss weak is piss.

"The fight fizzled out and the pub slowly returned to its usual rowdy but slightly calmer state." If something 'fizzles out', it's sort of like, you know, like it dissipates, disappears. So the fight stopped, 'fizzled out', "and the pub slowly returned to its rowdy but slightly calmer state." So, 'rowdy'. There's a lot of noise going on. There's a lot of talking, all that sort of stuff, you know, it's loud, but it's calmer than it was.

Right. It's a calmer state.

"Tommoslapped Mick on the back, laughing. Fair dinkum mate, you handled that well. Didn't run off like a wuss. Nice one." So, 'fair dinkum, mate'. He's like, you know. Truthfully? Honestly. Fair dinkum, mate. 'Honestly, mate, you handled that well'. You did a good job. You did well in that situation. "You didn't run off like a wuss", 'didn't run off like a wuss'.

We've done that elision thing there again where we've removed the pronoun because it's obvious. You don't have to say 'you' because you're talking to the person. They know you're talking to them. "Didn't run off like a wuss."

A 'wuss' is a coward in Australian English, a 'wuss'. "Nice one", you know. Nice one. Good job. "Mick, still dripping in beer, chuckled awkwardly. Heh. So, is this a normal Friday night?" Is this a normal Friday night? Again, my atrocious American accent. "Davo smiled back. Bloody oath mate. Things always get a bit full on 'round 'ere, around here, but it's all good fun, especially when you're on the piss with mates."

So 'bloody oath'. We use this in Australian English to when you agree with someone. Oh man, it's hot today. Yeah. Bloody oath it is. You know. Bloody oath mate. You're right, it is. You're. You know what you said is true. Bloody oath mate. Bloody oath. "Things always get a bit full on." Things always get a bit intense. "Around here", in this place.

"But it's all good fun", you know, Yeah, don't take it seriously, mate. Um, "Especially when you're on the piss with mates." When you're 'drinking with mates', you guys are 'on the piss together'. You're drinking alcohol together.

"As they settled back down at their tables, Shazza, seeing Mick soaked and looking out of sorts, took pity on him and brought over another beer." So, 'Mick looked soaked'. He was wet from the beer. "Looking out of sorts." So I guess that's sort of like looking a bit sad out of place. Awkward, 'looking out of sorts'.

"Took pity on him", so, felt sorry for him. If you 'take pity' on someone, you 'feel sorry' for them. So she's there looking at him, drenched, and he's just like, Oh, poor dude. I'll give him a free beer.

"And brought over another beer. Don't worry love, this one's on the house, she said with a kind smile." 'Don't worry', you know. 'Not a problem'.

"Love." Now, I wanted to include this because this is how women will often refer to men. Probably women too, in an informal way. It's kind of their equivalent of 'mate', especially in more regional areas. In Australia, if you go into the outback and you go into a shop and there's a woman working there who's selling the stuff that you're buying, whatever it is, she's probably going to call you 'darl' or 'Love'. That would be the stereotype in Australia. She may even call you 'mate', but it's a common one.

Men don't typically use it unless they're talking to women. Women will use it on everyone, if that makes sense.

"Don't worry, love, this one's on the house, she said with a kind smile." If 'something is on the house', the 'house' is kind of like the pub itself. The business, the establishment, the pub. Um, and so if it's 'on the house', it is them who are paying for it. It's free, you know. The establishment is paying for that beer. "Don't worry love, this one's on the house." This one is free.

"Mick grinned, finally starting to understand the rhythm of Australian pub life. He raised his glass with a newfound sense of belonging." So, 'newfound' is like something that you have just found. You have just discovered- he's got this newly discovered sense of belonging. He feels like he 'belongs' in this pub. You know, I'm one of this one of these guys. I'm one of these guys.

"I'm starting to get the hang of this." I think if you 'get the hang of something', you 'start to understand it'. You know, you start to get used to it. You 'get the hang' of things. He's 'getting the hang' of Australian pub culture.

"The next morning, Mick woke up with a pounding headache and and a foggy memory of the night before." So, you know, he's got a really bad headache. His head is pounding. It's going like bang, bang, bang, bang, bang.

And if you've 'got a foggy memory', the idea is that you can't really remember everything clearly, right? Imagine you're inside. Your mind is full of fog, right? Like smoke, clouds. And you can't see your memories very clearly. You've got a clear memory. Would be the opposite, I guess. Or, you know, sharp memory and a 'foggy memory' is to 'not be able to remember things clearly'.

"He groaned, grabbing his phone and shooting a quick text to Tommo." You can 'shoot someone something'. And this is to 'send'. It's a synonym for 'send'. You can 'send someone a text'. 'Text'. You can 'shoot someone a text'. You could 'shoot them an email'. You could 'shoot them a look'. You could 'shoot them a message', right?

"I'm feeling awful this morning, mate." 'I'm feeling awful'. I'm 'feeling horrible' this morning. "He rubbed his sore head. Ohh. Tommo replied almost instantly. Reckon you'll need hair of the dog?" Sorry. "Reckon you'll need the hair of the dog." Reckon you'll need the hair of the dog?"

Again, we haven't said "I reckon you'll need the hair of the dog". He's just dropped that and just said "Reckon you'll need hair of the dog?"

"Dog hair? What are you talking about now, Tommo? Mick asked, confused. The hair of the dog, mate." Gotta get my voices straight. "A drink in the morning to get rid of the hangover."

So 'hair of the dog' is when you are drunk one night. You go home, you wake up hungover. You feel like shit, right? You got a headache, you're hungover, you feel, you know, just under the weather. The- I don't know if it's true or not because I've never really done it, to be honest. But the myth is that you just start drinking alcohol again and you don't feel bad. It sort of clears up the hangover. And we call it 'hair of the dog', 'the hair of the dog'.

I don't know if this is unique to Australia, probably isn't, but that's what it is. 'Hair of the dog' is when you have a drink after a night out drinking, and you're hungover, right.

"Hair of the dog, mate. A drink in the morning to get rid of the hangover." To get rid of something, to, uh. I'm trying to think of a good synonym, to stop that thing from being. Being here to throw it away, to get rid of it. Yeah.

"Tommo replied. Meet us at the pub later for a recovery drink." So the idea here being that he's going to drink some more beer or some other alcoholic drink, I guess you could have an OJ, an orange juice, to recover. It's a recovery drink. "Mick chuckled despite the throbbing in his head", throbbing, like, pounding that doof doof doof.

"He was still learning the ropes, but after surviving his first piss-up, he knew he was well on his way to becoming one of the locals." If you 'learn the ropes', it's like you 'learn the rules'. The way that things work at a job, in a location, to learn the ropes, you know. And 'to feel one of the locals', to feel like one of the locals, to become one of the locals is to start being treated as or feeling like or understanding the people from that place, the locals.

All right. So now let's have a listen to that story one more time through. Keep an eye out, look at the vocab and see how much you understand. Hopefully a lot more this time. Let's do it.

Mick pushed open the door of The Rusty Roo, feeling a mixture of excitement and nerves. It was his first Friday arvo at an Australian pub, and as an American, he wasn't sure what to expect. The place was already chockers filled with blokes and sheilas all having a proper piss-up.

Mick had heard about the legendary Australian pub culture, but nothing could have prepared him for what lay ahead. As his eyes adjusted to the dim lighting, Mick spotted two blokes at the bar, Tommo and Davo, both dressed in high-vis work shirts, clearly having knocked off after a long day already a couple of drinks in.

They waved him over with big grins plastered on their faces. "G'day, mate. You're new around here, eh?" Tommo greeted, raising his glass. "Let's grab a brewski. It's time to get on the piss." Mick furrowed his brow, trying to keep up. "On the what?"

Davo chuckled, leaning in close. "Means we'll be drinking tonight, mate. On the piss all night long." Still unsure of what he'd gotten himself into, Mick nodded, eager to fit in. Tommo had been quick to take charge, ordering the first round of beers for the group.

As they waited, the barmaid, Shazza, zipped past them with a full tray of beers, expertly weaving through the crowded pub like it was second nature. She looked completely swamped, barely keeping up with the mountain of orders that just kept coming in.

"Bloody hell, Shaz is flat out like a lizard drinking tonight," Davo remarked, casually leaning against the bar. "The place is going off like a frog in a sock!" Moments later, their drinks arrived, three pints of cold beer, each glistening under the warm pub lights.

Mick grabbed his pint and with a grin raised his glass. "Cheers!" "Good on you, mate!" Tommo cheered, clinking glasses with Mick. "Ah, a pint's just what the doctor ordered. None of that schooner or pot stuff tonight. You Yanks love your oversized drinks anyway, right?" "Yeah, you could say that," Mick replied. They all took long, satisfying sips, and Mick felt the tension in his shoulders melt away as the beer settled in. It was only when Tommo set his glass down and looked at Mick with a grin that he realised something was coming. "All right, Mick, you know the rules, right?" Tommo announced with a hearty slap on Mick's back.

"It's your shout next!" Mick blinked, confused yet again. "My what? Why do I need a shout?" Davo burst into laughter. "Not shout as in yell. If it's your shout, it means it's your turn to buy the next round of drinks, mate. No tight arses allowed in this pub." Mick chuckled nervously, trying to mentally calculate how many rounds he'd be expected to buy before the night was over.

Before he could ask what to order next, the door swung open with a loud bang and in stomped Big Pete, a massive bloke with a reputation for causing trouble. He was the kind of yobbo everyone knew to avoid after a few drinks.

Big Pete's eyes immediately locked on to a man sitting across the pub- Gazza. With a smug grin, Big Pete made a beeline for him. "Oi! Gazza!" Big Pete hollered, his voice booming across the room. "You old bludger, still supporting that useless footy team of yours?"

Gazza glared up at him, clearly unimpressed. "You're full of it, Pete. Don't you start taking the piss out of my team." Mick, feeling lost again, turned to Tommo. "Wait, what does taking the piss mean? As in taking his beer off him?" Tomo smirked. "No, mate. If someone's taken the piss, they're making fun of you. We Aussies love a bit of piss taking." Before Mick could respond, Davo leaned in with a grin. "And while you lot are watching Big Pete take the piss, I'm off to take a piss." He winked at Mick as he strolled off towards the bathroom.

Mick turned to Tomo with a quizzical look. "So I gather Davo means he's going to the bathroom." Tomo chuckled. "Spot on, mate. There's a huge difference between taking a piss and taking the piss." Mick smiled, shaking his head in disbelief. "You Aussies really love the word 'piss', don't you?" Too right!" Tomo replied with a laugh. "After all, it's a pisser of a word."

Meanwhile, the pub started to buzz as the banter between Gaza and Big Pete heated up. Mick could feel the tension rising, but Tommo and Davo seemed completely unbothered. "She'll be right", Davo reassured Mick as he returned from the bathroom. "Happens every week."

But the argument suddenly escalated. Before anyone could stop it, Big Pete lunged at Gazza, swinging a fist at him and knocking over a full tray of beers in the process. A full-on biffo erupted in the pub, with blokes swinging punches left and right.

"Crikey! Pete's as mad as a cut snake tonight!" Davo shouted over the chaos, clearly enjoying the spectacle. Mick froze, unsure of what to do. He'd never seen anything like this back in the States. Punches were flying, beer was spilling everywhere and the pub had turned into a battleground. "Just another Friday night, mate," Tomo yelled over the noise. "Things always get a bit loose after a few rounds!"

As Mick ducked under the bar to avoid the chaos, a pint of beer splashed all over him, drenching his shirt. One bloke in the corner was already blind drunk, stumbling around completely out of it.

That's when Shazza had had enough. "Oi! Knock it off, everyone!" she shouted. "Rack off, Pete or you're banned for life! I'm not cleaning up this mess again, you drongo!" Shazza marched over her face red with fury, glaring at Big Pete as she added, "Now piss off!"

Realising he was seconds away from being banned from the pub for good, Big Pete backed down, muttering one last insult as he stormed out. "Oh, you're weak as piss, Gazza." The fight fizzled out and the pub slowly returned to its usual rowdy but slightly calmer state.

Tommo slapped Mick on the back laughing. "Fair dinkum, mate, you handled that well. Didn't run off like a wuss. Nice one!" Mick, still dripping in beer, chuckled awkwardly. "So, is this a normal Friday night?" Davo smiled back. "Bloody oath, mate! Things always get a bit full-on around here. But it's all good fun, especially when you're on the piss with mates."

As they settled back down at their table, Shazza, seeing Mick's soaked and looking out of sorts, took pity on him and brought over another beer. "Don't worry love, this one's on the house," she said with a kind smile. Mick grinned, finally starting to understand the rhythm of Australian pub life. He raised his glass with a newfound sense of belonging. "I'm starting to get the hang of this, I think."

The next morning, Mick woke up with a pounding headache and a foggy memory of the night before. He groaned, grabbing his phone and shooting a quick text to Tomo. "I'm feeling awful this morning, mate." He rubbed his sore head. Tommo replied almost instantly. "Reckon you'll need the hair of the dog?"

"Dog hair? What are you talking about now, Tommo?" Mick asked confused. "Hair of the dog, mate. A drink in the morning to get rid of the hangover," Tommo replied. "Meet us at the pub later for a recovery drink." Mick chuckled despite the throbbing in his head, he was still learning the ropes, but after surviving his first piss up, he knew he was well on his way to becoming one of the locals.

All right mate. Don't forget to grab today's worksheet down below. The link is in the description. Remember, you'll get the full transcript of the story. You'll get the vocab glossary, and you'll have the 20 question multiple choice quiz right at the bottom to test your listening comprehension skills. And um, yeah, I hope you enjoy it.

Besides that, don't forget to comment below and let me know what story you would like me to do next. Remember, we're going to do one next week on camping in the bush with loads of different animals and other things going on. So I hope you're back to see that one like and subscribe. All that good stuff. And besides that, I hope you have a ripper of a week and I'll see you next time. Tooroo!

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The post AE 1300 – Learn English with a Short Story: Piss-Up at the Pub appeared first on Aussie English.

AE 1298 – Learn English with a Short Story: Day at the Beach

Peter — Sun, 13 Oct 2024 08:00:00 +0000

AE 1298 - Learn English with a Short Story

Day at the Beach

Learn Australian English in this expression episode of the Aussie English Podcast.

These episodes aim to teach you common English expressions as well as give you a fair dinkum true-blue dose of Aussie culture, history, and news and current affairs.

In today's episode...

Ever wondered how Aussies talk about a day at the beach?

Dive into this episode of Aussie English for a ripper yarn about three mates hitting the coast on a scorcher of a day.

You’ll learn heaps of slang and expressions, from “chockers” and “sunnies” to “budgie smugglers” and “bogged.” We’ll break down the lingo step-by-step, so you can understand every word, and even test your comprehension with a free worksheet and quiz.

Whether you’re keen to sound like a fair dinkum Aussie or just want to understand the lingo, this episode is your ticket to talking like a true blue beach bum. So grab your esky and togs, and get ready for some fun in the sun!

Don’t forget to download this episode’s FREE worksheet!

** Want to wear the kookaburra shirt? **
Get yours here at https://aussieenglish.com.au/shirt

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Transcript of AE 1298 - Learn English with a Short Story: Day at the Beach

Hey guys. Pete here. Hope you're going well. Hope you are having an awesome weekend. We have something new and special today. Something a little different. So as you're no doubt aware, as you're listening to this on the podcast, for the last couple of months, you guys have been consuming, hopefully listening to a whole bunch of different Goss episodes with me and my dad having a chinwag, having a chat about different news articles, stories, things like that.

And that's been a lot of fun. Partly this was because I was spending a lot of time putting together my most recent Aussie English course, the English Expressions 30 Day Challenge, and we'll talk a little bit about that later on in this episode. You'll hear about that. Um, but also, I kind of wanted a break. I had sort of been burnt out a little bit with the structure of the expression episodes that we've been doing for years now on this podcast, and I wanted a bit of time to kind of reassess and think, you know, how can I mix things up and try and change them up, make them more interesting and just do something, uh, a little more different? So yeah, we've we've created what you will hear shortly.

And it's a video on YouTube. So if you want to check it out, go to YouTube. It's obviously a lot better if you can listen, read and watch at the same time. So just do a search for 'Day at the Beach Aussie English' on YouTube. Find my channel. It'll be one of the most recent videos if you're listening to this podcast as it first comes out. But yeah, 'Day at the Beach' is the name of it.

And effectively it's a short story with Australian slang and expressions in there, and we then break down those different expressions and slang terms after you get to hear and sort of watch this story, because it's also visual with images, and you can read and listen at the same time. Um, and then I play it for you again.

So hopefully this is a really effective way of learning about Australian culture, about the English we use down under the way that we talk to one another and the slang and expressions that we use as well. Um, before we get into it though, don't forget to give me some feedback. So after you listen to this or after you watch it on the Aussie English YouTube channel, please give me some feedback and let me know what you reckon.

What do you think of it? Do you like it? Is it too long? Is it too short? Is the structure good? Was it effective for helping you learn slang and expressions? If you have any suggestions? As always, please. I'm an open book. You can send me these suggestions. The whole point of this podcast is to help you guys level up your English as quickly and effectively as possible.

And I guess lastly, there's a worksheet for today that you can download. So I will include that in the podcast description. You'll be able to find it on the website as well on my Aussie English website. And it'll also obviously be on the YouTube video too. So hopefully you got no trouble finding that. It's probably easier if you download that first, then listen or watch the video because you'll be able to read the text, um, in the PDF as well. But no dramas if you can't. Anyway, I've been rabbiting on a bit. Um, let's just get into today's episode.

G'day, mate. Have you ever wondered how Australians talk about going to the beach in English? By the end of this episode, you are going to know a whole bunch of slang and expressions that Aussies use every day when talking about the beach. So the plan is that we're going to dive into a fun little short story about going to the beach.

Three mates that go to the beach on a scorcher of a day. I'm going to play this story for you to begin with. I'm then going to break down the vocab, the interesting vocab that's used in the story, including slang and idioms. And then at the end, I'm going to play the story for you one more time so you can check your comprehension.

Now, before we get started, I recommend grabbing a drink, grabbing something to nibble on, and grabbing a notepad so that you can obviously take notes. There's a free worksheet today. You'll be able to see that on screen. Here it is linked in the description below.

You can get this now. Pause the video, print it out and take notes on this worksheet if you want. It'll have the transcript of the video. It'll have the glossary for the vocab. And it'll also have a bonus 20 question quiz that you can do in your own time after the lesson as well. All right, so hopefully you got your drink and you got some snacks. Let's get into the story the first time.

It was a scorching day Saturday morning, and Jamie and his friends, Lily and Mark were itching to get outside. It's too nice to stay home. Let's hit the beach, Jamie called to his friends. They packed their bathers, towels, and loaded the esky with food and drinks before driving off to the beach.

By noon, they arrived at the coast. The sun was blazing and the beach was chockers with people, but they managed to find a spot near the water and parked the car on the sand. Blimey, it's packed, Jamie said, looking around. Everyone's out to catch some rays today. Lily, already wearing her sunnies, grinned as she took them off. You can catch rays later, she said. Let's go for a dip first. It's way too hot to just sit here.

As they strip down to their bathers, Jamie suddenly realised he'd forgotten his. Damn it! I've only got my jocks. Mark chuckled. Well, they'll have to do. Just make sure you don't lose them in the surf or you're on your own. Lily laughed as she ran down to the water. If that happens, at least it'll scare the sharks away, Jamie!

The water was perfect, but the surf wasn't doing much. Looks like the water's flat as a tack, Jamie commented, watching a few surfers floating around aimlessly. Not much action today. Mark, who had brought his surfboard, sighed in disappointment. Oh, I was hoping to catch some waves, but it's not happening. Look at all the shark biscuits out there with nothing to do. He decided to leave the surfboard on the sand and join them for a swim instead.

After cooling off in the water, they returned to their towels and cracked open the esky to grab some cold drinks. Jamie stretched out and sighed contentedly. Oh, I could do this all day. Guess I'm turning into a beach bum. Mark laughed. Mate, you already are. He lay back and added, still, I'm stoked we made it out here. Nothing beats a sunny day at the beach.

Just then, a gust of wind blew through and Lily, who had been trying to balance on the edge of a small wave, took a tumble right into the water. She quickly popped up, laughing. Well, that wasn't graceful. But no worries, she said, flicking the water from her hair. After a while, they decided to head back to the car, but when they reached it, they realised they were stuck. We're bogged, Jamie groaned, shaking his head. Knew I shouldn't have parked on the sand!

With some help from a friendly passer-by, they finally managed to get the car free as they packed up their gear and prepared to leave. Jamie took one last look at the ocean and smiled. You know what? He said, grinning despite getting bogged and missing the waves. That was a great day. Fair dinkum. I wouldn't trade it for anything. His friends nodded in agreement. Same time next weekend? Mark asked. Absolutely, Lily replied. And Jamie, don't forget your budgie smugglers next time. They all laughed as they drove off, ready to plan their next beach adventure.

Okay, so I hope you enjoyed the story. I now have the PDF up on screen in front of me and we'll go through it line by line.

And we'll also talk about the vocab that is used in the story as we reach it. Okay, "it was a scorching day Saturday morning, and Jamie and his friends Lily and Mark were itching to get outside."

So, it was a 'scorching day'. In Australia, we often say 'scorching' as an adjective to describe a very hot day. "Oh man, today was scorching". We can also use this as a noun. A scorcher. A scorcher of a day. "How was yesterday? It was pretty hot, right? It was a scorcher." A scorcher, so we use that quite a lot.

The other interesting vocab in the first sentence here is 'itching to do something', right. They said Lily and Mark were 'itching to get outside'. If you are 'itching to do something', it means you really want to do that thing. It's like 'gagging to do something', you're 'keen to do something', you are 'itching to do that thing'. "I'm itching to see my friends." "I'm itching to go to the beach." Okay. 'Itching to do something'.

All right. The next sentence. "It's too nice to stay home. Let's hit the beach, Jamie called to his friends." So this is the first piece of vocab that I've got here. This is an expression, 'to hit the beach'. Aussies use this all the time, and I'm sure you can work out what it means. It means to go to the beach.

I guess the idea is like your buddies are going to get to the beach, and go on to the beach. You're like metaphorically hitting the beach. Not literally. I guess you could trip over, and your body could hit the beach. But metaphorically, here or figuratively, we're saying 'hit the beach' as in to go to the beach. So, "I love hitting the beach with my friends in the summer." "My kids and I, we might hit the beach this weekend."

Let's keep going. So, "they pack their bathers towels and loaded the esky with food and drinks before driving off to the beach." "They packed their bathers." 'Bathers' is one of the several slang terms we use in Australia for swimwear.

So I think this is typically Victoria, South Australia. It might be Perth, Western Australia as well, and Tasmania. It's that southern part of Australia we use 'bathers'.

I then think that people from New South Wales will say things like 'togs' and maybe 'cozzie' as well. I think Queensland too. It's up, up north in New South Wales and Queensland. They'll use 'togs' and 'cozzie' a little more frequently than 'bathers'. I think 'bathers' is definitely a very, um, south part of Australia, uh, slang term.

And then we have the word 'esky' here. 'Esky'. An 'esky', that is a cooler, right. Where you put food to keep it cool. It's like an insulated box where you can put ice, and then you can put your drinks in there. You can put your food in there, and you usually take it to a party. You might take it to the beach. Funnily enough, you can take it to many different places.

Next sentence. "By noon they arrived at the coast. The sun was blazing and the beach was chockers with people, but they managed to find a spot near the water and parked the car on the sand." So most of this is going to be pretty easy, I think. For you guys. "The sun was blazing." That would, it's sort of like 'scorching'. I guess the idea is it's very bright, right? "The sun was blazing." It was very bright, hot sun.

"And the beach was chockers." 'Chockers' here is short for 'chock a block'. And these are both slang terms that just mean very full. And you can use this about items you know, your 'esky' might be 'chock a block', it might be 'chockers full' of food and drinks.

But you could also use it when talking about people. "The beach is absolutely chockers", and the rest of the, I guess, insinuation there, is that it's 'chockers' with people. "It's chockers." It's 'chock a block full' of other human beings, right.

So it's interesting how we shorten it there. Well, actually, we didn't shorten it here, but you could just say "the beach is chockers". Here, we did say "the beach was chockers with people." So that's a really cool phrase that you will hear all the time in Australian English.

"Blimey, it's packed, Jamie said, looking around. Everyone's out to catch some rays today." So there's some interesting vocab here. Firstly, 'blimey', this is an interesting word. We use this sort of like to show shock. Surprise, that you're impressed by something.

'Blimey', it's similar to 'crikey'. Or if you wanted to get religious, you could say, 'Jesus', you know. Well, you don't have to be religious to say 'Jesus', but we often use that. 'Bloody hell'. You could use that too. And you could use a number of other rude words to show that you're shocked or surprised. 'Blimey' is not rude. We don't really see that as rude. It probably was once upon a time. Nowadays you can say it, and it's kind of like a it's informal, but it's not going to turn heads like, Whoa, what did he say? You know. Oh my God, he said blimey. Woof.

"It's packed." 'Packed' is similar to 'chockers', right. So these things are echoing one another. 'Chockers'. The narrator was using this to say that the beach was full of people. And then Jamie here is saying, "Blimey, it's packed." 'Packed'. "It's packed full of people", "It's packed with people."

And you could also say "It's packed to the rafters." This is another expression that I guess means there are a lot of people in a single house. I think that would be the idea. It's a TV show as well. That was on TV, I think probably over a decade ago. Um, the idea being there were lots of people living in a single house, 'packed to the rafters'. But yes, 'packed', 'chockers', very full.

Uh, "Jamie said, looking around. Everyone's out to catch some rays today." So if you 'catch some rays'. These are 'rays' from the sun, right? The sun is shining 'rays' down on the earth. That is the light and the UV, which I guess is a form of light. And you are catching it with your body, right? So if you're 'catching rays', you're sunbathing, your sunbaking. You're out there trying to get a tan, or you could use this just meaning you're outside wanting to enjoy the sun, right? 'Catching some rays'. So this is another good expression. I don't think this is unique to Australia. You can probably use this all over the world. You know, "You can catch some rays" in the UK. You can do it in America and people would get the idea.

"Lily, already wearing her sunnies, grinned as she took them off. You can catch rays later, she said. Let's go for a dip first. It's way too hot to just sit here." So, 'sunnies'. The first phrase here. "Lily already wearing her sunnies." So she's obviously pulled out her 'sunglasses'. And she's put her 'sunnies', as we call them in Australia. Her 'sunglasses' on, right? She's wearing her 'sunnies'.

"Grinned as she took them off." I guess she took them off as soon as she put them on. "You can catch some rays later." There we have, 'catch some rays later'. You can sit on the beach, you can suntan. You can sunbathe. You can do that later on.

"Let's go for a dip first." So 'to go for a dip'. A 'dip' here means a 'swim'. And if you 'go for a dip', which is a common expression we use in Australia, this is to 'go for a swim'. You can 'go for a dip' at the beach. You can 'go for a dip' at the pool. If you go to a farm that has a huge dam, you might 'go for a dip' in the dam. You could go to a river and 'go for a dip'. So it is 'to go for a swim'.

Let's continue on. "As they strip down to their bathers, Jamie suddenly realised he'd forgotten his. Damn it, I've only got my jocks." So firstly, I'll probably go through the phrasal verb 'strip down to something'. If you're wearing clothes and you 'strip down to something', the idea is that you've taken off a certain amount of that clothing and that you probably still have your underwear on.

I don't know if you would say you 'strip down to nudity' being naked, you would say you just 'strip down' if you got completely naked. Right? So if you 'strip down to something', you can 'strip down to your underwear', you could 'strip down to your socks', you could 'strip down to your bathers'.

Um, it's usually that you've taken off most of your clothes, and you only have 1 or 2 items left on your body. 'To strip down to something'. And I guess that's the reason we're using 'down', right? We're reducing the amount of clothing we're wearing.

"Damn it." Another good little expression here to show frustration or anger. Sort of like, 'blimey', I guess, but it's more it's more frustration and anger. You wouldn't see an amazing sunset and say, 'damn it', you know? I mean, I guess you could, but it would be like, Why? Why is the sunset making you angry, man? It's a beautiful thing.

Whereas here, he's realised he's only got his underwear. He's only got his jocks. And so he said in frustration and anger, "Damn it!", right. "Damn it!"

And yes. 'Jocks'. 'Jocks' means 'underwear', right? Your 'jocks', your 'underwear'. And we can also call these 'undies' in Australian English. 'Undies'.

"Mark chuckled. Well, they'll have to do. Just make sure you don't lose them in the surf or you're on your own." So there wasn't any vocab I highlighted in this phrase, but there is some interesting stuff that we can talk about. "They'll have to do." So if something 'has to do' or 'you have to make do with something'. The idea here is that it will need to suffice.

That's going to have to be enough. That'll have to do. 'Look, mate, you're coming for a swim. I don't care if you've got your jocks or you've got nothing. You're coming for a swim, mate. Whatever you've got will have to do. You'll have to make do. It'll have to suffice. It'll have to be enough, okay?'.

"Just make sure you don't lose them in the surf." So the idea here would be 'in the surf', 'in the waves', 'in the surf'. And "losing your jocks", like you were swimming around and they'd come off. When you catch a wave or something, you lose them 'in the surf'.

"Or you're on your own." And this is one of those phrases that when you say it, it sounds really funny. /You're on your own/, /you-ron-yur-own/, /you-ron-yur-own/, /you're/ /on/ /your/ own/. I guess it rhymes, right? It's got the /yo-ruh/, /yo-ruh/.

So, "you're on your own". This would be like, 'We're going to abandon you'. 'You are by yourself. We're not helping'. You know, "If you lose your jocks. It's not my problem, buddy. You are by yourself." "You're going to be in the beach or in the surf naked. We're going to be on the beach, and you can deal with the repercussions. I don't want to deal with that", right. I'm not taking off my bathers to give to you. Then I'll be naked. So. Yes. You're on your own.

'You are all by yourself. I'm not helping.' That's a good phrase to learn. "You're on your own".

"Lily laughed as she ran down to the water." We often use 'down' and 'up' when talking about the beach. So you 'run up' the beach. The idea here being that it's away from the water. Although I guess you could use this to mean away from someone as you're running along a beach. Especially if it was like going north-south. You could probably use up and down in that way too. Like, "He ran up the beach." It would be like, yeah, he 'ran along the beach', but up away from me. Or you 'ran down the beach' to someone.

But here the idea is 'down the beach' would be 'towards the water', 'up the beach' would be 'away from the water', towards the the sand. So it's an interesting thing to think about when you break it down.

"Lily laughed as she ran down to the water. If that happens, at least it'll scare the sharks away, Jamie!" So, 'to scare something away', to cause something, to be afraid to go away from you. Right. And she's making the joke that obviously, if Jamie's naked, it's going to freak the sharks out.

Hey, mate, do you want to speak Australian English? Just like a fair dinkum Aussie? If you do, then check out my English Expressions 30 Day Challenge. Every single day for a month, you will get a new lesson that is going to teach you dozens of new expressions, idioms and advanced collocations in Australian English and English more generally, every single lesson includes a short story based in Australia, which is chock a block full of English expressions, idioms and advanced collocations.

At the end of this, you will have a short quiz that you can do to test your listening comprehension too. And you only need to study about 10 to 15 minutes a day. So if you want to check this out and you want to get 50% off, check out the link in the description or go to AussieEnglish.com.au/expressions and use the coupon code 50% off, okay. So once again go to AussieEnglish.com.au/expressions and use the coupon code 50% off to save. You guessed it. 50% off. Anyway, back to the lesson.

"The water was perfect, but the surf wasn't doing much. Looks like the water's flat as a tack, Jamie commented, watching a few surfers floating around aimlessly. Not much action today." So, 'flat as a tack'. We can use this to mean 'very flat', obviously, in terms of the water and the waves and the surf at the beach today.

So if it was, if you had really large surf, if you had huge waves, I don't know what would be the opposite of 'flat' here. You wouldn't really, I don't know if you would really use another, another phrase in the case of the ocean, you know, saying it's very pointy today. It's not flat. It's very, I guess you could use 'rough', but 'rough' would describe kind of waves everywhere. Not very clean waves at the beach, if you understand what I mean.

So, 'flat as a tack' here, we could use this to mean other things. Um, which I'll probably won't cover in this episode because it'll get banned from from YouTube. No, it probably won't, but it's probably inappropriate. But you can use this. Yeah. In in other senses as well to mean just very, very flat. I don't know what the deal is with 'tack' being used here. There's probably a reason I probably should have looked this up ahead of time. Um, but 'flat as a tack'.

I think it's mainly used because it rhymes. 'Tacks' don't tend to be flat. Maybe it's talking about the top of a tack, which is like a nail, kind of like a sharp nail with a flat top that you can push into something or you can hammer into something. It's probably talking about the top, as opposed to the sharp, um, point on it.

"Jamie commented, watching a few surfers floating around aimlessly." So this would be like they're floating in the water and they don't have a purpose. There's no waves to come, so it's 'aimless'. There's no 'aim' for them, right? They're doing that aimlessly.

"Not much action today." 'Action' here would mean like, a lot of things going on. There's not much surf, in this case. There's not much 'action'. You could go to the city hoping that a lot of stuff is going on, and if you went out, you know, you got off the tram or a train and you saw that it was dead, you might be like, 'Well, there's not much action today either', so there's not much going on, right? There's not much happening.

"Mark, who had brought his surfboard, sighed in disappointment. I was hoping to catch some waves, but it's not happening." So, we'll break down the first bit there. So Mark, he brought his surfboard along to the beach. He sighed in disappointment, like, 'Oh, this is you know, this sucks. This is lame. There's no waves.'.

"I was hoping to catch some waves." Another really cool expression we use to mean use a surfboard to go body surfing, to use a bodyboard, whatever it is to interact with surf waves, 'catch them', as in get on them and ride those waves, right? So, 'catch some waves', to surf some waves.

"But it's not happening. Look at all the shark biscuits out there with nothing to do. He decided to leave the surfboard on the sand and join them for a swim instead." So, 'shark biscuits', I wanted to include here. This is an interesting Aussie slang term that can be used to mean a beginner who is surfing, and I think it's probably fine to use it for surfers, people bodyboarding, body surfing. People interacting with surf, with waves, right there.

'Shark biscuits'. But I've also heard it used about bodyboards or probably surfboards too. The idea being like, it's sort of like a biscuit, right? That a shark could bite onto. But in the case of people, and going out and surfing, I guess the broader idea is that sharks could just come along and be like, Yum! You know, take a bite of that person, that surfboard, and that's the biscuit, the 'shark biscuit'. So it's just a bit of colourful Australian slang that you can use Down Under when talking about people surfing in the waves.

"After cooling off in the water, they returned to their towels and cracked open the esky to grab some cold drinks." So, they 'cooled off' in the water. We've used another phrasal verb here, as opposed to 'warm up'. Those are the sort of two opposites, or 'heat up'. So 'cool down', 'warm up', 'heat up', 'down' and 'up'. You'll notice those being used there.

"They returned to their towels and cracked open the esky to grab some cold drinks." 'Crack'. We can use this as sort of like informal Australian slang to mean 'to open something', 'to crack something open'. It's similar to things like 'to grab something', 'to chuck something', 'to crack something open.' We use that quite a lot. So learn those types of phrases.

It's it's informal, but it sounds a lot more natural, as opposed to saying something like, They opened up the esky, you know, you could do that, but 'crack something open'. It's pretty good. You can use it for drinks too. You might grab a beer and 'crack it open'. Um, what else could you 'crack open'? There's a lot of things you could 'crack open'. I think you know a container. Yeah, well, I guess an esky is a container.

So, "Jamie stretched out and sighed. Ah! Contentedly." Contented. He sighed 'contentedly'. Don't forget that adverb. "Ah!" You know, he's feeling good. He's sighing, but he's feeling good. Sort of like relaxation.

"I could do this all day. Guess I'm turning into a beach bum." So, a 'beach bum' here, 'bum' can be used many different ways. Obviously you've got your bum on your body. You know, I'm sitting on my bum at the moment, but a 'beach bum' would usually be someone who just hangs around the beach, all the time, right? A 'beach bum', we use that a lot.

"Mark laughed. Mate, you already are, you know you're already a beach bum. He lay back," again, probably sighing. Oh, "and added, still, I'm stoked we made it here. Nothing beats a sunny day at the beach." So there's a few things here. "Still, I'm stoked." I'm excited. I'm really happy. I'm chuffed. You know, these are slang terms. I think they're used by Americans as well, but Australians definitely use things like 'stoked', probably because we learn it from them, assuming it's not ours. And 'chuff' to mean very happy, you know? Um, excited. I'm 'stoked'. I'm 'chuffed'.

"I'm stoked we made it here." If you 'make it' somewhere, it's that you successfully got to that place. You successfully arrived. So someone might make it to your party. 'Oh, we made it on time. I thought we were going to be late, but we made it to the party and we made it on time'. So it's sort of a synonym for 'arrive somewhere'.

"Just then, a gust of wind blew through and Lily, who had been trying to balance on the edge of a small wave, took a tumble right into the water." So, 'to take a tumble'. Another good expression here, 'to take a tumble'. It sounds weird, right? It's sort of like what? You just took it and then what? You just ran off with it. No. 'To take a tumble' is to fall over. The idea being you 'tumble over', right? You fall. And I guess you've taken your yourself, and thrown yourself into a tumble. But yes, I don't know why we use 'take' here, as opposed to like 'go on a tumble'. 'Do a tumble'. It's just, it's just the expression, 'to take a tumble'. 'Oh, man. He took a tumble.' 'Fell down the stairs and took a tumble.' So it's kind of like 'fall down', but sort of rolling and probably worse than just 'fall over' or 'trip over', right. 'To take a tumble'.

You could also use 'to wipe out', if especially when talking about catching waves. So in the case here, Lily was surfing on a small wave. When you fall off a surfboard, or you effectively crash while surfing a wave, that is 'to wipe out', right? 'To wipe out'.

"She quickly popped up laughing." So, to 'pop up' would be like to quickly come up, right? So she could 'pop out'. She could 'pop up out of the water'. "She quickly popped up laughing."

Hah! "Well, that wasn't graceful! But no worries, she said, flicking the water from her hair." Yeah, I can't really do that on camera. It's a, it's a very quick 'flick' if I have water in my hair. My hair doesn't hold much water, to be honest.

Um, so, 'no worries'. We can use this in Australian English to mean, ah, it's not a problem, right? Ah. Don't stress. Ah, well, you know, no worries, 'no dramas'. You can use both of those. 'No worries', 'no dramas', you know. So she's saying, Ah, it's not a big deal, you know.

Okay. "After a while, they decided to head back to the car." So, 'to head somewhere', this is to go somewhere to go in a certain direction, 'to head back to the car'. They came from the car. Now they're 'heading back to the car'.

But when they reached it- so the idea here being they arrived at the car, they 'reached the car', they arrived at it, they realised they were stuck.

"We're bogged!, Jamie groaned, shaking his head. I knew I shouldn't have parked on the sand." 'Bogged'. If you get 'bogged', this is for your wheels to effectively dig a hole in sand, mud, dirt, and the car can't move, right? Or the vehicle can't move. It can be a truck, can be whatever you want. If it's got wheels- typically, it's not going to be something like a bike or a scooter, because you can probably just pull that out of the mud.

I guess, you know, if it did get stuck, you could say it's 'bogged'. Um, but usually it's going to be some kind of motorised vehicle, like a car. So, a four wheel drive, might be driving up a four wheel drive track. It's muddy, it's wet, it's raining, and all of a sudden it gets 'bogged', it gets stuck, and it has to be helped out. Maybe you've got to push it. You've got to put sticks under the tires and lever it up. Maybe you've got to use a winch or a strap on someone else's car to get you out of your situation, being 'bogged'.

And then something interesting to mention here. "Knew I shouldn't have parked on the sand." What's happened there at the start of this phrase? We've got some- I think it's elision. Elision or ellipsis. It's one of those two where the pronoun is missing. "Knew I shouldn't have parked on the sand."

Now, when learning English, you're probably taught quite often that you need to always be using pronouns. You can't- like, Spanish and Portuguese. Just drop the pronoun and use the verb, because conjugation allows you to know which pronoun should have been in front of that verb.

That was something that was a pain in the ass to get my head around when I was learning French. Not French, but um, Portuguese, Portuguese and Spanish. But funnily enough, in spoken English we do this all the time when it's obvious. Especially when you're speaking to someone, right? So yeah.

Spoken English. When you are having a conversation with someone, quite often you can just drop these pronouns. Whether it's 'you'- you know, you could just say 'Going to go to the shops later' if you were talking to someone, as opposed to saying, 'Are you going to go to the shops later?' Because it's obvious, you know.

And in this case, "Knew I shouldn't have parked on the sand." It's obvious he's talking about himself. You know, he's not saying 'You knew I shouldn't have parked on the sand', or 'He knew' or 'They knew'. It's obvious that he's talking about himself. So we do drop pronouns and auxiliary verbs. You know, like in that case of 'Are you going to the shops?' 'Going to the shops?' So it happens quite a lot.

"With some help from a friendly passer-by, they finally managed to get the car free." Let's do that first. So 'a friendly passer-by'. A 'passer by' is someone who is passing by. So we've turned, I guess, a phrasal verb, 'to pass by'. We've turned that into a noun, 'a passer by'. I wonder why we didn't call it a 'pass buyer', right? Or a 'passer buyer'? It's interesting how they end up deciding to turn phrasal verbs into nouns. A passer by! So, 'a passer by'. A friendly passer by is someone passing by who is 'friendly'. Obviously.

Then, "They finally manage to get the car free." So they got the car free of its trap, right? Of the thing that had it caught, it was 'freed'. They got it free.

"As they packed their gear and prepared to leave, Jamie took one last look at the ocean and smiled." So, you take a look. Don't forget, 'you take a look'. You can also 'have a look'. You can use both. You 'had a look' at the beach. He 'took a look' at the beach.

"You know what, he said, grinning. Despite getting bogged and missing the waves, that was a great day. Fair dinkum. I wouldn't trade it for anything." So, 'fair dinkum'. This can be used in a few different ways in Australian English. You could use it when talking about someone 'being authentic'.

'He's fair dinkum. He's authentic.' 'He's serious. He's being truthful.' You can use it when checking if someone is being truthful. "Fair dinkum. Like, are you serious?" "Are you? Are you telling me the truth? Is that true? Fair dinkum."

And here, it's kind of like he's he's, um. It's kind of like an exclamation, I guess. He's kind of like, you know, it's sort of like, Wow. You know? 'Wow. I wouldn't trade this for the world.' Like feeling like, 'in all seriousness'. Like, 'Truthfully, I wouldn't trade this for the world. Fair dinkum.' So he's using it in that sense.

"His friends nodded in agreement. Same time next weekend?, Mark asked." So here again, we've kind of shortened the sentence a great deal because context is obvious. 'Do you want to do this the same time next weekend?' 'Shall we do this the same time next weekend?'.

So we we quite often do that in English. We just shorten everything down in spoken English to make it as fast as possible. 'Same time next weekend?' So, 'Do you want to do this again next weekend at the same time?'.

"Absolutely, Lily replied. And Jamie, don't forget your budgie smugglers next time." So 'budgie smugglers'. I wonder if you guys have heard this colourful Australian slang term. It is your 'bathers', your 'togs', your 'cozzies', your 'Speedos', your 'swimmers' that are like underwear for men, 'budgie smugglers'. And the tongue in cheek joke here is that it's as if you are trying to 'smuggle' 'small budgies', which are small parrots in your pants- because that's what Things look like, okay, I'm not going to get too descriptive.

We'll keep it G-rated. But that's the joke, right? 'Budgie smugglers'. And this. It's one of those things where it is kind of grotesque in how it's describing something, you know, when you really think about it. But it's used all the time. It's used in the media. It's used, you know, I could talk to my kids, 'Bring your budgie smuggler.' They would have no idea in terms of what I was actually alluding to, they would know what I meant. 'Get your swimmers'. But they wouldn't- you'd have to- yeah, I don't know. You get to teenage years and then you're like, ah, that's what it means.

"They all laughed as they drove off, ready to plan their next beach adventure." All right, guys, so I'm going to play the story for you one more time. Hopefully this time. Now you have better listening comprehension. You will understand a lot more of the vocab that's used here, so listen out for that. Keep an eye out for it. And don't forget to grab the free worksheet today as well. If you haven't done that already, it's linked in the description below. You will get the full transcript of the video with the highlighted vocab, you will get the glossary with all of the vocabulary, a definition and an example phrase of it being used, and then right at the bottom you will also have a quiz that will obviously quiz you on the 20 different pieces of vocab and expressions that are in today's story. So again, the link is in the description.

It was a scorching day, Saturday morning, and Jamie and his friends, Lily and Mark, were itching to get outside. It's too nice to stay home. Let's hit the beach. Jamie called to his friends. They packed their bathers towels and loaded the esky with food and drinks before driving off to the beach.

By noon, they arrived at the coast. The sun was blazing and the beach was chockers with people, but they managed to find a spot near the water and parked the car on the sand.

Blimey, it's packed, Jamie said, looking around. Everyone's out to catch some rays today. Lily, already wearing her sunnies, grinned as she took them off. You can catch rays later, she said. Let's go for a dip first. It's way too hot to just sit here.

As they strip down to their bathers, Jamie suddenly realised he'd forgotten his. Damn it! I've only got my jocks. Mark chuckled. Well, they'll have to do. Just make sure you don't lose them in the surf, or you're on your own. Lily laughed as she ran down to the water. If that happens, at least it'll scare the sharks away, Jamie!

The water was perfect, but the surf wasn't doing much. Looks like the water's flat as a tack, Jamie commented, watching a few surfers floating around aimlessly. Not much action today.

Mark, who had brought his surfboard, sighed in disappointment. Oh, I was hoping to catch some waves, but it's not happening. Look at all the shark biscuits out there with nothing to do. He decided to leave the surfboard on the sand and join them for a swim instead.

Mark laughed. Mate, you already are! He lay back and added, Still, I'm stoked we made it out here. Nothing beats a sunny day at the beach.

Just then, a gust of wind blew through and Lily, who had been trying to balance on the edge of a small wave, took a tumble right into the water. She quickly popped up laughing. Well, that wasn't graceful. But no worries, she said, flicking the water from her hair.

After a while, they decided to head back to the car, but when they reached it, they realised they were stuck. We're bogged, Jamie groaned, shaking his head. Knew I shouldn't have parked on the sand. With some help from a friendly passer-by, they finally managed to get the car free.

As they packed up their gear and prepared to leave, Jamie took one last look at the ocean and smiled. You know what? He said, grinning. Despite getting bogged and missing the waves. That was a great day. Fair dinkum. I wouldn't trade it for anything.

His friends nodded in agreement. Same time next weekend. Mark asked. Absolutely, Lily replied. And Jamie, don't forget your budgie smugglers next time. They all laughed as they drove off, ready to plan their next beach adventure.

Alrighty, so that's it for today's podcast episode, guys. Again, please go check it out on YouTube. Give it a watch, download the free worksheet as well and give me some feedback if you guys really enjoyed it. If you hated it, whatever you want. Like if you have some kind of a reaction, positive or negative, please let me know as I would love to do more of these in the future.

And if you have some suggestions for topics as well as I think I stated at the end of the video, leave them in a comment on the video on YouTube, send me an email, send me a message on Instagram or on the website. Let me know what topics would you guys like to cover because we can do that in the future for sure. Anyway, it's a pleasure guys. Thank you so much for joining me. I am your host, Pete. This is Aussie English and I will see you next time!

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AE 1297 – The Goss: How ‘Dropping In’ Culture Has Changed in Australia

Peter — Sun, 06 Oct 2024 08:00:00 +0000

AE 1291 - The Goss

How 'Dropping In' Culture Has Changed in Australia

Learn Australian English by listening to this episode of The Goss!

These are conversations with my old man Ian Smissen for you to learn more about Australian culture, news, and current affairs.

In today's episode...

Ever wondered if it’s still okay to just “drop in” on your mates in Australia? Join Pete and his dad, Ian, as they dive deep into the changing etiquette of unannounced visits in this episode of The Goss.

They’ll share hilarious personal stories, reflect on how societal norms have shifted over time, and discuss the impact of technology on our social connections. From childhood memories of roaming free to the challenges of maintaining friendships in the age of social media, this conversation explores the complexities of human connection in the modern world.

Tune in for a thought-provoking and entertaining chat about the good old days, the quirks of modern life, and the enduring importance of genuine social interaction.

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Transcript of AE 1297 - The Goss: How 'Dropping In' Culture Has Changed in Australia

G'day, you mob! Pete here. And this is another episode of Aussie English, the number one place for anyone and everyone wanting to learn Australian English. So today I have a Goss episode for you where I sit down with my old man, my father, Ian Smissen, and we talk about the week's news weather locally Down Under here in Australia or non-locally overseas in other parts of the world, okay. And we sometimes also talk about whatever comes to mind, right? If we can think of something interesting to share with you guys related to us or Australia, we also talk about that in The Goss.

So these episodes are specifically designed to try and give you content about many different topics where we're obviously speaking in English, and there are multiple people having a natural and spontaneous conversation in English. So it is particularly good to improve your listening skills. In order to complement that, though, I really recommend that you join the podcast membership or the Academy membership at Aussie English.com.au where you will get access to the full transcripts of these episodes, the PDFs, the downloads, and you can also use the online PDF reader to read and listen at the same time. Okay, so if you really, really want to improve your listening skills fast, get the transcript, listen and read at the same time. Keep practising and that is the quickest way to level up your English. Anyway, I've been rabbiting on a bit. I've been talking a bit. Let's just get into this episode guys. Smack the bird and let's get into it.

Oh, yeah. Don't know what you've been doing. All right.

I'm going to get the audio going. Dropping in, Dad. Did you want to drop in later?

No!

No one ever does.

It's inappropriate.

So you want to introduce this story while I grab a beer? Have you finished yours or are you still going?

No, I'm still going.

Weak.

Um, yeah. This is a story again from the ABC. We seem to be referring to them a bit.

Well, they- I must be following them on Facebook because that's where they all pop up and I share them to you..

You don't have to follow them. You just, you click on one and then the Facebook and..

Yeah, the algorithm?

Google algorithm. Just..

Our digital overlords.

Yeah. Pops them in more and more.

Mhm.

Yeah. What's the etiquette of dropping into someone's house?

Don't.

Yeah. Don't. Well, that used to be. It was. And I don't know when it changed, and whether even if it has changed. And that's the, the, the premise of the article is, "Is it no longer cool or acceptable to just turn up at somebody's place and knock on the door and go, 'Hey, just passing. Thought I'd drop in.'" Which is the old cliched comedy..

Why are you here?

Saw the lights on.

Turn the lights off.

Yeah, exactly.

Shut the curtains.

Yeah.

Draw the blinds. Yeah. All right. I'll, um..

Cos and I mean, we. I mean, when you're kids, you do it all the time.

Yeah.

Going 'Hey, yeah.."

Is Pete home?

Yeah.

It's- No, he's not! Piss off!

Can it be interesting to see how that changes with Noah? Because I imagine that since I was a kid, changes have occurred. And there's probably certain etiquette that I'm yet to experience because my kids aren't at that stage now of being able to freely roam around the street and go to the neighbour's house or whatever to hang out with the kids. Um..

They'll be able to do that by the time they're about 20.

Yeah, well that's it. It changed, didn't it? Like, we've talked about this quite a bit. And it's not just Australia, but when you were growing up, you could just go out in the streets from what, age? Like seven..

7 or 8.

Yeah. Whereas when I was a kid, that wasn't, I wasn't allowed to just roam around..

.. As a teenager. Really?

Well it would have been primary school. And it would have been our main street. And hanging out.

Yeah, but you wouldn't have just been.

But it wouldn't be just. I wouldn't go to the shop..

Hey, I'm going out.

No. It would be, I'm going to Luke's..

I'm going to Luke's house. Okay. Make sure you're..

200m away.

Yeah, it wouldn't be just. I'm going out to hang out.

Yeah.

So whereas for us, it was. Yeah. Yeah. We'd, you know, Where are you going? But, I'm just going out in the street with my friends!

Yeah, and mum's just like, Fucking go, mate!

Yeah. As long as you're back by dinner time.

Leave me alone!

Leave me alone! Go and run around the block. That used to be my, that was the usual thing.

Yeah.

Um.

So. Yeah, but that changed when I was a kid. I didn't get to do that at a young age.

No. Well, I remember when I was. I think I was eight when I first went to the local, um, council library was, um, about a 20 minute bus trip away. We didn't have one in our suburb. There was two suburbs away, and we didn't have a car. My father had a car for work. Um, but only he was allowed to drive it. And obviously he was at work during the day. My mother didn't get a car until I was probably about 7 or 8. And so we used to go by bus everywhere.

Yeah.

And we used to go to the library, you know, and mum and the three kids would get on the bus and go. And it was a big sort of half day outing to go to the library. But then when I was about eight, I was, Can I go to the library. Oh yeah. Off you go.

Mhm.

All right. Go and get on the bus. I had to walk, you know, 400m down the road to get to the bus stop, get on the bus, sit on the bus for 20 minutes. Get off, go to the library, come back. And I cannot imagine letting you do that when you were eight, you know.

Well, they were. Wasn't there a series of murders? Like there was some in Adelaide, right, where three kids went to the beach and just disappeared.

.. again.

Yeah. And they pretty much worked out that it was a guy that was living down the road from them that, um, gave them money to get something to eat and then just took them home and probably did what he wanted to do with them. But I think it was after that point, right, that you guys started. And this was sort of a global thing during the, probably what, late 70s 80s that parents started to monitor their kids a little more.

Yeah..

And you had that series of serial killers in the US, right.

Yeah.

Was it late 70s and 80s? When Ted Bundy and all those types were going around? John Wayne Gacy, or whatever his name was?

It was, but I think it was also, um, I don't know. I'm sure it's different if you're living in a small country town.

Yeah.

Um, and everybody knows each other, and it's quiet.

There's no traffic.

And it's traffic. It's now, you know, we were literally our playground was the street, out in front of our house.

Yeah.

Um..

And there would have been so fewer cars..

It was a reasonably busy street in the, in the local context. Our strip of it, when I was a little kid, was the only bit that was actually bitumenised. Every other street around us was dirt roads.

Really?

Um, but for whatever reason, about 250, 300m of our bit of the street was bitumenised until I was about 7 or 8, and then the whole lot got you know, was a big program of making all the roads in the suburb. But we'd just go and play and you go, Oh, car coming!

Yeah.

You get off the road, let it go. It was a straight road. Get off the road. You go out and play for five minutes. Car coming! Whereas I can't imagine you letting your kids go and play out in the street out here. They've been about as busy as our street was.

Yeah. There'd be no point though, because..

They'd be off the road every 15 seconds.

Depending on the time of day.

Yeah.

The time of day they're going to be here though, like in the mornings and the afternoons.

Yeah. Pfft.

There's going to be, there's no point in even being out there. But it would be the danger of just running out onto the road and getting hit by a car.

Yeah.

That would be the main thing. But then there is that whole strangers just walking around.

Stranger danger thing.

Yeah, that's. That's probably way overblown compared to what you actually, proportionately, should be afraid of.

Oh! Absolutely!

Yeah. But at the same time.

But it is controllable.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Exactly.

So.

So anyway, this, this article, let's do a little bit at the start here. "Dropping in used to be a common way of staying in touch. But is it still okay to do in Australia? Etiquette expert Anna Musson says unexpected visitors can be a horrifying thought for many. If you're dropping past.."

Excuse me?

"And they just get a knock on the door, most people look at that with a little bit of terror." So it is one of those things. I get it with parcel drop offs, because two, the only people that I have knocking on the door during the day are people dropping off parcels, which I don't mind, or people asking for money.

Yeah.

And it's about 50-50. So it's almost once a week there'll be someone knocking at the door and they do- you know what they do? Hello! Like, Hey, it's me! You know, they use that kind of language that makes you think..

Think, Oh, I know this person!

Yeah. They'll be like, Hey, anyone there? Like, G'day!

No.

And you'll be like. You'll open the door and then be like, Fuck! I'm like..

So, not today.

And it's so funny because you just see in their face they're like, So how's it going? How's your day going? And you're like, Fuck. You both look at each other and he's he's thinking..

.. I've been trained..

How do I get this guy..

.. to do this routine.

Have a conversation about bullshit? And you're thinking, this guy's just going to try and get me to have a conversation about bullshit before selling me something or asking for money.

Yeah.

And you both look at each other like, agh.

Are they really selling you something? It's, the only thing they're selling are services. Like, Switch your electricity! Yeah. Piss off. I'm perfectly happy with my electricity.

Yeah.

But I can get you a better deal! Did I ask for an argument? You know, it's. Or they're charities.

You here to argue as well?

Yeah. Or they're charities looking for donations.

Yes.

And fortunately or unfortunately, the charities are the easier ones to deal with.

Well, I just shut the door.

Yeah.

I try not to be rude, and I..

Just say I'm not interested. Go on.

Yeah.

Um, and it is not wasting their time either!

Well, they're paid probably by the hour or by sign up.

Yeah.

Whereas I think the, the drop in thing. And I've got a theory about this. I when I read this story, when you sent it to me, I went I, and I didn't even look at why and any discussion about it, but I reckon it's to do with the fact that when I, and I look back when I was a kid. When I was a kid, I only ever knew my friends mothers.

Mhm.

Because their mothers were always at home. There was one friend I knew, his father because his father was an artist, and he worked in a little studio right by the front door. And he'd walk in and he'd go, Oh, good day, and come and have a come and have a chat. Everybody else I knew the mothers. And so the mothers were always at home. And being a housekeeper at home meant that the houses were always tidy. There was always a cup of coffee available. There was something. There was- people baked, they had things to eat and those sort of things. Now somebody knocks and you go, Oh shit! The place is is chaos! I wasn't expecting visitors! I haven't got anything to feed them! I haven't got any- whereas..

The only people that I allow to come over at the drop of a hat are those that I am not ashamed to show my mess to.

Exactly! And so I'm sure that's part of this thing of, you know, it's that fear of- not the fear that people are going to, you're going to have some random dropping in, but it's that, Oh geez! The neighbours have just dropped in to say hello! I don't want them in where I've got dishes in the sink and I've got..

But it's ironic..

Crap all over the floor.

We set up these expectations as a result of having that kind of attitude.

Yeah!

Because if you're not going to have people over when your house is complete chaos, they're going to always assume, well, everyone else's house is amazing. Like, as I remember, I used to laugh when mum, mum would tend to lose her shit prior to Nana and Grandpa coming over, or family, and be like, We've got to clean the house! Pete, vacuum! Dad, clean the toilet! Take the cats outside! And it's just like, Mum! But this isn't how the house normally is. It's. It's like, yeah, but we have to pretend it looks like this all the time!

Billy Connolly used to tell this joke about the Queen, the late Queen Elizabeth. He said, The Queen thinks the world smells like fresh paint. Because wherever she goes, 400m in front of her, there's somebody painting the bridge or the buildings or..

Well, yeah, it feels like that at times because, yeah, it's just like. But yeah, the irony is that if you just showed, if everyone just loosened up and showed their houses being..

This is how we live.

With less than perfect, everyone else else would relax, right?

Yeah, exactly.

And it would become this, this self-imposed prison..

Or they'd go, We're never going to drop in there again because their house is a pile of crap! Yeah. So you go, All right. Good. We don't need them here anymore! We'll only invite them when we've cleaned up.

It's so funny, though, because you do go to people's houses and you'll, you'll forget that they've probably spent the last half day cleaning the house, preparing for you to show up. And you show up and you have, you know, you go in and you have your tea or coffee..

Make a mess and leave!

But you look around and you're like, you feel like shit because you know, your house looks like crap and you're like, Their house is pristine! But you don't see them running around like mad.

No, I know. Yeah. So it is one of those weird things.

But yeah. So.

.. the etiquette of dropping in.

Do you have many friends that you would just drop in at their houses at the drop of a hat or..

I don't have many friends!

True that.

No.

But..

And it's- No, not. No. In a sense that I've got lots of acquaintance friends.

Mhm.

Um, and, you know, some that I've known for over 60 years, but but I wouldn't. And the acquaintance friends are the ones that I think you don't just drop in on.

Well, but it's, you're not going to just drive to Melbourne and then show up at someone's house without telling them first.

There's only, like the neighbours. If I don't drop in at the neighbours, many of the neighbours. Hey, I'm here, let's- and have this expectation that they're going to pull a beer or make a cup of tea or a coffee or, you know, pull food out or whatever to..

.. going to get some biscuits?

Which used to be the thing! When I, the neighbours are always dropping in at our place.

Yeah.

Um, when I was a kid. And my mum would do the same thing. I'm just going to go round and see Joan, or I'm going to go down the road to see Irma or whatever. Um, and as soon as you did, it was, I'll put the kettle on, have a cup, here's a biscuit or a cake or whatever. Um.

Do you think we've lost something, though, as a result?

I think we have. And we've lost that sense of community, I think. And again, it was partly because people were home, you know, mothers were home. Uh..

And if you walked around the suburb here..

You could walk around knocking up 27 doors and there'd be nobody home!

Because everyone's at work.

Everybody's at work!

Yeah.

It's the same-.

Or you would knock on the door, I'm the cleaner! Do you want to come in for a cup?

Yeah. That's it. This is my house. But you can come in.

Yeah.

It is one of those things.

You want for the television.

I think I've only more recently become aware of just how lonely I am. But people are, in general.

Lonely in a crowd. Yeah.

Well, yeah. And that's the thing. Like, it was funny. I was reading an article, I think, or watching a video recently where they were saying, how many close friends do you have? And by definition, that is someone you see more than, so it was twice a month or more.

Yeah.

And in the 60s, what do you think the number was?

It'd be 100.

No it was, it was 12.

Oh.

Close friends that they would hang out with.

Adults. Yeah.

That they would hang out with on a regular basis. What do you think it is today?

Two?

It's one.

Yeah.

And isn't that sad?

See, I don't, I don't know that anybody, I don't think I see anybody more than twice a month.

Yeah, but then that's..

Other than family.

Yeah.

And we're all fortunate.

And none of us have friends!

No, exactly. But we're fortunate that, you know, that Jo and I have both our children and therefore our four grandchildren, all living within one Ks, walking distance. The other one 15 minutes drive.

Well, we weren't allowed to move away.

Yeah, exactly.

You guys..

Shame on us!

We shamed you. Said, You move away, we're never coming to visit!

That's it.

If it's more than half an hour's drive.

We die. Pretend we're dead.

No, no. But it's so. Yeah, I think we've lost that sense of community. But. But part of that was inevitable because we we now live. Funnily enough, we now live much more socially than we did when we were younger.

Which is why it goes deep.

Yeah, it's wide and it's electronic.

Yeah.

It's social media and and handsets. I hesitate to call them phones because the last thing people use them for now is to actually speak with a phone call.

Well, yeah. You get a call from a number you don't know or even a number, you know, and you're like, Fuck, I don't want to talk. I'm busy.

Yeah, yeah, leave me a message and I might get back to you.

Yeah. That's it. Just text me. I'll deal with it when I'm ready! It is funny, though, right? Because calling someone without letting them know, or showing up to their house without letting them know first. It's that kind of 'I demand your time'.

Yes.

And you, or I expect you to give me your time without any, any preparation, no matter what you're doing, effectively, right?

Yeah.

And back in the day, it would be like, of course, because I don't have the ability to get back to you later. There's no internet. I can write you a letter.

Yeah.

I can give you a phone call, maybe, later on. But there would be the whole, Well, we'll just smash it out. Or also that it isn't done that often and it's not that easy. Because again, you didn't have the technology to be able to just send someone a text message no matter where you are in the world..

Yeah and I, you know..

Saying, g'day, how's it going?

But I mentioned that my, you know, my mum, I'm just going around the corner to see Joan, one of our family friends.

Yeah.

And, you know, I grew up with their oldest son, um, who was a close friend of mine. Went to school together for 13 years. Well, 12 years, unfortunately, he died when he was 17. But, um, but Joan would be at our doorstep three times a week. Mum would go round there. And it was just, I'm just going to. There wasn't anything. I don't have to go and get anything or do anything. It was just I'm just going to go and say hello.

Yeah.

You know, and Joan would do the same thing. Sometimes she'd she'd knock on the door and go, Oh, I just need to talk to your mum about it. Come in. No, I won't come in. I haven't got time.

Shut up, Joan!

And then half an hour later, she's at the door. Still..

Just come in!

Still talking to me before I moved up to mum, you know?

Just come in.

Come in. Put that kettle on.

God damn it.

Um, but, yeah, I think now you'd just send them a text, say, Hey, Joan, how are you going?

Yeah.

You know.

But, but that's sad, right? Because I have, I think, thinking about it, I have loads of friends Loads of friends that I talk to, but none that I see.

Yeah.

And that's. It's funny how that still matters and makes you feel lonely, even if you have that superficial direct connection via Facebook. Even if I call them, there's something different about physically seeing someone in front of you and hugging them or, you know, greeting them and hearing them and reading their body language and everything that must have some deeper effect on you, you know, psychologically that..

Yeah. And I've got friends that I've known for. Well, how old was I when I met him? 11? So, you know,

73.

Yeah, 55 years. Um, and we, you know, correspond via social media and text messages every now and then, but we still organise a couple of times a year just to get together. Three of us just sit down and have lunch, have a chat. Because there's something about- we're social animals. And social is not just superficial communication. It's it's I hesitate to use this word because it has a religious overtone and it's not intended this way. It's that 'fellowship' of we are going to do something together.

With the ring.

Yeah, exactly.

Take it to Mordor.

Yeah, right. So we're going to do something together, you know. It's a shared experience. Rather than just chatting to each other via text messaging. So. But then there are other times where, you know, I've got, you know, two close friends who you know very well. Who, one of whom I see quite regularly, the other one I probably see once a year maybe, but every week we are texting each other during football games. So we have this. We have that shared experience that we separate the geography and, and we will be sitting watching the same game on television.

It's so funny.

That wasn't a free kick, you know.

So there's a, there's a service on, on on your computer, a free service called Plex. And effectively someone who- you have to download it. The other person has it. One of you has a server at home where you put all of your movies and TV shows and whatever you want to watch, right? And you can both simultaneously stream it together.

Oh okay.

So you can get an invite and go and watch the stuff that they have.

So can I pause it and it pauses for you, too? So we can have a chat about.

It was, I was doing that for a while with a friend, Sean, where we were watching um, uh, Better Call Saul.

Oh, yeah.

And we were watching an episode by episode. Um, and it was so fun because we would get the phones on too, so we could talk to one another.

Yeah.

Whilst we were watching it, and, um, that was such. It was one of those times, like, it's so funny how you have those moments in, in time that you don't necessarily appreciate that are really profound. Like when Game of Thrones came out, um, every year or two years or whatever it was for a short period of time, whatever it was, two, three months, there would be just almost on a weekly basis. You would be talking about the last episode with everyone.

Yeah.

With everyone! Right?

It was the workplace conversation. I can imagine, because it was around the time I retired, but.

And it was so fun. It was so interesting. And whereas there's so few of those types of events or TV shows that that are ongoing, there may be specific events that take place, like the Aurora thing, right? Where everyone raged up about that online being like, God, it's all that's there online at the moment.

Yeah.

But it was kind of cool for a moment in time, a few days, you're pretty much sharing this with what, like 50% of the world's population has the ability to go outside and see it, but it lasts for a day or two.

Yeah.

And so it is fun when those things happen, but they're kind of fleeting. Pokemon Go was another one.

Yeah.

You wouldn't, you wouldn't have gotten into that.

No, I didn't. But I was fully aware of it because it was just, it infiltrated everything.

But it was so interesting playing it. Like, I remember there would be every day the girls in the office and I would just go out and walk around, um, Carlton Gardens playing Pokemon Go and just hanging out, having a coffee and just playing this game. But then I was talking about this with Kel the other night, where I remember it was just so weird how a game on a phone could change the way people behave in the real world in terms of where they are at any given time. And in a way that makes the world safer. It was so bizarre walking through the CBD of Melbourne, and there were certain areas in the CBD when Pokemon Go was huge, where there were loads of gyms that you could fight with your Pokemon and you would get points and catch new Pokemon or whatever. And I remember going to the front of the is it, um, Queen Victoria Library or whatever it is, the library there. The library.

State Library.

State Library, yeah, on um, Swanston Street, across from Central Melbourne.

Central Station. Yeah.

And there would have been like six gyms all at the front of this one place, because the game had set it up so that it was using a GPS, um, map of the world, and it would set up gyms to be around things like libraries or hospitals or whatever. And I remember there being a..

Common corners and..

Thousands of people. At about midnight.

Just standing around on their phones.

Standing. And it was they were chatting to each other. Strangers, just wandering around being like, Oh, what are you doing? Have you got this one yet? And and you could suddenly have conversations with complete, you know, strangers and you all have this shared interest. But also that it was safer because there were so many people out doing something that was so wholesome that you felt like- it was just funny. Because I remember my housemate was playing the game at the time, almost hate playing it. He was addicted to it and he would just at midnight, he's like, I'm going to the fucking zoo. And then he would walk outside.

Which is walking distance from where you were living.

Yeah, from North Melbourne, and go through Royal Park and then go to the zoo because there were gyms all around the zoo.

Yeah.

And he was just like, I'm just going to walk around the zoo for an hour or so and see what I can catch. And I'd be like, It's fucking midnight, man. And he's like, Yeah? There's just going to be other people playing the game! Going out there too, because no one else is there! So they'll be thinking, I can get these Pokemon. No one else is going to be around. And he's like, It's fine! But it was such a weird moment because that only lasted a few months.

Yeah. But again, that thing will run its race because, and not the social aspect of it I think is what, what made it hang on. Yeah. Because I hadn't, when it first came out, I went, uh, this won't last a week.

As an individual, you kind of like..

As a task, it'll last a week.

Yes.

Because you'll get bored of it.

Yeah.

But the social part of it, I think, is what..

Yes.

Yeah, and that random social shared experience..

I get bored with games pretty quickly. But the fact that everyone was doing this and it had that social side to it tied in, it was very powerful. And I don't even know if the Nintendo, the game developers had even worked that out initially, and that was the plan to try and get people to be social in order to get them to stay on the game, but it ended up being a very interesting kind of thing that happened.

Social experience.

Yeah. And you kind of, I miss those kinds of events that brought people together, that you have a shared experience or a shared interest or shared hobby or whatever it is, and you can, you know, hang out together and just talk shit about that thing. Right? Because I think for the most part, people are so busy with their own lives and our interests are so different.

Well, I think social media seems to have not replaced but paralleled some of that where conversations, even if they're only conversations in your head. Because you're, you'll see a random post by somebody on, you know, somebody's, one of your friends has commented on somebody else that you've never had any contact with and probably never will again. And you go, Oh, somebody made a statement on Facebook and they posted something.

To pause you there, there was a meme on Reddit the other day that was like, um, a skeleton, dead on the ground and a knight standing there being sad because he'd obviously tried to come to rescue a princess or whatever. And they died years before. And the title was like, um, it was effectively like the person has gone online to search for a problem they currently have, and then find someone that had the same problem nine years ago and no one's answered it.

Yeah!

And I was like, Oh, that's so true. You'll get on there and be like, you'll get on these forums and you'll see someone's had the same problem and there's no comment.

I do that, I do that all the time, you know, all the time. Reasonably frequently, when I have an issue, you go and type in how do I, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And the instantly the top 2 or 3 things that come up will be either read it or random forums of something and you go..

2007..

And you go, Oh, here's the answer! And you go, No, it's just the fucking question.

Yeah.

And it's there from, yeah exactly, ten years ago.

And the software is outdated..

It's done and, and nobody has even answered it.

The screenshots are of DOS..

Really, Google? Be smarter!

Well, if that's the only option. But it is interesting how online. Yeah. Because as you were saying, getting online and there are loads of guitar groups that I'm in now, I'm getting back into guitar- well, I'm getting back in for the last year and a bit. And, but it's not the same. And that's why I like going to A and B, the local music store and just talking to the guys and hanging out and touching things and, you know, talking to people and socialising that way on a regular basis. There's just something about- jiu jitsu was the same. There was almost a spiritual aspect to jiu jitsu, and it's probably the same with any kind of physical sport. I imagine it's the same with AFL, where even if you're fighting the person, there's something about touching another human being..

You're doing it together.

But also touching them and trusting them.

Yes.

You know, and there being that physical interaction with someone else that I remember, even if you don't know the people like you very well, you see them on a regular basis, but you just fight and then that's it for the lesson. There was I remember just having a better kind of like mental health as a result of going somewhere and physically interacting with other people.

Yeah, and sometimes it's not even physical. It can be emotional. Um, and I remember writing the, you know, writing my chapter of the family history book that I did, and I spoke about my version of spirituality being a, you know, completely irreligious atheist. So my version of spirituality is what makes you feel good.

Yeah.

And the things that you do, because you get this sense of internal joy in doing it. And one of those is live music. I'm not a musician, I can't sing, I can't play an instrument.

Mhm.

Um, but going and listening to a live band play, particularly a really good one. And if you sat there by yourself doing it, you'd go, Yeah, that was good. But when you're with 10,000, 20,000, in the case of some recent concerts, 100,000 people.

Yeah, it's a spiritual event.

It's a spiritual..

It's a mega-church at that point..

It is, it is it's a spiritual experience because you're all engaged in this thing, and I know..

It's a shared experience.

Yeah. And it's that. And Bruce Springsteen, who is one of my favourite musicians, probably my favourite musician. Um, he says that every night when he goes out to play, he performs a magic trick.

Yeah.

And he says, I can't teach you how to do it.

Yeah.

I don't know how I'd do it.

Do you..

But I do it.

Do you think you would have that same experience if you didn't like the music you were seeing?

No.

So you'd just be there, like.

Because I'd just be going 99,999 people are idiots. But it's the same thing going to a football game. You know, I go, no, most of the time I go to a football game. I go to watch my own team play. So you have this sense of joy or devastation, but it is shared with a whole bunch of other people who are also supporting the same team.

Yeah.

And if something excellent happens, you end up high fiving people who are next to you that you've never seen before in your life and you're never going to see again.

Well, that's sort of like that jiu jitsu thing. Yeah.

But you have this shared experience. And that's getting back to the thing about the dropping in stuff. Um, it's just that I want to go and see my neighbour. I'm going to drop in, but we don't do that anymore for a whole bunch of other reasons. So we have lost that little bit of community that that allowed us and mental health is a good example of something that it created a capacity for people to engage with other people, which is so important for us as a social species that we've just lost. And we replace it with a bunch of other things, but they just don't do it as well.

It's not the same.

Yeah.

I wonder how much indigenous groups like I really wish that I could have been, you know, on that, um, 1770 voyage with Captain Cook coming to Australia and seeing indigenous people living indigenously. Like, like living as hunter gatherers in these groups and getting to just experience that from the first person, right. And, but but it would be so interesting also to obviously be in that indigenous group as someone in there and understand what it was like from their point of view.

Yeah.

Because from the outside, you think it must have been amazing..

Interpreting, basing it on your own experience.

Well, yeah. You imagine all these things that you didn't have as a result of being like that, where they have friends and family around them at all times, effectively. But then you wonder from their point of view, what was it like? Fuck, I just can't.

I can't get rid of Pete.

If I try and get away from these people, I'd die.

Yeah.

Like, you know, we have to stay together..

Or..

.. to survive.

They treat me as a leader and they just follow me!

Yeah, exactly. You wonder what it- because it's always really interesting learning about Australian Indigenous people from the point of view of Europeans, because they always saw them as lazy, right? To some degree. There was always that kind of comment on they weren't, they weren't hard workers. They would do the bare minimum type thing and you realise it's like, Yeah, look at the country they fucking live in.

Yeah.

The continent they live on where there's effectively no food. The, the extremes are so harsh that you pretty much die if you, you know, you don't get enough water. So they do the bare minimum to be able to survive and then they just conserve their energy.

Yep.

Yeah. So that they can make it through to the next period, right. Like, no shit! Like, but it's, it's always mind blowing, you know, watching those differences across those boundaries. But yeah, I always wonder how much their mental health would have differed from, say, modern people's mental health as a result of being in a small group that see each other every single day. You know, like you watch something like Big Brother or any of these sort of, you know, survival TV shows where they're all together at once and you wonder, is that a positive thing mental health wise? Is it a negative thing? What are the differences? Like, Survivor is a TV show.

Survivor? Survivor is probably the only authentic one that I, of those shows.

Well, you guys seem to be obsessed with it.

Yeah. You guys. Yeah, I watch it. Jo watches it. Your sister watches it.

Mhm.

Um.

Jo as in my mom.

Yeah. My daughter..

Yeah, not your daughter. Yeah. Jo. Yeah. We sit down with a three year old and go Watch this!

.. obsessed.

Yeah. I reckon Bob's going to win this. Yeah. Um. Digressed. Further sense of levity. Um, I, I think it's authentic in a sense that it's obviously completely contrived, but the reactions and the behaviour of the people is not contrived. Where something like Big Brother is, is it's being adjusted..

Yes.

By the producers every minute.

It's the um..

In order to create..

It's the junk food end of the scale.

It is. So, but survivor really is this we're going to put 24 people out there, put them in two teams, make the teams compete with the knowledge that they're eventually going to join up together, and that the whoever's been kicked off is going to determine the winner. So it is it's contrived, but it's got this sense of rules that everybody understands.

I guess, do they have to all work together?

You've got, well, you've got to work together in order to beat the other team so that you don't get kicked off.

Yeah.

But..

You'd also survive, right? Yeah.

You've got to work together to create your shelter, to- you are given food, but you can go out and collect food as well. But you're given rice and beans. But if you're not in the winning team in the first couple of days, you don't get the ability to build fire unless you can manufacture it themselves.

Yeah.

In fact, there's only one one season that I can ever remember where the team that didn't get The Flint.

Yeah, still managed to do it.

Managed to do it. And they came back going, Legends!

Yeah. Yeah. I wonder, I wonder what it's like. Because like, in my head, I have it as it must be, or I assume it to be, a much better experience socially than, than modern day, the modern day world.

Yeah. Well, and it would be. And there have been studies. And I'm not an anthropologist or a sociologist. You talk to your sister?

Mhm.

Um. About what- yeah, and if you look at- Yeah, you're talking about indigenous populations, what a lot of those um, groups of um, old cultures were related, possibly in the case of many places in Australia, about how many people can you have living in the one place that you can actually support by the physical environment? You know, how much food and water can you gather? Um Rather than what's the ideal size for a social grouping? Whereas if you go back to, say, Europe, where post-agricultural, um, village sizes were all the same.

Yeah.

Across Europe, village sizes are the same across North America. The indigenous people in North America, Native Americans or First Nations people. Um, village sizes were about the same as they were in England. Right. And it had nothing to do with the resources that were available. It was just what's a an acceptable, sensible, ideal group size?

Yeah.

And it turned out it was between 30 and 100 people.

Yeah. Okay.

And that's probably, even if I imagine, you know, when I was growing up, Melbourne had just over 2 million people in it, but I didn't interact with 2 million people. I probably interacted with between 30 and 100 people who lived in my part of my suburb. And other than artificially now, we send kids off to- I went to a primary school that had 1000 kids in it. And a high school that had 1000 kids in it.

But I think if you were to still study it, you'd probably find they still interact with. Because again, you only have a certain amount of time per day and energy, you can't maintain a certain number of relationships. I remember getting on Myspace and then Facebook and being like, Fuck yeah, I've got a thousand friends. And you're like, but how many..

.. got 1000 clicks?

Yeah, exactly. If you go through the people that I talk to on a regular basis, I bet you it's..

Mine too. Mine's about ten.

Yeah, but it'll be one of those, um, what's it called? Not an exponential curve, but the one that diminishes.

Yeah, well, it is exponential, but it's diminishing..

Right? Yeah. It'll be that where the majority of the people that I talk to are my wife, my family and a few close friends. And then it rapidly drops off.

Yeah.

But they'll probably be about 20 or 30 people that you'll if you were to look through the chat histories that I talked to on a frequent basis, it'll be between..

But you're talking to individually rather than liking what they've commented on on somebody else's post.

Yeah.

Yeah yeah. Interesting one.

Yeah. So anyway..

So don't drop in.

Yeah. Well it's one of those things. It depends, right. I think that was the basic thing with the article. It's like it depends who the people are. It depends how you know them. It depends on the context. And we have that, I should have mentioned earlier on when we were yakking about it. But there are certain people, certain friends that can effectively show up at any time. And it's not a problem. Because, you know, like other people who are my age, who are my friends, who have children show up to my house and see the place as a mess. It's kind of like..

My place looks the same!

Exactly. I don't care. Whereas if Nana and Grandpa showed up unannounced tomorrow, I would be mortified for them to see. I would be..

You would only be mortified because your mother would be here as well going, Pete, you should have tidied up!

I would be like, Can we do this somewhere else? Can we just do it in the front yard? Like, can we do it in the street?

Ca we sit in the driveway?

Exactly. I'll get some camping chairs and we'll just hang out and do- and open my garage..

With sloping driveway, we'll slide into the garage door.

It is so funny when you have, once you have kids too, it completely changes where, especially when they're babies and young kids. Because of the, the whole eating and sleeping pattern and everything getting effed up. And you know, if they want to hang out at a certain time, it's..

You just do it.

You can't, or you can't.

Yeah.

But then when they have small children, you kind of you're almost like, Oh thank God. They'll bring their kids over and you're like, go play outside and leave me alone. Anyway. Yes. Well, cool. Good episode.

Yeah! Done!

See you later, guys!

See ya.

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AE 1298 – Learn English with a Short Story: Day at the Beach

AE 1297 – The Goss: How ‘Dropping In’ Culture Has Changed in Australia

AE 1296 – The Goss: Gorilla Glasses & Dad’s Crazy Zoo Stories – MEMBERS ONLY

AE 1295 – The Goss: Australia’s Most & Least Ethical Jobs

AE 1294 – The Goss: Australia Just Had the Best Aurora in 500 Years!

AE 1293 – The Goss: Should Aussie Schools Ban Homework?

AE 1292 – How Aussie Do Asian Australians Feel? r_AskAnAustralian

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AE 1296 – The Goss: Gorilla Glasses & Dad’s Crazy Zoo Stories – MEMBERS ONLY

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AE 1295 – The Goss: Australia’s Most & Least Ethical Jobs

Peter — Sun, 22 Sep 2024 09:00:00 +0000

AE 1295 - The Goss

Australia’s Most & Least Ethical Jobs

Learn Australian English by listening to this episode of The Goss!

These are conversations with my old man Ian Smissen for you to learn more about Australian culture, news, and current affairs.

In today's episode...

Ever wondered which jobs Aussies consider the most and least ethical?

Join Pete and his dad for a lively chat as they unpack a surprising list of occupations, from selfless firefighters to the much-maligned real estate agents. They’ll delve into the reasons behind these rankings, share their own experiences, and spark a thought-provoking discussion on ethics, conflicts of interest, and the power of public perception. Expect some laughs, Aussie slang, and plenty of insights into the Australian perspective on the working world. Tune in to this Aussie English Goss episode and discover which professions come out on top – and which ones might need an ethics makeover!

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Transcript of AE 1295 - The Goss: Australia’s Most & Least Ethical Jobs

G'day, you mob! Pete here and this is another episode of Aussie English, the number one place for anyone and everyone wanting to learn Australian English. So today I have a Goss episode for you where I sit down with my old man, my father, Ian Smissen, and we talk about the week's news weather locally Down Under here in Australia, or non-locally, overseas in other parts of the world, okay. And we sometimes also talk about whatever comes to mind, right. If we can think of something interesting to share with you guys related to us or Australia, we also talk about that in The Goss.

So these episodes are specifically designed to try and give you content about many different topics where we're obviously speaking in English and there are multiple people having a natural and spontaneous conversation in English. So it is particularly good to improve your listening skills. In order to complement that, though, I really recommend that you join the podcast membership or the Academy membership at Aussie English.com.au where you will get access to the full transcripts of these episodes, the PDFs, the downloads and you can also use the online PDF reader to read and listen at the same time, okay. So if you really, really want to improve your listening skills fast, get the transcript, listen and read at the same time. Keep practising and that is the quickest way to level up your English. Anyway, I've been rabbiting on a bit. I've been talking a bit. Let's just get into this episode guys. Smack the bird and let's get into it!

All right. Dad, what's going on?

Your cat's about to attack me.

Yeah, I know. Scrappy's been let out of his dungeon after having having lunch separated from our other cat, Peach. Because she steals all the food.

She would eat him.

So, ethical and least ethical.

Most ethical, most and least ethical jobs.

Mhm.

Yeah.

How should we do this one? Should we do, like the ethical ones first, but go from 10 to 1? Have you read that already?

I have, yeah.

Okay, so there's no surprises.

There's no surprises. There aren't any surprises anyway.

Yeah, but I can't shock you. It can't be like. What do you think number one is?

What do you think number one is? Yeah.

Yeah. This is a good, an interesting article, right. Where- what are we. What, do we go to the top here. "The most and least ethical Australian jobs have been named. At least ethical, real estate agents. With many Aussies fed up over rent hikes and failures to fix property issues, it's perhaps unsurprising that real estate agents have been named the least ethical job in Australia. The Governance Institute of Australia's latest ethics index ranked occupations from most to least ethical along with sectors and organisations." So yeah, it was an interesting read. Um.

Yeah. The only issue I have with the article is that it's very short. So you basically read half the article. Um, other than the lists which we will go through.

It's long on my, um, my screen because there's so many fucking ads.

Oh, yes. Online news. Um, yeah. But they don't tell you how they determined.

'We interviewed three people...'.

Yeah. And this ethical index? Well, show- what's the- what are the parameters in the index? But anyway, that aside..

Old mates opinion.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Pub test. That aside, um, none of these is surprising, which is, um, interesting in itself. So we can go through them. But the top ten most ethical occupations are all in the caring industry. Broadly.

That's pretty much so..

It's hardly a surprise, is it?

I found it interesting. So I guess we'll go through them one- or do you want to do it from 10 to 1.

Yeah. Do that. Yeah. Do the countdown.

Yeah. So secondary school teachers.

Yeah. That was me. A long time ago.

Yeah.

I'm ethical, but not as ethical as I could be. Yeah.

Ten. Yeah, nine was dentist.

Dentists.

I was kind of thinking. How do you measure the ethical.

What's an ethical dentist?

Like, most of them don't really say much. They kind of just look at your teeth.

Well, they say a lot, but you can't talk back.

I guess it's what they're considered by the public, right?

Yes.

Um, eight is vets.

Yeah.

Veterinarians. Eh, veterinarians.

Veterinarians.

I say 'veterinarians', but yeah.

Yeah, you can say what you like, but it's veterinarians.

Gotcha. Not veterans.

Veterans.

Yeah. Um, then seven is primary school teachers. It's funny that primary school teachers are so much higher than secondary school.

Aye, so? There are three places ahead! And out of a million jobs that you could have, these are the top ten. So.

I guess though I'd probably feel primary school teachers are probably a little more parent like?

Yeah.

You know, like caring. And..

Yeah.

Whereas high school teachers were, at least from personal experience, when I was there at high school, they always seemed a bit colder and. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Six is child care pre-school.

So we're going to, we're going up that same index of, you know take out vets and dentists. We've gone secondary school, primary school, child care pre-school, kindergarten sort of teachers. So.

Yeah.

Um, it's teachers in increasing ethics when they're dealing with younger children.

Yeah.

Which is probably fair.

Yeah.

Um, and because obviously this is all perception, I don't I as we suggested, we haven't seen what the index is made of, but I suspect it is about perception, not about some objective, uh, ethical behaviour measure.

Mhm.

Um, so people will always assume that if you're looking after my three year old, I expect you to be more ethical than if you're looking after my 17 year old. So. Next one.

Uh, general practitioners...

So, doctors.

Yeah.

Makes sense.

Yeah.

And then nurses above doctors.

Yeah.

I guess they have to be...

...much more hands on. Yeah. Yeah.

It's funny, though. I don't know how, this one got Pharmacists.

Pharmacists.

Is number three.

Pharmacists have always had this. And this is one of these things of. Because if you look through, say, if you wanted a statutory declaration signed other than going to a Justice of the peace..

You can go to a pharmacist?

You can go to a, you go to a police station.

Yeah.

You can go to a judge, justice of the peace or whatever. The next thing on the list is usually pharmacist.

Really? I didn't know that.

And then there's ironically teachers are in there as well. Um, doctors I think can be. But doctors, you're never going to go to the doctor's surgery and say, can you sign this for me? Yeah, it'll be ten minutes, $70.

Yeah, exactly.

Um, so pharmacists have always had this perception of being, you know, ethical humanitarian people and the next two are obvious. So if we pause here, if you're if you're listening to this and clearly you are listening to this, you're not going to hear that and not be listening. Um, pause for a minute and think what you think number two and number one are, while we discuss this. But I think the pharmacist one is that people go to the pharmacy to get advice, not just to buy things. Whereas you don't go to..

..go to Bunnings to get advice.

Sorry?

I go to Bunnings to get advice.

Yeah.

Like I would go and get advice from them and they're not even on the list.

Yeah, but it's not life threatening stuff.

Yeah.

This is how seriously you take your woodworking. Yeah, well. Or how badly you are with power tools, but all right. Number two!

You do it.

Ambulance service.

Ambos.

Ambos. And then number one is the most obvious one.

I don't know. I don't know. It's one of those ones..

I might have switched one and two?

Yeah.

But, fire services.

Yeah. Firies.

Yeah. People who like..

Most of them volunteer.

Ironically, police is not on there. I would have thought police would have been in there.

No.

Um, but I think there are so many people in the community who've had bad experiences, or perceived to have bad experiences. But nobody has a bad experience with an ambo or a fiery.

Mhm.

Um, and yeah, ambos are risking their lives in a sense that they're dealing with lunatics some of the time. Um, but fire people risk their lives just by turning up at work.

Yeah.

Every day.

Yeah.

And if you do that job, you've got to look at it and go, hmm. These people are serious people, you know?

Yeah.

And look, in our area where more than 50% of the firies are volunteers.

Yeah.

That's somebody who's just going to risk their life because of community service. Yeah.

I remember seeing Tony Abbott. As much as I didn't really like him as a prime minister and just..

Yeah, he was a CFA volunteer.

Yeah. And you were kind of like, that bumped up respect a bit. Especially when I think it was Black Saturday and everything was taking place and he was just volunteering and..

He used the media..

Maybe they found him and got photos of him..

And he just walked away.

Just let me do my work. Yeah, I'm trying to do my thing.

Yeah. Tony Abbott was a prime minister. Not at the time, but he was a past prime minister of the country, and I had no time for him as a politician. Ironically, he's one of these guys, apart from his religious beliefs, and I'm not religious, so we probably would have had some differences in opinion around that.

Just slightly.

Just slightly. But pub test. If he's sitting next to you at the bar stool or the pub, you'd probably have a pretty good conversation going. He's an okay guy.

Yeah.

Yeah. But as a politician.

Yeah. Well.

No.

I think politician brings out the worst and most.

Yeah. Yeah. So, uh.

So least ethical?

Least ethical. So we can do. We've already named the number one because it was in the headline. But.

Yeah.

If we do it, start at the bottom. This one might surprise people. That a...

I guess it depends also what was below this was 11, 12.

I know, but the fact that it's in the top ten is probably not a surprise. But the fact that it comes up as number ten.

Yeah.

Mind you. Yeah. Lawyers. Um.

And I guess it's probably going to depend on what kind of lawyer. Because there are a lot of lawyers you would imagine that aren't you know, if you're just doing conveyancing or, or, you know, tax..

..these lawyers, you.

Just sort of like there's no kind of ethical. I mean, I'm sure you can be.

The trouble with, yeah. The trouble with lawyers is that, um, I think, as you say, other than the service lawyers, you know, that every time you engage in engaging with a lawyer, you are probably engaged against a lawyer.

And both lawyers are making a lot of money.

And so they're both making a lot of money. But also doesn't matter if you win?

You lost.

Your bank lost!

And if you lost, the other guy was an unethical bastard.

Yeah.

So yeah it's one of those sort of. Yeah, it doesn't matter what the ethics of a lawyer is in a confrontational situation, 50% of people are not going to be happy.

Who do you think the most unethical type of lawyer would be? Do you reckon it would be marriage lawyers, like..

You mean, family..

You know, when marriages..

Divorce lawyers..

Divorce lawyers.

Divorce lawyers. Yeah. Go for everything...

Do you reckon they would be the most?

I don't know..

Or barristers? Like, for the, um. For the criminals. You know, those who are working for, like, the mafia or whatever.

Who knows? Yeah.

It's always so funny. I remember watching those docos on, um, uh, you know, mafia bosses or whatever, and it's always like the kids end up becoming lawyers or accountants and you're like, no shit, Sherlock.

I've got, I won't name the family. But there was..

Yeah, you encountered that?

There was a family, uh, in the Australian mafia that you went to school with the kids. I went to school with the two youngest brothers, and they both became lawyers. I wonder who they were working for.

Yeah, exactly.

Ceos and managing directors.

Managing directors. I think that's, that one stands up along with the next one, number eight directors of Australian companies. And then number seven, chairs. That's sort of throw the whole lot in together. The senior management of corporate Australia.

Yeah.

When they're often on extremely- well directors aren't, but chairs and CEOs and managing directors on, off and on, very high salaries of large companies. They can do an awful job in a sense. You don't. You never know what job a CEO actually does in a large organisation.

Besides what determined direction, yeah.

Um, into, you know, from the outside. But you look at them and go, is that worth. They got sacked because the company was terrible and they had written into their contract that if they get sacked, they take away a $30 million payout. Yeah. You got sacked because you are hopeless and yet you take a lot of money. So I think people just get jack of that. I think people also look at it and go, nobody is worth a hundred times more than the average worker in the company.

It's hard, though, because I can understand the argument from the point that like if you, if like, if I joined a company as a CEO, was hired as a CEO and turned the company around and the company made billions in profits and someone said, Well, you can have 60,000 as your annual wage. I would be like, Go fuck yourself. I just earnt you, you know, exponentially more than that. I want a proportion of the amount that I just earnt you, especially if it's something that I uniquely could do for you. If you could, if you couldn't hire anyone else to do this, to get the company turned around to make this kind of money. You can make this money, but I want a proportion of it that's significant. Um, so I can imagine that argument is devil's advocate. But yeah, at some point you've got to say, you know, is it you're getting more money than God now, you know.

Exactly.

Is it justified? And how much effort have you put in to actually reward the other people at the, the business who are doing all of the shitkicker jobs or all the other stuff from day to day, even if they didn't have the, the the goals in mind or the the the vision that you had and the you know, yes, it's pretty mind blowing. But yeah, I understand why people like Alan Joyce get huge income, you know, wages and payouts for Qantas or whatever, when for better or worse, they've been able to, you know, objectively make more money for the company throughout tough periods. And you can, you can think, you know, take ethics off the table. Um, if we can hire you and you can make more money for the company, we'll pay you more in order to do that..

Yeah, no question. But the I, I think the whole severance pay.

Yeah.

Regardless of the reason for severance.

I guess it's just that.

Like, if you say..

If you want to hire me, these are the conditions..

I know well and..

.. end up hiring..

And the trouble is that everybody does it, so there's no differentiation.

Yeah.

Um, you know who's going to walk in there and go pay me my $10 million a year? And at the end, I walk out with nothing.

Yeah. Well.

Nobody's going to do that. They're all going to go, You fire me, I want two years pay.

I know. It's pretty..

Because it's going to take me two years to get another job.

Yeah. No.

Yeah. And look you know, one of these of..

Life is..

I'll use an example and I'll name the person. I don't even have to name them because it's the immediate past CEO of the AFL. I have AFL, the AFL. Yeah.

This is a good story.

He he he hung on and he hung on, and he hung on in the job after he after he decided he was going to leave about two years ago. And he gave them 12 months to replace him. And then there was this drama with one of the clubs, um, that we can talk about in another time, but, um, and he decided that he was the only person who could oversee this, so he stayed on. Nothing happened for six months in this thing. It's just gone on and on and on and on and on. And then he decided he was finally going to leave. Five months after he leaves, he's now the CEO of Tabcorp, one of the major gambling companies that is a sponsor of the AFL. And, I go, Really? It's no wonder that..

.. people of interest?

People have been whining for years about gambling companies are so tied into sport because that's what people gamble on, which is fine. I have no problem with gambling companies. I have no problem with gambling. What I have a problem with is when they are major sponsors of sporting organisations. It's a huge conflict of interest. And the AFL, a lot of the clubs, I mean, my club, for instance, um, doesn't- they refuse to have gambling on any..

Jerseys.

Jerseys. They won't take sponsors. They don't have poker machines in their club rooms. They don't have, you know, on their social club, none of that stuff. Um, a lot of the clubs are the same, but the AFL as an organisation will take it. And then it's TV companies as well, who are, you know, they're paying billions of dollars for five year broadcasting rights. Um, because they're selling advertising. Who do they sell their advertising to? Gambling companies. And then they don't treat it like advertising. They treat it like advertorials. We'll go in the middle of a sporting thing, go, okay, now we'll go to blah, blah, blah from a particular gambling company. We talk about who to talk about. No, who. What are the odds on this game? You go, I'm sorry, that's an ad and it doesn't get included in your ad time because it's part of your broadcast. Anyway. So that's why I think people are, um, object to that sort of senior leadership when that unethical behaviour is, it's you could say it's not unethical to take you can take a job wherever you like, but we but..

It's like becoming the CEO of a cigarette company or, you know, any of these sorts of companies where it's like we're selling misery.

Yeah.

Effectively.

Exactly.

And we know we're selling, you know, and you can say, look, I'm just the head of the company, and I have to do, you know, but at the same time, you know what you're doing, you know, that you're in an industry that is causing, you know, a lot more harm than it is benefits. Yes. Oh, but we we sponsor the Little League teams at the local. So yeah, but their dads are all in debt.

I know. So.

Six.

Hang on. We go. Six, four and three are all escalations of the same thing. Number five, senior executives. It just ties into the other sort of company leadership.

There's pretty much just two big chunks here. And it's..

Yeah.

It's people who work in big companies.

Leaders and politicians.

And politicians. The next..

Local politicians, six. Four is state politicians, three is federal politicians. Interestingly, I would have thought..

The more senior you get..

The more senior you get, the less ethical people think you are, which is sort of bizarre. I'm not sure what the differentiation is, particularly between federal and state politicians. They're effectively the same. They're just obviously at different levels of parliament. Local politicians is a bit more different. You'd expect that because there's less kickback possible in a local politician.

But there was lots of weird shit happening, right, in Labour, in Victoria recently. Wasn't there this whole investigation came out where it was branch stacking or whatever it was.

Yeah, but that was at state and federal level.

Was it? Yeah.

Its local branches, but not so local politicians. Yeah. Your average person in the Geelong City Council or whatever you think is.

Yeah.

People are not doing that for career development or whatever. Yeah. Your average 22 year old might be, because they're looking I'm going to be the Prime minister one day. Where do I start? I'm going to go run for local council. But um, yeah. Anyway, I'm not sure about that.

But I can imagine. I can see why politicians. Because you are, you know, they talk out of both sides of their mouths.

Oh, constantly. And that's the thing is, I don't think..

.. Everyone nuts.

And there are a few examples. And usually they get found out and they get sacked or forced to resign.

Paid out, and then they leave and get it.

They leave and get their huge superannuation payout.

Barilaro was a sort of good example, and I probably don't want to get defamed, or defame him or anything, but look into the story of what happened with him and how he ended..

That new South Wales politician.

Yeah. Leaving, um, leaving politics because of the friendlyjordies coverage and everything and you're just like, especially all the stuff they brought to light. Again, assuming that it is true. Um and friendlyjordies definitely had a lot of evidence that he was showing. You, just like just horrified at the amount of, you know, the kind of stuff like we saw that with, um, Gladys Berejiklian, right, where she was on the phone to her boyfriend who was gloating about getting some deal for real estate, selling his property or whatever to make a, you know, millions of dollars. And she was just like, Yeah, I don't need to know that bit.

Yeah.

And you're just like. And then she was like, Oh, I didn't know what he was up to. And you're like, then how did you know you didn't want to know that bit?

I know, I know.

Like, you guys are so foolish.

I think, I think there are some there's corruption in politics. And you can say corruption is the ultimate in unethical. But I think the perception about ethics in politics is particularly state and federal politicians, is that they don't necessarily lie, but they never tell the truth.

Yes. Well, they tell whatever they need to in order to make..

The answer is always going to be the ten second grab that makes the news. They'll never answer a question.

Honestly.

And that's where I think. Well, they never answer a question. Full stop.

Or they do with like..

What's your, what's your favourite colour? Well have you heard what we're doing with, you know, it doesn't matter what the question is. They're going to give you their message. And I think people just get jack of that.

But that's the system. I guess that's how it's set up. Anyway. Number two, directors of foreign companies operating in Australia. It's like, yeah, I wonder why that's high up there.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. That's the all of the directors of Australian companies was down at number eight and roll all the other senior. Then you look at the people who have no, um, financial interest in Australia other than making money.

But I'm sure it's the same for Australians who are leading companies overseas. And then, yes, number one..

.. Which was already taken away. Real estate.

You know what shocks me? That isn't on this list? Um, marketers or salespeople.

Oh, yeah.

How are they not in the top ten? Because I would imagine they'd be above lawyers, some of these like directors of companies or whatever, like because I imagine they have the insane, perverse incentives of just sell as much shit to as many people as we can for as much as we can. And I get a percentage.

That's advertising. Advertising. Advertising is what's what is advertising?

Well, it's trying to get you to buy this stuff.

Trying to sell you something you don't need.

Yeah.

That's, that's not unethical. What is?

Yeah.

Look, I think regardless of advertising and marketing, I can see salespeople I think is probably different in a sense of and again, we don't know what the index included, but I think most people would not see salespeople as unethical because most people have a good experience with salespeople. They're being bullshitted the entire time, but they have a good experience. You know, I went to a shop or I went online and I tried to buy something and I got what I wanted. Uh, all things were happy. Tick.

Another one that's not on here. Car salesman.

Yeah.

How is that not on there?

Well, used car sales. Used car sales are sort of lumped in with real estate.

But just in general cars, cars, car sales people. Because they try and sell you so much crap that you don't need, even if it's a new car.

But yeah, the upselling is.

Yeah.

Would you like fries with that?

Let's have this one. And there was I was reading something on Reddit recently where there was someone who I think it was probably linked to this article on Reddit, and then the people underneath were commenting on it, and one of the guys was like, I used to work at a used car sales or not a used car new car sales place. If they ever try and get you to buy those premium annual packages or whatever it is. Care packages for the car, it's complete bullshit.

Of course it is.

And they were like, all they do is like, maybe for two minutes, vacuum the car out. They might use a squeegee on the front of the car. You know, all this stuff that you could do yourself, and it's 500 bucks a year or whatever. He's like, so much of that stuff is just padding and garbage for them to make more money.

Yeah, of course it is.

Yeah, there was loads of those sorts of comments that were like, I do this job and it's this and you know. Yeah.

Yeah. Real estate agents doesn't surprise me. I mean, the reasons that they give in the article are Ah, I think that that's just, um, I think it's soft journalism in a sense that they're, they're picking the pain points that are obvious. Um, you're basically saying people are ticked off with, you know, the, the, the price of rent and that, you know, their problems with their rental properties are not getting fixed.

Yeah.

Yeah. Well, yeah, that doesn't make people unethical. It just makes them bad at their job. Um, I think the underlying thing and apologies to all those real estate agents who are listening to us, I think the underlying problem that I have, and I think many people have with real estate agents, is that they, by definition, serve to have a contract. A contract, conflict of interest. They're serving two masters. They are the buyer and the seller.

Yeah.

And they're the agent for both.

Yeah.

And so you can't do that. It's impossible to do it ethically..

At least, yeah, ethically.

And I think everybody sees that. And knows that.

But I remember..

An individual's possibly very ethical, but the very nature of their job is unethical. Regardless of the ethics of the particular people.

I called out the guy that was selling us this house because he was like, you know, oh, you can trust me. It's a really good deal, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, who do you serve?

Yeah.

Who are you working for? And he was like, oh, the seller.

I'm like, why would I believe anything you tell me? Like what? I'm just going to trust you? Like.

I know.

Like, you know, that's a really good price in this market. That's like, Based on what? Like you're just saying that. Yeah.

Yes.

And how do you, how would you do? You reckon there's a way of being an ethical real estate agent, or do you think inherently the job is just..

I think the job is just it's it's by very definition it's unethical.

Yeah.

Because you said you're serving two masters. It's it's it's a salesperson. Like, if you're a pharmaceutical salesperson, you're not selling directly to the patients.

Well, this this though, let me stop you, there was the issue they had in America and the opioid crisis, right. If there's a movie or a doco I think I watched on this, it may have been a movie. I can't remember the name of it, but it was that on the, the, um, is it what was it called? It starts with C, I think the drug that they were having all these issues with the pain medication.

Oh, yeah.

And the company hired all these beautiful women, these models, to go around selling it to doctors.

Yeah.

And the incentive was the doctors got to kick back on every pill they sold.

Yeah.

And you were just like, Oh, my God. I remember watching that and just being like, yeah, great. Like. Like. No shit. So they're going to now prescribe this for everything.

Exactly.

Because they get a dollar a pill back to them directly.

Well, see. That's that's not just unethical. I think that's illegal. It should be illegal. It's certainly immoral.

Yeah.

Um, it's probably not illegal, but, you know, that's happened in the in a lot of industries, you know, medical industries in particular of not just pharmaceuticals, but, you know. Oh, I sell products to surgeons. Surgical equipment. I'm just going to invite all of my customers to go skiing in Colorado this year, and my company will pay squillions of dollars to have all these surgeons who are already earning millions of dollars to go on this junket to Colorado on my, and I'll go with them just to buy them drinks. And so they'll keep buying my stuff.

Yeah, well, that's another one.

What is the next job do? Oh, Disneyland's no good. You know, use something better.

How are plastic surgeons not on here?

Yeah.

I would have thought they'd be up high on the list, depending on the type. But like the American, um, you know, facial plastic surgery type person, you see them on..

Nips and tucks and lips, yeah.

And TikTok going viral. And there was a huge issue with..

Botox and boobs.

There was some, some of them in Australia that got done because they were doing some really unethical practices in order to maximise their, their income and everything, and they got found out and had to like hand in their licenses or whatever. And you're just like, Good God.

Yeah.

Anyway, so yeah, it was an interesting read.

I don't know how accurate it is.

Yeah. Let us know what you think the most ethical and unethical jobs are.

Yeah, I don't know. Can you think of any that weren't on there that that should be, whether ethical or unethical. Like, zookeepers you would think would be up there. You know, like. People..

Unethical zookeepers.

Yeah. These people who work with animals.

Never met a zookeeper I didn't like. And I worked at a zoo for three years.

Yeah.

Anyway, thanks for joining us, guys.

Thanks, guys. Bye.

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AE 1298 – Learn English with a Short Story: Day at the Beach

AE 1297 – The Goss: How ‘Dropping In’ Culture Has Changed in Australia

AE 1296 – The Goss: Gorilla Glasses & Dad’s Crazy Zoo Stories – MEMBERS ONLY

AE 1295 – The Goss: Australia’s Most & Least Ethical Jobs

AE 1294 – The Goss: Australia Just Had the Best Aurora in 500 Years!

AE 1293 – The Goss: Should Aussie Schools Ban Homework?

AE 1292 – How Aussie Do Asian Australians Feel? r_AskAnAustralian

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AE 1294 – The Goss: Australia Just Had the Best Aurora in 500 Years!

Peter — Sun, 15 Sep 2024 09:00:00 +0000

AE 1294 - The Goss

Australia Just Had the Best Aurora in 500 Years!

Learn Australian English by listening to this episode of The Goss!

These are conversations with my old man Ian Smissen for you to learn more about Australian culture, news, and current affairs.

In today's episode...

Hey there! Ever seen the Southern Lights? Pete and his dad were lucky enough to catch an epic display recently, and they’re absolutely buzzing about it!

Join them on The Goss as they geek out over the science behind the aurora, share their personal experiences, and even ponder what it might look like on other planets.

It’s a mind-blowing conversation filled with awe and wonder – you won’t want to miss it!

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Improve your listening skills today – listen, play, & pause this episode – and start speaking like a native English speaker!

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Transcript of AE 1294 - The Goss: Australia Just Had the Best Aurora in 500 Years!

G'day, you mob! Pete here, and this is another episode of Aussie English, the number one place for anyone and everyone wanting to learn Australian English. So today I have a Goss episode for you where I sit down with my old man, my father, Ian Smissen, and we talk about the week's news weather locally Down Under here in Australia or non-locally overseas in other parts of the world, okay.

And we sometimes also talk about whatever comes to mind, right. If we can think of something interesting to share with you guys related to us or Australia, we also talk about that in The Goss. So these episodes are specifically designed to try and give you content about many different topics where we're obviously speaking in English, and there are multiple people having a natural and spontaneous conversation in English, so it is particularly good to improve your listening skills.

In order to complement that, though, I really recommend that you join the podcast membership or the Academy membership at AussieEnglish.com.au where you will get access to the full transcripts of these episodes, the PDFs, the downloads, and you can also use the online PDF reader to read and listen at the same time. Okay, so if you really, really want to improve your listening skills fast, get the transcript, listen and read at the same time. Keep practising and that is the quickest way to level up your English. Anyway, I've been rabbiting on a bit. I've been talking a bit. Let's just get into this episode guys. Smack the bird and let's get into it.

Dad.

Pete!

I wonder how many episodes start with that.

Dad.

Dad. Pete. Pete.

I always think it's unique. And then I'm like, no, I did it every single time.

Yeah, well, it's unique, but repeated.

Yeah. Repeat.

It's re-peat, re-peat! So the aurora!

Yeah.

How epic was that?

It was amazing.

Did that blow your mind? Because I remember..

It blew my mind because I've photographed the aurora a few times and I've seen it before. But where you actually have to go and photograph it with a long exposure.

What for?

Yeah. To get..

We were doing a long exposure when we were there.

Yeah. But but the long exposure, you know, just to get a vague, purpley glow in the sky.

The very top of it.

Yeah.

Yeah. Because I guess..

But this one..

Over the last decade or so, I know you would tell me every now and then I'm going to go out early in the morning to photograph the aurora. And you'd come back with photos that would be long exposure and have a bit of the red hue on the horizon. But, um, this most recent one just blew the, the fucking roof off, right? Like, it was just absolutely ridiculous. And it was worldwide. That's again, we were previously talking about these shared events being just so epic, right?

Yeah.

Um, whether it was TV shows all coming out at once or Pokemon Go, but the Aurora was one of these interesting sort of moments in the zeitgeist that happened on social media all simultaneously. And I think..

Well, the thing is that it it got reported on social media, but it happened.

Yeah.

It's a natural event that everybody could see.

Well, I could see it from my front door!

I know!

I remember going on..

.. a back deck and go, Look at that!

Well, I remember going out there and holding my phone up, and these people walking past with their dog being like, What the fuck is this?

I know.

And I was like, Guys, guys, guys, come here. Come here. Come here. Have a look at this. The aurora. You can see it above this person's house. Despite the street lights. Despite the light pollution from our suburb. It's right there. You can see it with your naked eye.

I know.

How effed up is that?

It was amazing.

And they were like, Oh. Oh, yeah!

Yeah.

But yeah. So were you initially expecting for it to be as intense and spectacular as it was, or were you just thinking it's another event with the Aurora?

Look, because I'm on one of the Aurora watch mailing lists. Um, so you get notification from the Bureau of Meteorology that just says, you know, we're expecting, you know, there has been an event on the surface of the sun.

In 18 hours.

So, you know, in the next 24 hours, you are likely to be able to see at high latitudes blah blah blah.

Mhm.

Um, and you get those on average once a month ish, sometimes nothing for six months, sometimes 3 or 4 in a month.

Really? Okay. So it's quite frequent but then not as..

Yeah, and then 90% of the time you get nothing.

Okay. So you go out there and go out during the day or you missed it.

Yeah, you don't see anything.

Yeah.

Um, this one though, that had been 3 or 4 days in a row where those Aurora watch things came out. And then the last one came out and said, This one's going to be..

Intense.

Yeah, more spectacular or intense. I can't remember the word they used. It wasn't either of those, but basically what they were saying is, don't miss this. Um, but I hadn't expected anything like what we got. You know that what we got is what you get at 70 degrees north or south.

You reckon?

Once every few years. Yeah, but. But they only get green. We got reds and purples and green and, yeah, it was ridiculous.

You wonder what it would have been like at the poles. I imagine it would have just been green, but intense.

Yeah.

But they wouldn't have had that spectral.

No.

Variation, across the colours, as a result of being further away from the poles.

Yeah.

And but yeah. So this article, this is on Space.com and it was, We may have just witnessed some of the strongest auroras in 500 years. And that blew my mind. I didn't realise like I thought, oh, okay, we've got a good one. But, um.

Well, in my 66 years, that's the only time that I've ever been able to see it, other than going this vague pinky glow on the horizon. Yeah, I think with the naked eye, I think whereas this one we were, you know, we were down at the beach together, standing there going, Holy shit. And it was the entire southern sky.

Yeah.

It wasn't just a little bit of glow and, you know, ten degree angle of it. It was the entire southern sky.

It was pretty mind blowing. I'm glad. Like, so with the story was that. Yeah, I think I just saw online and I was like, oh fuck it, I'll go down to Barwon Heads and I'll send dad a text because I'm sure he's going to go out and photography, do some photography or try and photograph it. Um, and you were in Melbourne, weren't you? Driving back from..

Coming home. Yeah.

And then I said, oh, well, just send me a text. When are you going to go down? And I'll go down and check it out.

I said, yeah, I'm going to, I can I was driving along down the back of, out of the back of Geelong going, I can see it from here.

Yeah.

And that's when I just called you..

And said, go..

Hey Siri, call Pete. And-.

Careful what you say.

Yeah, exactly. It just popped up.

Yeah, exactly. Who doesn't have a phone on them. I am.

Good.

Um, and I, um. And I just said, yeah, I'm going there, turn up.

And it was insane, right? Like..

It was.

As soon as you showed up, it was really the thing for me that it was kind of a letdown, but impressive at the same time because I was totally. You see all these photos of the Aurora online, and you forget that they're long exposure. So you just assume you're going to look at the sky and it's going to be bright green and red, you know, at least from the ones that we've seen. Um, and it's not that. But this time when we went or at least when I went, it's the first and only time I've ever seen it. But you could definitely see this, this very obvious glow.

And movement.

And movement. Yeah. It was really weird. Just I imagine it's what it's like being on acid, right? To some degree where you're watching..

How would you know?

The sky is just changing the light intensity. And you could see the arms of the aurora coming out and everything in your eyes. But it was pretty faint. But then the funny thing was, you would hold your camera up, and I don't know if there was like multiple second delay on just you having the camera open and looking at the sky. But as soon as you hold the camera up on your phone, you could see what it would look like.

Yeah.

And it was just intense as. And there were a whole bunch. I couldn't believe the quality of the photos I was getting through my, um, my phone camera.

Good.

Now, despite it being like a ten, 3 to 10 second exposure each time. But it was just ridiculous. But yeah, it was really cool watching. And you could see the intensity change, right? It was dull at first, well, dull compared to what it became. And then it really intensified and then sort of got dull again, dull off.

And then it intensified a little bit more later, but not to the level it was when you were there.

Yeah, but it was mind blowing. Yeah. Just looking, because we went down to Barwon Heads 13th beach Beach, which is effectively looking south to Tasmania, across the bay, pretty much across the bay, across the Bass Strait.

Strait. Yeah.

Um, and so there's nothing impeding your view. You can just look out to the ocean. And it was just taking up the entire sky.

Yeah, it was.

Across in front of us.

Yeah. It's ridiculous.

Yeah. So, yeah, that was, um. That was funny, and I didn't. I didn't really appreciate how much this was happening everywhere in the world. I remember posting a photo on Instagram and then having someone, a friend who's followed me for a long time, um, messaging me, and she was like, I'm in far north Queensland and I can see the red on the horizon.

Yeah.

Like, she sent me a photo and she's like, Is that the Aurora? And I'm like, It looks like it to me. Like it's the top of the red part. It's the same colour as the one that I'm seeing. You can't see the intensity of it like the whole thing. But you can see the red. And she's like, I'm like in, you know, wherever it was, it was above Brisbane.

Yeah.

And she's like, I can see it.

And she's like..

Well, I was saying, I was saying that it was, um, up to 26 degrees latitude, which is near the tropics. Like the tropics are 23 degrees.

Yeah.

Thereabouts. Um.

Ridiculous.

That's crazy. Yeah.

Yeah. So it was obviously it would be so interesting. I don't know, I'll have to look online if there's any um, International Space Station photos of like just the spread. Because in my mind I see it as normally, you know, you see it above the poles as green, but it must have spread all around the top way further along than normal. But apparently it was due to these, um, what are they called again? C M.

Coronal mass ejections. Coronal- it's what causes them.

CMEs, right.

And the corona is the like..

A crown.

To use a metaphor, it's the skin of the sun. It's the right outer part. And a mass ejection is just effectively it's a storm on the surface..

Under these weird like rings that appear and then explode out?

And it just blows out.

Yeah.

Um, yeah. Gases and charged particles. Um, and takes 18 to 24 hours to travel the 150,000,000km to Earth.

Yeah.

Um, and those charged particles in there excite the particularly gases, but mostly oxygen and nitrogen hence the different colours to different gases in the Earth's atmosphere, but they do it because of the way that it's hitting and transferring through the atmosphere. It is most obvious at the poles.

Yeah.

Um, and..

Well that's the magnetic field, right? It's more intense at the poles than it is around the other sides. But obviously it was so strong that it was seen much further..

Into the tropics.

Yeah.

Well, subtropics.

It was funny too. I was reading this article from Space.com and again, this is titled, um, We may have had we may have just witnessed some of the strongest auroras in 500 years.

Yeah.

Published on May the 21st. And they were saying it was funny because it hit Mars, I think, a week later.

Yeah.

As a result. And, um, it would be interesting again to see photos from Mars because the atmosphere in Mars looks different during sunset. And everything, like the light moves through the atmosphere differently because it's a different thickness and..

Thinner atmosphere and different composition.

Yeah. Yeah.

Almost no oxygen.

Yeah. It is one of those things. You wonder what the aurora looks like on different planets. That has any of those planets has to have an active. Um, well, don't they have to have just an active? Um. Well, yeah. Atmosphere, but active magnetic field.

It's the atmosphere as much as anything else. Because you've got to excite gases.

The particles.

Yeah. Gas particles.

A little flight.

Yeah.

Or to refract it. Yeah. Anyway. Really cool. But I had no idea too, that it was the most intense in 500 years.

Yeah, well..

That really hit home.

Well, 500 is the guessing..

But that's effectively them saying, well, since records..

You're never going to see it again!

Yeah, exactly. So did that make you happy that you went out and saw it that night?

Oh yeah. Yeah. But you could see it tomorrow. You know, there could be another equivalent thing. It's just they, they happen on average over, you know. Well, whatever people are extrapolating it to over 4.5 billion years, they happen about once every 500 years.

Well, you wonder at that level. You wonder how it must happen on almost a daily basis on the sun..

Oh, of course.

The angle that it's shot out into space. Just completely misses us.

But but, well, it probably won't miss so much. But it's also that the intensity of it is so little that it's the excitation of particles in the Earth's atmosphere is just not going to be visible. So yeah.

So yeah.

It was cool.

Pretty cool, pretty cool.

Sorry you guys missed it if you did.

I know and sorry for spamming you guys. If you were sick of seeing all these photos from pretty much everyone everywhere about it online at the time. Anyway, thanks for joining us guys, and we'll see you next time.

See you!

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Recent Episodes:

AE 1300 – Learn English with a Short Story: Piss-Up at the Pub

AE 1299 – Pete’s 2c: Do You Ring, Call, or Dial Someone on the Phone in Australia?

AE 1298 – Learn English with a Short Story: Day at the Beach

AE 1297 – The Goss: How ‘Dropping In’ Culture Has Changed in Australia

AE 1296 – The Goss: Gorilla Glasses & Dad’s Crazy Zoo Stories – MEMBERS ONLY

AE 1295 – The Goss: Australia’s Most & Least Ethical Jobs

AE 1294 – The Goss: Australia Just Had the Best Aurora in 500 Years!

AE 1293 – The Goss: Should Aussie Schools Ban Homework?

AE 1292 – How Aussie Do Asian Australians Feel? r_AskAnAustralian

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The post AE 1294 – The Goss: Australia Just Had the Best Aurora in 500 Years! appeared first on Aussie English.

AE 1293 – The Goss: Should Aussie Schools Ban Homework?

Peter — Sun, 08 Sep 2024 09:00:00 +0000

AE 1293 - The Goss

Should Aussie Schools Ban Homework?

Learn Australian English by listening to this episode of The Goss!

These are conversations with my old man Ian Smissen for you to learn more about Australian culture, news, and current affairs.

In today's episode...

Is homework really necessary in primary school? Join Pete and his dad, Ian, as they delve into the debate surrounding homework’s effectiveness and its impact on young learners.

They’ll discuss the historical roots of our education system, share personal experiences, and explore the potential benefits of a more flexible and personalized approach to learning.

They also touch on the challenges of implementing such changes, the importance of teaching critical thinking skills, and even the evolving nature of social connection in the digital age.

Tune in for a thought-provoking conversation that will challenge your assumptions about education and spark ideas for creating a more engaging and effective learning environment for all.

** Want to wear the kookaburra shirt? **

Get yours here at https://aussieenglish.com.au/shirt

Improve your listening skills today – listen, play, & pause this episode – and start speaking like a native English speaker!

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Transcript of AE 1293 - The Goss: Should Aussie Schools Ban Homework?

G'day, you mob! Pete here, and this is another episode of Aussie English, the number one place for anyone and everyone wanting to learn Australian English. So today I have a Goss episode for you where I sit down with my old man, my father, Ian Smissen, and we talk about the week's news; whether locally Down Under here in Australia or non-locally, overseas, in other parts of the world, okay.

So it is particularly good to improve your listening skills. In order to complement that, though, I really recommend that you join the podcast membership or the Academy membership at AussieEnglish.com.au where you will get access to the full transcripts of these episodes, the PDFs, the downloads, and you can also use the online PDF reader to read and listen at the same time. Okay, so if you really, really want to improve your listening skills fast, get the transcript, listen and read at the same time. Keep practising and that is the quickest way to level up your English. Anyway, I've been rabbiting on a bit. I've been talking a bit. Let's just get into this episode guys. Smack the bird and let's get into it!

G'day, dad.

Hello, Peter.

Am I in trouble?

No. We just. We just raise the. Raise the level of decorum. Yeah.

Formality?

Formality. Yes. Sorry, your cat's harassing me.

He wants some affection.

He is getting affection. I'm scratching him on the neck. But that's not enough.

He's such a pest. But he's a good pest.

He is.

He always sleeps with me. Kiss my feet. Warm at the moment.

Uh oh.

Under the covers.

You sleep under the covers between your feet.

Yeah. It's great. It's cold at the moment, and we're trying to keep the heat off so that we save money. Last electricity bill was, like, 700 bucks.

Holy moly.

I know. Winter. It's brutal.

Yeah.

So. Go on you, Scraps. Good boy. So, "Education researcher calls for primary schools to have courage to rethink homework."

Yes.

And you were like, 'fuck yes'.

Well, 'rethink school', but 'homework' in particular.

Yeah. That's it. So let's, this article again is on ABC news. Um, "When Estelle Truman was growing up, homework was par for the course. But now her two daughters are in primary school at Townsville in North Queensland, homework isn't mentioned. There's no purpose. Ms Trueman said." Um, "If we get home and want to prepare a meal together or spend time together outside before bed, we can and don't have to hope that we won't get in trouble tomorrow because we haven't done the reader."

Yeah.

So yeah, it was an interesting article talking about, I guess, the research related to, um, levels of homework at primary school age and whether or not it's beneficial. And effectively, this, um, Professor John Hattie had done a study with 130. It was like a meta study of 130,000 other studies, saying that there was no evidence that it was really useful at primary school age. And you used to work as a high school teacher, and..

I did.

In the education industry. So how did you,, how did you feel about homework in general, but also obviously at primary school versus high school?

Well, I think there's a, there's a difference between, you know, the distinction between primary school and high school is an artificial one in a sense that, you know, we they're very different forms of education, but that's a consequence of the way that life is taught at both ends. You know..

How did we end up with this division between primary school and high school? Because it seems arbitrary, as you say.

I- do you want the historical thing to it?

You go to town.

Um, two generations older than me. Most people did not go beyond what we would now call Year Eight.

Yeah.

At school. And in fact, that was, you know, a lot of them wouldn't have gone past Year Six or Year Seven.

So they would have finished effectively primary..

They would have finished it effectively at what we call primary school.

Yeah.

High schools were considered for higher education, to go on to professional careers, university study, those sort of things. Um, now that has been completely diluted and changed over four generations.

Yeah.

Um, so we're left with this artificial construct of primary schools are structured in a particular way that, you know, you start off as a five year old in Australia, five year old or six year old, and you go to school. Um, and then seven years later, you progressed to a high school. And instead of being in effectively one class with one teacher, except for maybe art and sport and music, um, to being in ten different classes with ten different teachers.

Yeah.

Um, over one summer, you know, so that's an artificial change. Um, but it's just it's a result of, you know, the history of the development of schools 150 years ago.

One, I guess in the West, we pretty much developed these schools to get people to be factory level workers, right?

Yeah. Well, a lot of the times, the way we structured schools, you can go back even further than that. You can go back to agricultural times. The way we structure school was we didn't give people a summer off because they wanted to go on holidays and things. We gave people summer and early autumn off because they had to go home and be at home to harvest the crops and do those sort of things. So.

So that's really where we get, you reckon the summer holidays from and everything. It's all about that.

Originally it was done that and then and the legislation in European countries, you know, was not everyone was the same, but legislations around the amount of time that people had to spend in school in terms of hours a day, days, a year, and so on, was created based on the expectation that we'll just do what we currently do.

Yeah.

Now that's a different story around. We're talking about homework, but um, the reason I'm talking about that distinction is that I think homework for primary school students is a complete waste of time. Um, except..

Hence I'm wanting to talk about this article. Yeah.

Except for Reading.

Yeah.

Uh, because there is an enormous amount of educational research that suggests that children who read at home are going to be better learners than children who don't.

Well, I guess it's cross.

In fact, it's even..

Disciplinary, right.

It's even more bizarre..

Than every..

It's children who have books in their house are going to be better learners, even if they never read one.

Well, we just have loads of books and don't actually show the kids.

Yeah.

Like well, yeah.

Well, they're screwed both times.

We just leave them in..

The money gets spent on the books and the kids don't get to see them.

We just know by having them, the kids are going to be smarter.

Exactly.

That's how it works, right?

Exactly right!

We just have a garage full of books.

So, I think reading practice is a good thing to do. It's also if you treat it the right way and don't make it a task. It's also a social thing to do with kids.

Yeah.

Let's sit down and read a couple of pages of a book.

It's funny. I feel bad a lot of the time because we don't do a great deal of reading. We do from time to time, but a lot of the time they want to watch videos of things on YouTube and everything. So Noah at night will be like, when we go to bed, Can you show me how black holes function? How they work? And you're just like, what the fuck, man? How did you learn about that? And he realised he's been watching Transformers or something. And there's been a black hole and.. Or he'll be like, Can you show me how trains were invented? And the cool thing is, you can just get YouTube up and be like, show me how trains are invented, and they'll have a description, you know, on a video and everything, so you don't have to pull it out of your butt.

I know.

But at the same time I'm like, how useful is this compared to, say, sitting down and trying to read? Is this the same quality time spent with your child in terms of education?

It can be.

Yeah.

It can be.

As long as he's interested in asking questions, I imagine.

But at that early stages of educational development, kids have to have to be able to read and write, or at least be able to communicate in a in a language. Now, now, you don't have to because you can. Just as long as you can find a Google app on something, you can search just by voice.

Yeah. You wonder how much that's going to be a hindrance to kids in the future. Because I remember being at school and every now and then you would hear of children somehow making it through to like Year 7 or 8 and being illiterate. Yeah. Not being able to read. At all.

I taught, you know, I was a high school teacher and I taught kids who couldn't read.

Yeah.

You know, couldn't read when I left teaching when you were. And I'm trying to think when I was 94. So you would have been about seven years of age, and you were. And your sister were as good a readers as some of the kids that I was teaching in Year Seven at school.

Really?

12 year olds. So, um, so so that I think that that sort of engaging kids in learning experience is a good homework and setting tasks. You know, as in saying your homework tonight is to do some reading is fine.

Yeah.

Setting them, you know, sending them a sheet of arithmetic to do.

Yeah.

Is a complete waste of time.

Yeah.

And it's..

Well, I think that was part of the the argument in this article, but then also the whole that steals time away from family time of engaging and having conversations..

It is worse than a waste of time.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

But yeah, but it was interesting. I wonder how much having the ability to use things like AI and Siri and phones and all that sort of stuff, and being able to just talk to them and then getting answers back will help or hinder kids at high school, like, because I'm obviously not in that world, so I have no idea. I assume it's affecting it now.

Well, I haven't been in a high school classroom for 30 years/

But I can imagine that if you had a smart phone and you were one of these kids that you were talking about, who was, you know, at the level of reading of a seven year old in Year 8 or 9 or whatever they're going to be able to hide a lot easier.

In a sense of just Google it by voice.

Yeah, but also, I guess it allows it's on the flip side, it's allowing them to function a lot higher at a higher level despite their illiteracy.

Yeah.

But, um, yeah, it's it's mind blowing. Those thinking about those things that there are kids that slip through the cracks and just can't, and go on to adulthood.

I think the other the other part of that is, and I'm not suggesting that all education as opposed to learning and there are two they're quite distinct, but that all education only happens in the classroom for five hours a day.

Mhm.

Um, that's not what I'm saying because but I, and certainly where I, other than maths homework, I used to set maths homework for high school students.

Mhm.

Um and the homework was finish up to this point with the expectation that the kids who were good at it and quick at it could finish it in class.

Yeah.

Those that couldn't, I expect them to have a go at it. And I would always give them time at the beginning of the next lesson to say, all right, who hasn't finished? Let's have a go and work through the stuff that you were struggling with. It was a way of identifying what they were struggling with, but giving them the opportunity to go and just spend longer doing it. Because sometimes everybody has variable times that they take to do things, regardless of whether you're good at it or not. Um, so giving kids more time to do things, um, but with teaching Science. Um, I- and Health, which are the two other subjects I saw taught it, you know, not, you know, the Year 11s and 12s, but 7 to 10. Um, my homework was implied, and that was I used to teach mostly project based work. And if you get kids interested in something, they will spend an inordinate amount of their own time afterwards investigating finding things out, trying things, getting people's opinions and whatever. And that's what learning is about, you know. And to me, it was it was getting kids excited about learning was implying that they will do homework because they would do it just because. Sorry, the cat's just gone mad. Um, it was they would do it because they were interested, not because you told them they had to and that they were going to get marked on it. Um, you know, if it's just another task for kids to do, then it's pointless. So.

So what are your sort of criticisms of the schooling system in Australia, whether it's primary school or high school?

It's not just Australia.

But I mean, in the Western world, right? Yeah.

I think most of the world now.

Um, well, because a lot of it is built on what the Western model is, which is..

It's all built on the old European model. Well, it was it was never designed for learning. It was designed..

To teach people rote tasks, right.

Exactly. Um, and that's. Look, the problem is that we force kids into saying that you're going to spend now. Almost everybody does these days. You're going to spend 13 years at school.

Yeah.

And in those 13 years, we're going to structure it the same way for everybody. Um, and we're going to structure it not based on the best way for you to learn, but on the best way that we can administer it.

It's funny too, to pause you there. I remember someone I can't remember who it was, but I remember them saying, isn't it weird that we send kids to school for 13 years and they come out being able to do fuck all?

Yeah.

Like they can't get a job the next day as a waiter. They don't have any of the. They couldn't cook basic food. They don't have all these skills that you would get you a low level job anywhere at the end of high school, effectively, like you would have to do on the job, learning and all that. So it is one of those things where it's ironic that we have this, this system in place to teach kids to be employable, effectively.

We could say that, you could say it's not just school. You could say the same thing about universities. Other than professional degrees like, you know, engineering, teaching, nursing, medicine, law, those sorts of things where you are being an actual you are being- it's it's it's an academic apprenticeship to being qualified to do a job.

Yeah.

You go into a science degree and an arts degree. The science degree is designed to create science researchers. About 1% of people who do science degrees go on beyond maybe an honours or a master's program, um, to actually do research. Um, you're not being taught to be a lab assistant. You're not being taught that. So you've got to learn that. Here's your degree. Now go and get this job and learn how to do it.

Yeah.

Is very different.

Well, and that would be the majority of-.

Commerce degrees. Arts degrees, you know, just generic degrees, are not teaching people how to get jobs. Um, but universities were never set up to do that. You know, in the last in, in my lifetime, you know, when I went to university, it was academic.

Yeah.

Even if you went and studied arts or commerce or whatever, or medicine or law or anything. It was an academic program. And only about 5% of people went to university. Now more than 50% of people go to university, and more than 50% of the rest go to some other form of higher education or tertiary education. But they're still operating the same way. But getting back to schools, it's it's just this conundrum of we, it's $1 trillion industry in Australia that we cannot pause to change it for a year to get it right, or two years or three years to evolve it into something that will be much better.

What's the fallacy again? It is that thing of like, you just have to deal with breaking the system for a short period of time to then improve it and be able to move.

I call it the touch typing thing. I have never learned to touch type. In order for me to learn to touch type, I would have to slow down and be a bad typist for months because I can type badly, much faster than I could by learning, so I'm never going to do it.

Well, what it's like. I remember where evolutionary biologists would talk about like, adaptive landscape, and this is probably a bit esoteric and hard to describe, but effectively you have like these mountains of adaptation where you adapt to be able to do a certain thing, but you can't jump from mountain to mountain.

No.

You would have to go down into the valleys..

.. are completely different.

Yeah. And then come back up the next mountain. And it's effectively you can't evolve backwards, right. You end up evolving a certain series of traits to be able to do a certain thing. But even if..

And you've lost the traits, the generic traits, to be able to do other things.

Yeah, exactly. And so it's very difficult to, even if it's very close by, get from one peak to the next peak. And that's what it would take, with education. You would need to go backwards for a short period of time.

It all comes down to simple things like, um, we assess kids and adults. And, you know, everything from young primary school age to university students. We assess them based on a standardised test, whether that test be a paper test or a task or whatever else, and you will be deemed as achieving the appropriate thing.

Success or failure.

If you meet a standard in that test, and we give you a certain amount of time to do that in. So in the case of high school, it's you've got a year, so 40 weeks of school to complete, an amount of work to be deemed to have done. Year 12 Biology, I used to teach Year 12 Biology. At the end of year 12, students would be assessed. You got a mark from 0 to 100. Um, now it's slightly different the way the scoring gets done. But effectively you're testing people and saying if you get more than 50%, you're okay. Now what you're saying is, if you can do half of it, that's a win. Because we assume that there's a limited amount of time.

Yeah.

If we had criterion referenced, proper criterion referenced assessment in schools, that says you have to be able to demonstrate your capability to do these things. If you can do them in three minutes or three weeks or three months, that's what it takes.

Yeah.

But the, the, the engagement of teachers to be able to handle kids doing things at, you know, if you've got and the way that it is structured is purely numerical. It's just about a financial thing to say. We'll have 25 students in a high school class. And because that's what we can finance, we can put one teacher per 25 kids. Um, it would be impossible for a teacher to have 25 kids all operating in completely different time frames. But also we would say, well, you know, Pete finished Year 12 Biology, met all the assessment requirements for Year 12 Biology, demonstrated his learning on all of the concepts, and all the practical tasks and everything, in three months. Now, what do we do with him? He can go on and do something else. No, he can't, because that would mean you have to be in another class.

Yeah.

And that class hasn't started yet and so on. So we, we've structured this the way of learning around administrative ease that everybody does the same amount of stuff, the same amount of time. And then at the end of that we say whether you achieved or didn't achieve.

I remember being mind blown by certain people at school who would were academically really intelligent, but then just like socially stupid, right, like or it would be the street smarts versus book smarts type thing. Because I remember there would be a few of my friends who got like 98 into score 99 and you knew, okay, they get it. They can study really well. And they, they memorise things incredibly well. But then you would just be mind blown by how stupid they were in terms of just completely other..

Common sense.

Other usual things that would just be so simple, like in interactions with friends or..

Yeah.

It's just so many other areas of life. But they would be seen because they had a good memory and they knew how to study, and they were, you know, put a lot of energy into that. They would be seen as functioning well. And the rest of you not functioning well, people who weren't like that.

Yeah.

I remember it being like, this system doesn't feel like it. It supports other areas of intelligence.

But we also, we don't tend to teach, um, meta skills like problem solving.

Yeah.

The people who are..

It's memory based.

The people who are good at problem solving do well.

Yeah. But it's, the people of it..

Yeah, yeah, but the people who are not good at problem solving never get taught how to do it. It's, I say never. It's, you know..

It's not the focus.

And look, we used to teach I mean, mathematics teaching has changed. So even over the time that I was teaching and certainly since then, that there is more and more on, you know, problem solving and so on, not just rote learning how to solve an equation.

You used to talk about this with me, right? And me and my sister learning a lot differently from one another. And I would be just like, give me the answer so I can work it out backwards.

Yeah, you were a problem solver. She was a recipe follower.

Yeah.

Um, and providing I showed her the recipe, she could just plug all the things in and do what do you like? Your brain just didn't work that way.

Well, I preferred to, for you to. Yeah. I would be like, give me the final answer. And then I'm just going to keep doing this equation until I get that answer, and then I'll be like, that's how I know how to do it. Exactly. That was my, I need to just, I'm going to go through multiple different paths and I'll get the wrong answer multiple times, but then I'll get the right one. And I want to be able to just confirm.

Yeah.

But yes, obviously you can't do that on any exam.

Well, the thing is you should be able to.

Yeah.

Um, but it's yeah, it's. It..

The resources required to be able to manage students like that, though, would be, um, too expensive, right? Because you would need to. Yeah.

Well, it's more changing to be able to operate that way would be too expensive. Because we could operate that way. It would require more, you know, a higher staff-to-student ratio to be able to do it.

But it's already..

Hugely!

Isn't it?

It is, but not 'hugely' more. It would require 'more', but in order to change it, you basically have to throw the entire school structure out and start again. Uh, and then, you know, it's pretty radical to, to suggest that I remember having an argument with I was, you know, when I was, I was teaching science education at, um, what is now the University of Melbourne. It was the Institute of Education at the University of Melbourne straight after. It was the College of Advanced Education at Melbourne, and I was teaching science education there when the national curriculum was starting being developed. And I was asked to comment on the science curriculum that was being done, and I went through a 10th of it and just sent some preliminary comments back saying, this is a complete waste of time. Because you're not teaching science. You're teaching scientific content. It's, science is not memory.

Yeah.

Science is not just tell me the periodic table. Just, you know, fill in the, you know, 100 and whatever it is now, elements on the periodic table. Um,

This is just memory work. Could be colours, could be anything.

It could be anything. It could be history. You know, it's, um. Science is a process. Where in this are we teaching? Scientific process? Where are we teaching the scientific method? Where are we teaching children to create hypotheses, to understand what is a legitimate test of a hypothesis?

It was funny that I didn't really understand much of that until I got to university.

I know!

And you just sort of like I've been doing biology since probably, what year?

It used to drive me nuts, and I used to teach science like that when I. And you try and squeeze the curriculum into a way of teaching. It's actually teaching children to ask questions, to work out. How are you going to know the answer to that? You know, you you did this thing once and you got this result. How do you know that? That's not a mistake.

Yeah.

Yeah. Well, we have to do it again. Correct. Replication. What does that mean? Well, how do you. But in this experiment that you did, how do you know that those three things weren't affecting the result? Oh, we have to work out what the effect of that. Exactly. All of those sort of things. We don't teach that in science. We still don't. And it drives me nuts because if you did that, science would be more attractive to everybody..

Well, because you're learning the basic concepts..

Because you apply that to learning problem solving.

Yeah.

You're learning. Yeah. It's the same thing about Scientific literature. Literacy is not about how much science do I know? It's about how much science do I understand? When somebody tells me something, I've got the ability to go. I don't believe you. Prove it. Show me the evidence. And that's true for everything. When you see the news at night on TV, you go. How do I know that's not just complete rubbish? That's somebody's opinion. Show me the evidence. And that's, that's just..

To pause you there, that's one of those interesting things with the internet and with AI and everything. That's all the more important now. It's the being able to verify, um, information that you receive online because and it's going to be interesting to see what happens in the next few years, just based on ChatGPT and all these other AI things. Because so much of the information you're going to see, it's going to be like, how do you know that's actually real? How do you know that's a real person? How do you even know that? That's exactly you know, that was really said. There are these deep fakes that all this sort of stuff. So I hope you'd hope that it's going to be that scepticism and that logical, problem solving..

It's information literacy combination is really what it comes down to. Is it? How do you believe what you see, hear or are told? And we don't teach enough of that.

I remember always having my mind blown with a lot of that. Like people get told something and they would come and tell you about it and you'd be like, why? Why would you just assume that's true? Like, it sounds good. It's something you would like to be true. But how do you know it's true?

Well, that's, that's more often than not that people will believe what they want to believe. So your cat's gone mad over here. He's.

Ah, he's a pest. He gets into the sink and just licks things and tries to. He's just. Yeah, it's his name. Scraps, I guess. Damn it. Scraps. Anyway, cool. So how do we fix the system?

We can't.

Yeah, so it's just fucked. Good luck.

Pretty much.

Yeah.

Yeah. And and that's. Yeah. Well, you know, you've got children. I've got grandchildren who will be, you know. Well, one of them is..

We need to move to Finland.

Yeah. Well the Finns have sort of got it right.

Or at least they're trying.

Least number of hours. Least number of years in school. And the highest accomplishment.

Best results. And the Polish, I think in this article was mentioned the Polish have started to abolish, um, primary school homework and everything too, working towards, you know, a system that's more efficient and better for, for kids.

Yeah.

Yeah, I imagine. It's funny though I find myself so often just being like, almost irritated at how hyperactive my son is, and wondering, is there something wrong with him? Like, why can't he just sit down and concentrate? And I wonder how much I've just been programmed by society to think that is what a child is.

A good child.

Yeah, exactly. But.

No, he's inquisitive.

Yeah, yeah. And that's. Yeah, that's really..

Well that's, school is almost a war on boys to some extent too, from what I understand where it's just you're constantly trying to put young boys in a certain 'sit still, don't ask questions, be quiet, listen to the teacher' box and you're like, they're not like that at such a young age.

They're not like that at all.

At all.

And most girls aren't either. But girls are, um, are much more likely to comply. Girls are compliant.

They just sitting there going..

There's a complete generalisation, but they're much more likely to comply with rules.

And resent you for it.

And resent- and then..

It'll come back later.

And they're not driven by testosterone either, so that helps.

But when they're trying to impress anyone.

Well, they impress them in other ways.

Yeah, exactly. Anyway. All right. Cool. Thanks for joining us, guys. We'll see you next time.

See you!

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AE 1292 – How Aussie Do Asian Australians Feel? r_AskAnAustralian

Peter — Sun, 01 Sep 2024 09:00:00 +0000

AE 1292

How Aussie Do Asian Australians Feel? r_AskAnAustralian

Learn Australian English in this expression episode of the Aussie English Podcast.

These episodes aim to teach you common English expressions as well as give you a fair dinkum true-blue dose of Aussie culture, history, and news & current affairs.

In today's episode...

Ever wondered what it’s like to be Asian Australian? Join Pete as he dives into a fascinating discussion about cultural identity, sparked by a post on the Ask An Australian subreddit.

Hear firsthand experiences from Asian Australians as they navigate the complexities of feeling both Asian and Australian, the challenges of fitting in, and the importance of finding their own place within a diverse society. Pete also shares his own observations and reflections on cultural integration and making friends across different backgrounds.

Tune in for a thought-provoking conversation that will leave you with a deeper understanding of the Asian Australian experience and the multifaceted nature of identity.

The Reddit Community: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskAnAustralian/

The Reddit Thread: Asian Australians, How ‘Australian’ Do You Feel?

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Transcript of AE 1292 - How Aussie Do Asian Australians Feel? r_AskAnAustralian

G'day you mob. Welcome to this episode of Aussie English. So I've got something a little different today. The goal today. So I've done a few of these episodes on the podcast recently where I read out and sort of discuss some of the interesting questions that people ask on the subreddit forum Ask An Australian.

If you guys are interested in asking Aussies all sorts of questions, or just learning about these sorts of things, definitely jump over there. I'll leave the link in the description so you can check it out.

Anyway, today's was really interesting. I was having a read and I thought, look, I'm not Asian, I'm not an Asian Australian. [No shit!] But I would discuss it on here and read out some of these comments because there seemed to be a really good discussion happening. So it's going to be great for your English skills, and you're also going to hopefully learn a lot about Australian culture and everything. And the issues that Asian Australians face with identity, when growing up in Australia, when moving to Australia, everything like that.

Editor Pete here: I have since reached out to a whole bunch of my Asian Australian friends, and I've asked them to contribute videos talking about this very topic. I won't include it in today's video, but I will try and include it in a future video because otherwise it's just going to get too long. Anyway, enjoy today's. So without any further ado, let's just get into it.

"As a Chinese Australian who grew up here, I've never fully felt 'standard Australian' in a white Anglo-Australian sense. Most of my friends are other Chinese Asian Australians and we are definitely different to bulk White Australians to the extent that we might as well be different demographics at this stage. I feel a sense of distance to White Australians, which was especially evident during university."

"Many Asian Australians tend to feel excluded in classes because white Aussies would oftentimes ignore us, or passive aggressively talk with each other. Asian Australians seem to also do this as well. To be honest, in terms of interests or the media I watch, I mostly consume Korean and Japanese media along with Hollywood generic stuff. I'm very removed from local Australian media and politics of which I care very little about, question mark."

"I do notice that Asian Australian subgroups differ in how 'Australian' they present. For example, Filipino Australians seem more or less in the same social circle as white people, but Australian born Chinese from mainland China in selective schools might as well be their own Australian subculture at this point. Most of us can't really make friends with Chinese internationals or mainstream White Australians."

"Our friend groups are usually this pan Asian Australian mixed group, with specific interests and experiences that others may not understand. Ultimately, I think I definitely feel 'Australian', but just a different type of Australian."

And then "Edit: For the average Chinese or Asian Australian, I think it can be rather easy to befriend certain rural regional white Australians rather than certain grammar school preppy quote, 'my dad is a lawyer' types." I think that, that goes for anyone, man. "My observation is that the latter group seems more cliquey and hard to break into. Interestingly, my white friends at uni are usually of regional and rural origin."

So the first thing that I note here, obviously again, I'm not Asian. [Are you sure?] I haven't been born and raised Asian Australian and so I can't really talk from firsthand accounts. I can talk from experiences with friends who are Australians, and who are also Asian and what they've gone through. But yeah, obviously I'm not talking from personal experience when I answer these sorts of things.

Before we get into the comments, it sounds like he is a very rich Chinese Australian who goes to a private school, or went to a private school, and then went on to university. So mileage may vary here, but he is probably not the same as the average quote unquote 'Asian Australian' being, yeah, very- from a wealthy family at a 'selective school', as he says, and talking about trying to befriend kids at grammar schools like, Oh my God. Yeah, that's, that's the, the rich of the rich, in Australia, if you're going to a grammar school.

University wise. So I can talk a little bit about this, I definitely experienced this as a white person at Melbourne University. I studied there for over 11 years doing different degrees. I found it incredibly difficult to break into Asian circles. And I think most of those would have been students from overseas because they tended to come and end up creating very cliquey groups with other compatriots, people from their own home countries, and they would always be speaking in their native language.

And obviously as a, as a white Australian, I only spoke at the time Australian English and just, it was, it made that barrier very hard to kind of overcome. That said, I'm sure that there was also the same thing the other way, where they would have felt excluded and outside the group or not part of the clique, as you know, migrants or students from from overseas. So it definitely did go both ways. And I was very, very hyper aware of that at university.

Okay. So top comment here from goater10. "I feel comfortably both, but I consider myself Australian first. I feel more Asian in Australia, but I feel more Australian when I'm in South East Asia. I'm lucky I can appreciate the good parts of both cultures." And we can probably dive into a few of the comments that follow up here. Dedem13: "Not Asian myself, but as a first gen (generation) Australian, I feel this. Mum's Spanish, dad's Iranian, never been to Iran due to the political situation and all. Though I'd love to someday, but when I worked in Spain, I probably felt more distinctly Australian than I ever have while in Australia."

And then goater10 follows up. "Yeah, I completely relate to that. Even though I'm close to my cousins in Indonesia and can speak the language quite fluently, they will always remind me how they can hear my Australian accent when I talk to them. They also told me that I carry myself like a Westerner, and that I have that aura that someone raised in a western country has." That's interesting to think about. I wonder what the sort of signals are that give that away when somewhere like Indonesia.

"I was also lucky that while I had somewhat of an Indonesian upbringing at home and ate mostly food from there, Dad would occasionally have a barbecue, bring home pizza, and take me and my brother to the footy, like all of my other friends did, and he and mum would only talk to me and my brother in Indonesian if we had family or there were other Indonesians around."

That's a really interesting thing in terms of how much of your own culture you kind of impart on your kids, and mixing that with Australian culture. I remember growing up, it was definitely harder to connect with kids whose parents didn't embrace Australian culture and try and take part in, say, sporting events or, you know, just those everyday things, have barbecues and that sort of stuff. Because as a result of not doing that, you end up not spending as much time with other locals whatever country you're in.

And so I think that's probably a big part of it, too. I wonder how much this, this original poster's parents, um, were actively trying to integrate into Australian society and, you know, taking part in our hobbies and interests and the aspects of our culture and everything. Because, yeah, again, the less you do that, the harder it is to, I think, feel Australian or feel, um, a part of whatever culture you're in, right?

Let's keep going here and check out some of the other ones. Oh, this was cool. "Smart_cat_6212: Filipino Australians are in the same circle with white people. This part is interesting. I don't really read much into circles. I'm married to an Aussie." And again, it would be interesting to think. What do you mean when you say Aussie? "I just go with people who like me and I'm also an introvert, so it's not like it bothers me a lot if I don't have a social circle either."

"However, I did notice that Filipino Aussies get on well with both Asians and non-Asians. But I think it's more because of how we are brought up. Everybody is welcome. We like being warm towards people and even generous sometimes. Most who I know live here have brought Filipino food at work and shared with everyone. And in schools, they mix with different groups, but also come home to a Filipino household where they still get to enjoy their own culture."

"We also tend to not force people to understand our culture and way of thinking, but we try to adapt to who we are surrounded by. Also, the Philippines is multicultural, so being friends with people from different backgrounds is not new to us. The Philippines also has a long history of being colonised by Spanish, by the Spaniards, for 300 years, which exposed us to their culture and religion. But we have close ties to America and speak their language very well, but also have lots of Chinese, Koreans, Japanese and Indians living there that we are exposed to their culture, religion and food."

Yeah. So that's an interesting thing too, how much the Asian cultures that you would come from, or your parents come from, what their cultures are like, how much they are from countries that are full of, you know, multicultural aspects, people from different countries compared to countries where that isn't the case, you know? So it's probably quite different if you're from somewhere like Korea, Japan or China, mainland China, compared to somewhere like Malaysia or Singapore, or even the Philippines.

In this case, where you have so many different cultures, you may or may not have been colonised. Um, you know, there's there's many different languages that may be spoken there, many different foods and cultures, everything like that. So that probably plays a big part too, into how easily you probably integrate into other cultures when and if you migrate to those places.

So yeah, again, please leave comments below. Tell me about your experiences, guys, coming to Australia or interacting with other cultures or migrating to other places, you know, what's it been like? Have you experienced specific problems that you didn't expect or that are unique to you?

And it's interesting. I remember going to school with a guy who was Asian Italian, right? He was Filipino Italian, his mum was Filipino, his dad was Italian. And he was probably the, the Aussiest guy I knew. He was six foot something tall. He was a very big guy. He was the goalie when we were playing soccer. Just a massive guy, but just the most Aussie dude.

And it was funny because a big part of it, I think, was that both of his parents didn't push their languages or cultures onto him, for better or worse. I remember he used to always be like, God, I wish I spoke Italian, I wish I spoke Filipino, but my parents put in so much effort when they came to Australia to not be from those places or to not, you know, for whatever reason, they decided they didn't want to push their culture and their language and everything on their kid. And it's, it was interesting to see how that ended up, you know, leading to him just having a bit of distance between those cultures. Again, for better or worse.

And I think it was probably a detriment to some degree. Because I think if it were me, I would want to be able to speak those languages so I could communicate with my family members from those countries, and just have a deeper understanding of those cultures. But on the other, the other hand, he was just so thoroughly Australian that, yeah, he just didn't even really consider himself. I don't even really think he thought of himself that much as Asian Australian. He was just like, I'm just, I'm just Australian man.

And yeah, his parents, I think probably took part in lots of activities and stuff in Australia. And an interesting aspect to it too, may have been that they didn't push their languages onto their kid because they only communicated with English. They didn't speak each other's languages.

All right. The next one. So this one comes from Briewnoh. "Very. I mean, I live in Australia. I work with mostly non-Asian people. Heaps of my friends through hobbies or school aren't Chinese, although plenty from uni are. I'm writing in English and read traditional English language media. My voting options are white peeps." Okay! So, "Let me be real. You have this weirdly reductionist attitude that comes through most from you using the phrases 'bulk White Australians' and 'mainstream White Australians'. The fact is that people in Australia come in all shapes and sizes. Take any subgroup, whether it's Chinese Australians from selective schools, or white young liberals or people living in rural areas, and there'll be some sense of distance from everyone outside the subgroup. The model of Chinese Australians versus mainstream white Australia is so off. It's more like hundreds of overlapping subgroups."

"Saying most of us can't really make friends with Chinese internationals or mainstream white Australians sounds so defeatist and sad, dude. I don't think it's true either. All of you, Chinese descent selective school kids, can make friends with anyone with the right attitude and actions. Learn how to socialise at the pub or at a run club or sport. Or find a way to invite people into your niche interests. And, you know, stop hanging out on Asian masculinity subreddits and spend more time in the real world."

So I think, I think this guys kind of hit the nail on the head. In Australia, you will hear about a lot of people saying they have trouble integrating into community, finding friends and everything like that. And I think his point here about being a bit defeatist and just saying, you know, Oh, it's hard or, you know, The average Australian is racist. And that's why I find it hard to integrate into these groups.

You need to put in the work, at the end of the day. People aren't going to befriend you on your behalf, right, for you. So if you want to become a part of, you know, cliques with white Australians or just non-Asian Australians, you're going to have to find interests and hobbies and all that sort of stuff that mean you interact with those kinds of people, right? And so, as this guy was saying at the start, I think if you're spending most of your time consuming Korean and Japanese culture and not taking any part in Australian, you know, consuming any Australian media or any of that sort of stuff, you kind of already showing that you're isolating yourself a bit from what the average, quote unquote, 'Australian' would be consuming, right?

So that doesn't necessarily mean that you need to change your interests, but it's something to be aware of, right? Like if I got really, really interested in, I don't know, Greenland-ish waltz folk music, it's probably going to be hard for me to find other Australians who share that passion. Whereas if I put in some effort to go down the pub or to, you know, join a club. Or to start doing jiu jitsu. Or to, I don't know, try and form a band. Or go to a music meet up, or whatever it is. You're more likely to meet people who are just everyday Australians, or migrants to Australia, and be able to befriend them, right?

So it does, I think, come back to your interests and how much you put yourself out there interacting with other people, whoever they are. Let's keep going.

"Onlythehighlight: I feel pretty Australian as an Asian born Australian, but I just don't fit in the blokey or sporty subculture that is prevalent in social media slash TV." I guess just Australia in general, right. "I fall mostly in the nerdy subculture. There isn't a weird single Australian group that make up your view. Remember, there are so many different groups you can fall into like cookers, tradies, city slickers, nerdy and more that make up our great country."

Yeah. So exactly. I think that's it, right? I don't really fit into the blokey or sporty kind of subculture in Australia, but I have other interests, you know, things like music, jiu jitsu, even indoor plants. You know, I've got loads of weird interests. And you end up making loads of friends based on those interests.

So, yeah, if you're nerdy, if you're into going to the gym, if you're into random hobbies, as long as they're the kind of thing that I think loads of people are interested in, you're going to be able to find like minded people around who want to spend time with you and get to know you and share those, those interests.

One, like, I became really good friends with a migrant who- Filipino migrant who came to Australia who works as a chef here. He's just a great guy. But I became friends with him when I inquired about buying one of his guitars on Facebook Marketplace, and I just ended up chatting to him. You know, he had this guitar for sale. I was kind of interested in buying it, but I wasn't sure about the price and everything. And we ended up just having a chat because we both were passionate about guitars and music, and I was like, what kind of music do you play? And then after the conversation kind of kept going. I was just like, just add me to Facebook, man, you seem like a cool guy. Let's keep chatting.

And I chat to him all the time. You know, I've made friends that way. It's sort of unconventional, but at the same time, we're all on social media, so why not try and make friends on social media if you get the chance. And if you click with people. All right, let's do a few more and then we can finish up.

"DontJealousMe: I think it would depend on who you grow up with, what you did at high school, who you hung out with. Did you go to school with a lot of Asians? Did you try to involve yourself with Aussies? Did you speak your language whilst with other Chinese at school? I grew up in a low socioeconomic white neighbourhood. Only time I felt left out was during Christmas because I do not celebrate Christmas. Also after 9/11, it got a little worse. But then the influx of-" Muslims. He's used, he's used a racial term here. "Came. But I still have a lot of Aussie mates, especially from going out, playing soccer, going to clubs, etc."

So, besides the racist term there, I think his point again is pretty valid, right? As long as you put yourself out there, you don't necessarily have to celebrate all the same things like Christmas and all that sort of stuff. But you, you know, get into clubs, get into sport, interact with other people with shared interests.

"KTR83: Also Asian Australian. I consider myself equally both, but that means sometimes you meet other people who will never consider me 'one of them'. Also equally on both sides. It took me some time, but I'm 100% okay with that." And we've got a lot of follow up comments here, even from the original poster. "Yep, this. Everybody's own definition of being Aussie is also different, which gives space for you to have your own once you realise."

And then Joistheyo said, "I think I consider myself culturally Australian, but a different form of Australian to the mainstream white Anglo ones. Might be similar to how African Americans currently do not relate to people in Africa at all, yet they're socially different to white Americans." And then KTR83 has followed up here. "I get it. Cultural identity can be super complex. It's one of those things that each of us have to decide for ourselves."

So anyway, you know, this has been a really interesting kind of Reddit thread. I thought I would share it on here, see what you guys think.

Again, I can't really talk from personal experience not being Asian. [Okay, okay, we get it. Okay.] But I can talk a little bit about what it was like growing up in Australia and having a lot of Asian friends. I had friends that did kind of struggle with identity, to some degree. But then I had friends who just never considered themselves Asian and only wanted to think of themselves as, you know, true blue Australians. And but for the fact that when you saw them, you could see that they obviously had Asian heritage, you would never have known, right? Like if you were blind and you were chatting to these people and befriending them, you could probably go 20 years without finding out that they're actually, you know, from mainland China or whatever, um, heritage wise.

So anyway, let me know your experiences down in the comments below. Let me know if you enjoy this type of episode, and I'll do more of them in the future. Again, the whole point of this is to just share a bit of Australian culture, and when I myself can't share certain aspects of identity or personal experience, I feel like it's really cool to share these types of posts and talk about them on here so that you guys can think about these things, you know, and we can discuss them. Anyway, I'm Pete! This is Aussie English. Thanks for joining me and I'll see you next time!

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AE 1291 – The Goss: New Echidnapus Monotreme Mammal Discovered in Queensland

Peter — Sun, 25 Aug 2024 09:00:00 +0000

AE 1291 - The Goss

New Echidnapus Monotreme Mammal Discovered in Queensland

Learn Australian English by listening to this episode of The Goss!

These are conversations with my old man Ian Smissen for you to learn more about Australian culture, news, and current affairs.

In today's episode...

Ever heard of an “echidnapus“? Join Pete and his dad as they delve into the fascinating world of paleontology and the recent discovery of three new extinct monotreme species, including this intriguing creature that bridges the gap between echidnas and platypuses.

They’ll discuss the significance of these findings, the challenges of reconstructing ancient ecosystems, and the ongoing debate between “splitters” and “lumpers” in taxonomy. Plus, they’ll share their awe at the incredible diversity of life on Earth and the convergent evolution of similar traits in unrelated species.

Tune in for a mind-expanding conversation that will leave you pondering the mysteries of the past and the wonders of evolution.

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Transcript of AE 1291 - The Goss: New Echidnapus Monotreme Mammal Discovered in Queensland

G'day, you mob! Pete here, and this is another episode of Aussie English, the number one place for anyone and everyone wanting to learn Australian English. So today I have a Goss episode for you where I sit down with my old man, my father, Ian Smissen, and we talk about the week's news, whether locally Down Under here in Australia or non-locally overseas in other parts of the world, okay.

And we sometimes also talk about whatever comes to mind, right. If we can think of something interesting to share with you guys related to us or Australia, we also talk about that in The Goths. So these episodes are specifically designed to try and give you content about many different topics where we're obviously speaking in English and there are multiple people having a natural and spontaneous conversation in English.

So it is particularly good to improve your listening skills. In order to complement that, though, I really recommend that you join the podcast membership or the Academy membership at AussieEnglish.com.au where you will get access to the full transcripts of these episodes, the PDFs, the downloads and you can also use the online PDF reader to read and listen at the same time. Okay, so if you really, really want to improve your listening skills fast, get the transcript, listen and read at the same time. Keep practising. And that is the quickest way to level up your English. Anyway, I've been rabbiting on a bit. I've been talking a bit. Let's just get into this episode guys. Smack the bird and let's get into it.

Dad.

Pete.

What's going on?

You're just overhang from the previously recorded episode.

Yeah. You guys all have to listen to the slang one. Hopefully.

No, don't.

You'll enjoy that.

It's crap.

Yeah. How's it going? Which episode do you want to do now? We have. We've just started the recording and we haven't even chosen the story.

I know. This is preparation, Pete.

Oh, I've got them open here. I just didn't choose which one.

All right, well, pick one.

Well, you choose-.

Echidnapus!

Echidnapus. That's the one I got in front of me.

Yeah.

With old mate.

With old-.

With old mate. Um.

Tim?

Yeah. Tim's on the Tim Flannery.

Yeah.

Famous Australian author and scientist.

Yes.

I noticed him. He's looking very healthy.

He is. He's lost a lot of weight. I hope that's by choice.

Yeah. That's it. So the echidna was fossil of potential echidna and platypus. Ancestor may point to Australian age of monotremes.

Yeah. 100 million years old.

So an ancient monotreme dubbed the echidnapus, which shares platypus and echidna like characteristics, is one of three extinct species of egg laying mammal unveiled by palaeontologists. Today. Palaeontologists. What a great word.

Palaeontologist..

The nightmare of anyone at high school having to do spelling spelling tests. Archaeologist and palaeontologist. I always get confused with these words because I think is it American English where they remove one of the vowels? It's like it's not ae, it'll just..

They drop the, they dropped the ae, which is a combined vowel in Old English.

And so I'm always, no matter how I write it, it seems like I'm getting the word or whatever corrected with that red underline in, in Word. So, another of the creatures shares close similarities with modern platypus, and could represent the oldest known monotreme to have a platypus like body. The trio of fossils are between 100..

Could indicate that it was the first aquatic.

Yeah. Could be. So, they're between 100 and 96 million years old and were found in the opal fields of Lightning Ridge in New South Wales.

Yeah.

So this was pretty cool. Though, it is funny how much they kind of they've really tried to sex it up. To zhuzh it up. To get it to the news..

Echidnapuses is just.

Yeah. And the, the monotreme, um..

Ancestor.

No, no. What is it that they used again? Like the explosion, right. The the age of monotremes.

The age of monotremes. There was one. Not one species, one individual.

But it's very cool. So Lightning Ridge, what's that famous for? In Queensland, right?

Nah, Northern New South Wales.

Northern New South Wales..

Near the Queensland border.

Okay. Is that inland?

Mhm.

It's pretty deserty isn't it.

Yeah. Central western New South Wales up near the Queensland border.

Okay.

Just, just really arid country.

Yeah. So it was a cool story. Um, Tim Flannery was just looking through some drawers apparently and came across..

Yeah, Australian museum.

And came across some opalised fossils.

It's not like these were just dug up.

Not recently.

They've have been..

Two decades.

Stuck in for 20 years in the Australian Museum.

Yeah, it was crazy. I wanted to say here that it was astonishing because over the last I think, 40 years, we've only found four fossilised monotreme jaw bones from Lightning Ridge. So this was like a bonanza because. Yeah, they found three.

Yeah.

Um, and he just found them in a random drawer. And it's so funny how often that happens in museums because they're inherently understaffed. They don't have enough staff working there, and they inherently have massive collections..

And a lot of..

.. too much stuff.

And a lot of the people who are working there are collecting.

Yeah.

They're not necessarily they, they catalogue to the point of saying it was found here on this date under these circumstances, but they haven't been worked up.

And then that was..

Determining what they were or, or, you know, taking all of the crappy rock bits off and identifying the fossil in more detail.

That was always the balance. When I was doing my master's and PhD at the museum at Museum Victoria. It was always that balance of you need to be- you can't. I mean, there would be the workers there who just love doing the field work.

Yeah.

That's what they live for. But then there would be that push from the academics there being like, we have to publish, we have to be analysing this stuff. We have to be communicating with science. And I mean having better science communication to share this. Otherwise we're just sitting on it and it's not.

What's the point of it.

Yeah, exactly. And yeah, it was just um, really kind of eye opening. It was funny. I knew a bunch of the people involved in this, actually. So Chris Helgen, the guy who is doing all of the media release and published this study, is worked closely with my supervisor. I think he was over at the Smithsonian for a while. Um, but yeah, so they found these jawbones, and it's interesting that they can so easily describe unique species based on a single bone from a single individual. Like that would always that always blew my mind that obviously, you know, that it's it was something at some point, you know, that it's similar to other things that are out there, but there's nothing like it. And so it becomes this, um, new species. But that the then the thing that I was always skeptical was the lengths to which, skeptical about was the lengths to which they would, um, describe, like the habitat of the animal..

I know.

And its behaviour and all these things where you're like, you have one half a bone.

Yeah.

Yeah. But I, by the same token.

But it's all by..

And determinal..

It's all by extrapolation.

Yes. Because they look at a jaw bone and go..

Here's what it's diet was.

Here's what, here's what. Yeah. Here's what it's likely diet is. We know that it is related to these other animals who are living after it, but who had very similar lifestyles that we know about.

Yeah.

Um, and we've got much more detail on. So it's all extrapolation, but there is and I'm a bit of a cynic as well, that there is this splitter mentality amongst a lot of palaeontologists of if you discover something, it has to be new.

Well, and that was why..

You can't this be another one to throw in the pile of variety and variation in an existing.

It's so hard to know, right? And that's the hardest part to know when you find something that is significantly different from all the other specimens that you have, whether it's morphology or size. The first reaction of a lot of people would be, this is something new and unique. But when I was doing my my PhD, I remember there was there was a study or a few studies that came out that were that we had the splitters and the clumpers, taxonomically speaking. And this is probably getting into the weeds and going to bore a lot of people, but there would be people who would want to turn everything into a new species. And then there would be those that would want to clump them together and say, no, this is these multiple different types are still one species. And there would be this sort of battle between those kinds.

And not just species, but at different levels..

Or groups.

Of groupings. So.

But the story was that I remember there was it was those dinosaurs that have the bald skull that have that are like plant eaters that smash into each other like rams. I think it was those. Um, and they found all of these different size fossils from a certain area and assumed that they were different species, all living together. But the study that was done analysed the leg bones of these same fossils and found that the smaller ones had the ends of the leg bones that weren't fused properly yet..

Showing they were juveniles.

Yeah, exactly. And the interesting thing was that they, the horn morphology changed significantly through their age and again, makes them look like completely different animals. But like with elephants..

That is elephants. Yeah.

Yeah. Or hippos or whatever the, the teeth and the horns and everything like that completely change as they mature. So it does make you think a lot of the time when doing this kind of work, it just shows how hard it is to really know..

And sexual dimorphism. You look at..

Yeah.

African elephants.

Yeah.

Males are 30%, 20-30% bigger than females. They have um, tusks, females have tusks. But then you go to Asiatic elephants. Females don't have tusks. And so if you're if you're looking at fossils of those, you'd be going, Oh, here's a different species. It didn't have tusks.

But.

This is just how the scientific method, I guess works, though. You know, you put out there your ideas and you allow time.

To wait for everybody else to argue the point.

Yeah, well, and find further evidence, because that must be the hardest thing. Really what these guys want is to be able to go to Lightning Ridge and keep pulling out more fossils from this same period with these same characteristics, to be able to reaffirm what they've suggested. So the two. What have we got here? The three different species, Parvopalus, um, clytiei, which may have been a land based animal similar to a brush tailed phascogale. Do you know, do you want to talk about what a phascogale is?

Phascogale's like a..

Tiny possum.

A little possum. Yeah.

It's like a very, very small marsupial.

Yeah. And to most people, if you saw one very briefly in the wild, you'd go, There's a rat.

Yeah, pretty much.

A small rat with a fluffy tail. Fluffy tail?

Yeah. With a fluffy tail. They're gorgeous.

They are. These fantastic..

Phascogales. The next one was Dharragarra aurora. I imagine that Dharragarra is an indigenous word, which it, it's cool when they use those which shares similarities with modern platypi. And then we have Opalios splendens. I imagine that Opalios is from 'opal'.

Yeah.

I imagine. And this was the one that was dubbed the 'echidnapus' because it had characteristics of both.

Yeah.

So it is interesting because there's a huge period of time they mentioned in this article where we have zero monitoring fossils. And monotremes are the earliest form of mammals, right. Effectively at least that are still alive today. They're the, the very the closest to reptile like group of mammals. They still lay eggs. They don't, they don't produce milk from nipples, but instead secrete it like sweat.

Yeah.

And their babies drink it, but they're still around today. But yeah, there was this huge period, I think they mentioned between 60 million years ago and 26 million years ago. We have zero fossils.

Yeah.

It's just nuts. It goes to show how, how hard it is to find or to fill out the fossil record at times.

And it's. Yeah. And it's quite likely that there just weren't many of them around. Yeah.

But that's what you don't know, right.

Yeah. But this is very early evolution of, of mammals. And so there would not have been a lot of them around and they might not have been, you know, if you're particularly terrestrial animals don't get fossilised very easily.

No.

Um, so aquatic animals do because they tend to die in the water. They sink into the bottom of the water, which is sand or mud, and that sand or mud gets turned into rock very quickly..

And becomes..

Geological times..

Becomes anoxic quickly, too. Right. So you don't have them rotting.

.. Yeah so you don't get them falling apart. Um, so yeah, if you're small, so small animals don't get fossilised very easily because they break apart and chemically dissolve too easily. Small terrestrial? Not many of them. There's no surprise. Um..

But it is cool to think that based on this, you know, finding three new species, all from a specific area. And they were the fossils were found by a miner who then gave it to an Australian opal centre palaeontologist, Um Elizabeth Smith, and her family, and she passed it on to the museum. So he must have found them all at the same time, you would imagine, or at least in a very short period of time. So they probably came from the same..

Here's my little shoe box of stuff.

Yeah. So I guess my point is they probably these animals probably were contemporary with one another at the time, right. Or at least very closely. So I don't know. It is cool to think that we may have so much more to learn about Monotreme evolution, because the current extant number of species is like five, right? There's a whole bunch of echidnas and the platypus.

Yeah.

And that's it. You know, we've got like three species of long beaked echidna, the short beaked echidna..

Yeah, and the argument is..

And the platypus.

How many species of echidna do we have? 1 or 5.

Yeah. And so it's cool to think that there may still be so much more to uncover about Monotreme evolution, and it would be really cool if they did discover this radiation where you have monotremes capitalising on all of this open niche space. Um, you know, millions of years ago, obviously with the dinosaurs still around and then evolving into numerous different species in many different habitats. And yeah, I don't know, it's I kind of found it pretty cool. I also like, I should comment the article guys if you want to find it. So it's..

It's on ABC.

.. news. Echidnapus. Just type in 'echidnapus'..

Yeah, just type in 'echidnapus' and you'll, it'll come up. You don't even need to go to ABC.

Yeah. And it's from the 27th of May. But if you find this on ABC, I'm actually really impressed with the science communication aspect now.

Oh, it's good.

And the art that they've gone to, they've obviously hired an artist, and I imagine they've written it here Pete Schouten? Or [Schouten]? From the Australian Museum.

Yeah.

Has done an image, a beautiful- a few images, but there's one here with the six species of monotremes that are known now from that period; 6 or 7. And you can click on each one and learn about it. And then when you scroll down below that, like there's more images of these really cool animals. But the ABC has embedded, um, this really cool timeline.

Yeah.

Of Monotreme evolution, which again, is just really, really.

Yeah.

So it's just cool.

This is a, this is a science communication article..

Yeah.

Not just a straight news article.

Yeah. Exactly. So you can, it starts here from the Permian-Triassic extinction event 251 million years ago, and then slowly moves forward, you know, through time, deep history all the way up to present, um, and has these sort of key milestones with monotreme evolution and other animals that were similar in form. I didn't realise there was a dinosaur from 250 million years ago that had a similar niche to a platypus, which was very cool and aquatic. So this is Eretmorhipis carrolldongi from 250 million years ago, an aquatic dinosaur with superficially convergent features with the modern platypus like beady eyes and a similar duckbill existed. They were only 70cm long, and they are not actually related to monitoring as well. They are related, but they're not closely related.

Yes.

Everything. Everything alive is related..

They're animals, yes.

But yeah. Um, yeah, it's cool. And it will be interesting to find like.

Yes, I think they mean not an ancestor.

Yes. But it's cool to find these animals that have similar, um, ecological niches and traits and morphologies to contemporary animals, right? Like, when you find these, you see that in the ocean right? With all those different dinosaurs, different lizards, whales, seals, all taking the same sharks, taking this same kind of body form and, and filling those same niches from a completely different animal families.

Well, it's the same from, you know, even semi closely related things. But look at kangaroos and deer. If you get a photograph of the head of a deer and a head of a kangaroo, they're almost identical.

Yeah. And then you zoom out and you're like..

You zoom out and you go, all right, there's two different ways of moving, and all of the rest of the shape of a kangaroo is related to how they move. But the head is what they eat. It's their jaws and how they eat. You know..

One of my this is a side note, but one of my favourite things to do at the moment, because I'm writing a bunch of essays for Aussie English about, um, sort of history, is reading the first hand accounts of people who saw animals like the thylacine and the kangaroo and the koala, and what they how they described it. You know them like, like it's just so, you can't like. It must be so amazing to think about those people who first saw animals that were so unique and out of their wheelhouse, right. Like..

The first gorilla?

Yeah.

Well, even you see the there's people from the Middle Ages, right?

That's Australian.

Or the medieval period where they tried to draw animals like tigers, leopards and elephants, and they just look stupid.

Yeah.

Disproportionate. Like, child's images, right? So disproportionate. And you realise that they're drawing it from a description from someone else. You know, it's a third hand account. Someone saying this is what it looked like. And you just think, man, imagine what it must have been like to be the first Roman, you know, to see a giraffe or an..

.. archaeologist as well. There are so many cases where re-examination, later examination of skeletons, you know, fossilised skeletons using biomechanics says animals never look like what they are first described as, and drawn as, and painted as.

Well the dinosaurs, right? The initial thing, that initial version of a T-Rex resting up on its tail like a kangaroo and walking around on two legs, really awkwardly standing up like Godzilla, right, is so just not how the animal would have moved efficiently, you know? It's effectively would have been sitting in a position that was horizontal to the ground, with the tail acting as a counterbalance and almost silent, apparently. They had, they looked at the foot morphology and they can work out they have pads that meant when they were walking, they were actually really quiet.

Yeah.

Fucking horrifying.

Yeah. Exactly.

Can you imagine being in the in the Jurassic or whatever and just seeing some of those animals..

Trees farting? Yeah.

No, not even just seeing the animals sitting there, watching you in the trees, and just being like, I'm dead. You know? Anyway, we've rambled on, but that was a cool story. Anything else to add?

No.

So what does it say here: So far 16 extinct monotremes have been found from dig sites in Australia and two from Argentina. So there you go. The max is 18 extinct monotremes. For the past, however long that is 100 million years or more, right? So it's not much. You would imagine there is a lot more species that are there yet to be discovered.

You would think so. Well, obviously that's true with everything.

Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, thanks for joining us, guys. Hopefully it blew your minds as well.

Yeah. Check it out!

See you next time!

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The post AE 1291 – The Goss: New Echidnapus Monotreme Mammal Discovered in Queensland appeared first on Aussie English.

AE 1290 – Expressions: Nip It in the Bud

Peter — Sun, 18 Aug 2024 09:00:00 +0000

AE 1290 - Expression

Nip It in the Bud

Learn Australian English in this expression episode of the Aussie English Podcast.

These episodes aim to teach you common English expressions as well as give you a fair dinkum true-blue dose of Aussie culture, history, and news and current affairs.

In today's episode...

G’day, you mob! Ready to tackle another ripper Aussie expression?

This week on the Aussie English podcast, we’re diving into the phrase “nip it in the bud.” We’ll break down its meaning, explore its origins, and show you how to use it in everyday conversations – just like a true blue Aussie!

We’ll also have a laugh with a classic Aussie joke, test your listening skills with a clip from the TV show RFDS, and even work on perfecting your Aussie accent with a pronunciation exercise.

Plus, Pete shares a personal story and answers a listener’s question about his favorite Aussie beers.

So grab a cuppa, tune in, and let’s get cracking on expanding your Aussie English vocabulary!

Don’t forget to download this episode’s FREE worksheet!

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Get yours here at https://aussieenglish.com.au/shirt

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Transcript of AE 1290 - Expressions: Nip It in the Bud

G'day you mob, and welcome to Aussie English. I am your host, Pete. And my objective here is to teach you guys the English spoken Down Under. So whether you want to sound like a fair dinkum Aussie, or you just want to understand what the flippin' hell were on about when we're having a yarn, you've come to the right place. So sit back, grab a cuppa and enjoy Aussie English. Let's go.

G'day, you mob! How's it going? Welcome to this episode of Aussie English, the number one place for anyone and everyone wanting to learn, you guessed it, Australian English. So I am your host, Pete, and it's a pleasure to have you here again. It's another expression episode. And today we're going to be going through the expression 'nip it in the bud', 'nip it in the bud'.

But before that, what have I been up to today? It has been freezing. It has been absolutely freezing. Uh, I think we have this, like, cold air current coming up from Antarctica at the moment here in the south of Australia. And every, every night it's been getting down to like close to zero degrees where, where I live. And yeah, I'm just not used to it. Maybe I'm just a bit weak, but besides that, I took the kids to Day-care and swimming today. And then when I got home, what was I doing? I was playing with the plants. So I've got a lot of plants in the house, and I was kind of propagating some of them, chopping them up, repotting some, planting them, you know, watering them, all those sorts of chores.

So yeah, that's what I've been up to today. Anyway, before we get into the episode, as always, guys, don't forget if you want to support the podcast whilst also levelling up your Australian English, be sure to check out the premium podcast membership. You can check it out at AussieEnglish.com.au/podcast

So you'll find it on the website. When you sign up as a member to the premium podcast for less than a dollar a day, you will get access to over 1200 podcast episodes, including the members only episodes. You'll be able to download the worksheets and the transcripts so you can read the the words that I'm saying and remember. Every single episode includes a transcript, except for the Pete's 2 Cents episodes. There's only a handful of those, and they don't have them.

And you'll also get access to the Premium Podcast player, which allows you to read and listen simultaneously at well, yeah, online at the same time. That's sort of redundant. Simultaneously, at the same time, but that's the most effective way of improving your listening comprehension, reading and listening simultaneously. So yes, once again, check out the premium podcast at AussieEnglish. Com.au/podcast. So let's, uh, make the sheep squeal. I guess he's not a pig. He's a sheep. So he goes 'baa'. And, uh, get into today's Q&A.

So today's question comes from Joao. I'm assuming that you are Portuguese, Joao. Or Brazilian, rather. Um, "What's your favourite Australian beer, Pete?" Hmm. So this is a good one. I'm a big beer fan. I love myself a good beer. There's a few different brands, but I'm not really too picky to be honest, I kind of, you know, I just like beers. Sort of like wine. I'm the same with wine. I just like wine. A red wine in particular, so I'm not really too fazed. But.

So, there's a beer from Geelong that is called Cockies. So, as in cockatoo, right. It's a slang term for cockatoo, cockies. I love this one because I met the owner of the brewery and we, when I was working at the Bellarine Distillery making whisky. Um, we did a few runs there where we were making, I think it's called 'the wash'. So it's the liquid before you've distilled it. We were making that all there using his equipment. So he was a lovely bloke, and it was cool being able to see his beer brewery and use it and, um. Yeah, learn from him.

There's another brand called Bentspoke from Canberra. That's a really good brand. You should be able to find that in most stores. Blackman's. This is another sort of local one. This is from Torquay. They have a restaurant, a sort of burger restaurant and beer. Well, yeah, restaurant for beers. You can get their beer at the restaurant as well in Ocean Grove. Blackman's, they're cool.

And then another cool local one from Queenscliff is called the Queenscliff Brewery. Um, that's really good as well. So yeah, but to be honest, you know, if you're in Australia, check out local breweries. There should be people making beer pretty much everywhere in Australia, so you should be able to find something local that tickles your fancy that you're going to enjoy. Okay, so good question, Joao. And um, yeah, I'd love to know from you guys, what beers do you enjoy from Australia? Send me a message on Instagram and tell me.

All right, so let's, uh, slap the bird and get into today's joke. So today's joke is, "What did the big flower say to the little flower?" "What did the big flower say to the little flower?" "Hey, bud!" Get it? "Hey, bud!"

So, okay, the pun is on the word 'bud'. Obviously a 'bud'. This is a small part of a plant that then develops into a flower or a leaf. So at the moment we've got a tree out the front of our house. It's a deciduous tree. It's one from the northern hemisphere that drops leaves. Native Australian trees don't typically do that, so it's suddenly dropped all of its leaves. And my son the other day was like, When are the leaves gonna grow back, dad? And I said, Well, in spring, and you'll see the small buds appear on the branches and they will turn into the leaves and the flowers. So a 'bud' is that small part of a plant that turns into a leaf or flower.

But 'bud' can also be short for 'buddy', meaning friend, mate. You know, amigo, bud, buddy. But 'buddy' tends to be very American. You can use it in Australia. We will 100% understand what you're saying, what you mean. But I think most frequently we would go for 'mate' instead of 'bud' or 'buddy'. You can kind of- it's funny, you can kind of use it, but a bit sarcastically. Like if someone said to me, Oh yeah, okay, bud. Like partly it's how they're saying it. But also they might say, you know, Good job, buddy. Um, it can be a bit sarcastic. I don't know, maybe it's just me, maybe it's just me and my friends.

Anyway, so that was the joke. "What did the big flower say to the little flower?" "Hey, bud!" [That was good, wasn't it? It was good for a bit of a giggle anyway.] Okay, so let's get into today's expression. Obviously, you can see how this links with the joke 'to nip something in the bud', 'to nip something in the bud'. I wonder if you've heard this before and if you know what it means. And sometimes I reckon Australians sometimes change the 'bud' to 'butt', 'to nip it in the butt'.

I think there's a, there's a phrase for this, where people mis-remember, uh, phrases or idioms or expressions and they substitute in the wrong, the wrong word. I'll have to look that up and talk about it one day, but this might be one of them. I think if I've heard, I think I've heard someone say, you know, Oh, well, you need to 'nip it in the butt', instead of 'nip it in the bud'.

Anyway, so before we get into that, let's go through the different words in the expression 'to nip it in the bud'. [Youse. Collective noun. All of your friends.].

So to 'nip', in this context, 'nip' is a verb meaning to pinch, to squeeze, or to bite sharply. Okay, so you can use this with regards to say, flowers or um, buds that are on trees where you would like pinch the bud to kill it, or break it off, right. But a dog could 'nip' you as well. You might be running down the street and a dog could try and nip at your ankles. Okay,

It. I'm sure you'll know what 'it' is. 'It' is a pronoun, right? 'I can't believe 'it's' already noon'. Um. 'What we need to finish 'it' by tomorrow', you know. 'So let's focus on 'it' and get it done'.

In. This is a preposition that in this case, is used to indicate inclusion or position within something. Okay. 'She dipped her toes 'in' the pool.' 'They live 'in' a small town.'.

The, or the. This is a definite article. So these specific thing a noun usually follows this.

In fact it always follows this, this word, 'the'. 'The' book you asked about is on the table.' The specific book. That book, 'the' book. Um, Can you see 'the' dog running across the field?' Not just any dog, but the dog that's running across the field. 'Can you see 'the' dog?'.

And then lastly, 'bud', I think we've sort of talked about this, right? It is that part of a plant, the growth that will turn into a leaf or flower.

Okay. So, 'to nip it in the bud'. 'To nip something in the bud'. This is to put a quick end to something. You know, figuratively. We would use this to mean to stop something from getting worse or out of control, to halt something immediately. And it ties in with that idea of pinching a bud to, you know, kill it. So, let's keep going. Give you, I'll give you three examples of how I would use this expression in everyday English. Okay.

So, scenario one: Melbourne start up culture. You know, the context is that in a bustling tech start-up located in Melbourne's Docklands, tension began to build over whispers of potential cutbacks due to a downturn in investment, and the uncertainty started to affect the team's collaboration and innovation. So Claire, the HR director, noticed the drop in morale during her walks through the open plan office. And recognising the potential damage of unchecked rumours, she decided to try and 'nip them in the bud'. She got everyone together, she wanted to have a chat with everyone and she wanted to nip the rumours. She wanted to nip the unrest, she wanted to 'nip it all in the bud'. She wanted to stop it from getting worse.

Scenario two. Right, okay. A high school rugby rivalry. So at a high school in Sydney. And misunderstanding over a misinterpreted tackle during a rugby match between two key players, Tom and Ben, started to create divisions within the team. So the coach, who had seen many young athletes let small disputes derail their sportsmanship, decides to intervene early. He organises a video review session where both players, along with the team, could watch the play and discuss it openly, and the review clarified that misunderstanding and reaffirmed the importance of teamwork. So the coach's decision 'nipped it in the bud'. It stopped everything from getting a lot worse. And it, um, you know, mended the relationship of everyone in the team. It 'nipped it in the bud'.

Example number three. So imagine a little suburban concern in Brisbane. Um, in a leafy suburb of Brisbane. A new family moved into a community known for its quiet streets and close knit Neighbourhood Watch. The family's habit of hosting lively barbecues late into the night began to stir discontent among the long time residents, though.

So Judy, a well respected member of the Neighbourhood Watch, decided to address the issue before it escalated into outright complaints or calls to the local council or police. So she goes over to their house. She brings some Anzac bickies as a gesture of goodwill, and she says, You know, can you control your parties a little bit? Bring the noise down, maybe finish them a little earlier because it's affecting the other residents. The other neighbours, you know? And by doing that, she 'nipped the problem in the bud'. She wanted to 'nip it in the bud'. She wanted to stop it from getting a lot worse.

So hopefully now, guys, you understand the expression 'to nip something in the bud', 'to nip it in the bud'. This is to put a quick end to something, to stop something from getting worse or out of control. Okay.

So as usual, let's get into our pronunciation exercise and work on our Australian accent. [Would you like a car-donay, Kylie? Kim, it's not car-donay. The correct pronunciation is chardonnay. Mum, it's French! The H is silent! Back me up here, Kylie!] Okay, so the goal of this exercise. I'm going to say words and phrases out loud. Find somewhere that's away from other people where you can feel comfortable speaking loudly. You know, speaking out loud and try and impersonate. Mimic. Copy my accent as best you can, okay. You ready to rock? Let's do it.

To. To nip. To nip it. To nip it in. To nip it in the. To nip it in the bud. To nip it in the bud. To nip it in the bud. To nip it in the bud. To nip it in the bud. I need a nip it in the bud. You need a nipped in the bud. He needs to nip it in the bud. She needs to nip it in the bud. We need a nipped in the bud. They need a nip it in the bud. It needs to nip it in the bud.

Good job guys. Let's go through a little bit of the sound changes that are happening there and the linking. So /nip it in the bud/ /to nip it in the bud/. There's a lot of linking going on there. /nip't/, /nip't/, /nip't/, /nip't/, /nip't'n/.

And what do you notice happening to the T in the word 'it'? When we link to the the word 'in', /nip/ /it/, /nip't'n/. The T turns into a T flap because there's a vowel either side of it. /nip't'n/ /nip't'n/. /nip't'n the bud/. /Nip't'n the bud/.

You'll notice the same thing happening with the words 'need to'. So /I/ /need/ /to/ becomes /I needah/. We just use a T flap in place of the D and the T at the end, and start of those two words. /need/ /to/ becomes /needah/.

But you'll notice it's different when we have /needs/ and /to/. So /he needsta/ /she needsta/, /it needsta/. /He needsta nip't'n the bud/. /She needsta nip't'n the bud/. /It needs to nip't'n the bud/.

The last interesting thing that we should cover here. What do you notice happening with the T at the end of the word 'it' when it's at the start of the phrase, 'it needs to nip it in the bud' and it's followed by a consonant and N sound. Have a listen. So is it a hard T, or a muted T? /It needsta nip't'n the bud/. /It needs/, /it needs/, /it needs/, /it needs/.

We're muting the T and going straight into the N sound. So the tongue goes up. We make the T the first half of the T sound by stopping the airflow it, and then we go straight into the N. /It needs/ /it needs/ /it needsta nip'tin the bud/.

The reason we do this is because if we release the T: /itah needs/ /itah needs/. It adds a vowel sound in between the words, and it's going to confuse native speakers, or advanced speakers of English. They're going to be like, What is that vowel sound representing? It sounds like a schwa could be any sort of word, you know. Is it a name of some kind? What's in there? Are you saying? Um. So that's why we do that. We mute consonants like T, D, P, B, G, and K. Okay.

So anyway, don't forget, guys, if you want to master your Australian accent and speak confidently with Australian pronunciation, be sure to check out my Australian Pronunciation course.

You can get access to this for $100 off at Aussie English.com.au/apc100. Inside the course, you will learn how to use the International Phonetic Alphabet to master every single one of the sounds in Australian English. You'll then go through all these sounds, the tutorials teaching you how to pronounce them, then exercises so that you can do these on a regular basis to master the different vowel sounds and consonant sounds.

And then in the final section of the course there are 25 advanced lessons covering things like linking, you know, or the muted T, the muted D, the T flap, the linking R, all those sort of more advanced spoken English aspects of the Australian accent. So again, check it out at AussieEnglish.com.au/apc100. And you will use if you use that URL, which is also in the description, you'll save 100 bucks.

So anyway, let's get into today's listening exercise and we can finish up. [That's not a knife. That's a knife.] [Here, there's no cash, all right? Cash? No! Robber? No cash.] [You're terrible, Muriel.] [Tell him he's dreaming!] So today's clip comes from the new Aussie TV show called RFDS, which stands for Royal Flying Doctor Service. So it's it's I think it's out. It came out a few years ago, so it's relatively recent. Anyway, the excerpt is: The workers of the Royal Flying Doctor Service of Australia face many obstacles every day, but with the support of each other, they solve the problems."

So the rules of the game. I'm going to play a clip for you two times, and your goal is to listen and then write down what you hear being said. This is an amazing way of levelling up your listening comprehension.

And remember, you can check your answer using today's free worksheet, which you can download via the description or on the website on this episode page, or if you have the premium podcast membership and you can access the transcripts, the answer will obviously be in there. Okay, so you're ready to go? Here's the first playthrough.

But even if I'm just making soup and we're just watching all The Real Housewives together, it'll be worth it. I know you hate surprises. Are you angry? That it's taken 18 months of begging to get you back? Very! I haven't told anyone. Only Graham.

Good job. How'd you go? Did you get all of it? Time for the second playthrough.

All right, well, that's it from me today, guys. Thank you so much for joining me. I really appreciate it. I hope you have a good day. I'm Pete, this is Aussie English and I wish you all the best. Tooroo!

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Recent Episodes:

AE 1300 – Learn English with a Short Story: Piss-Up at the Pub

AE 1299 – Pete’s 2c: Do You Ring, Call, or Dial Someone on the Phone in Australia?

AE 1298 – Learn English with a Short Story: Day at the Beach

AE 1297 – The Goss: How ‘Dropping In’ Culture Has Changed in Australia

AE 1296 – The Goss: Gorilla Glasses & Dad’s Crazy Zoo Stories – MEMBERS ONLY

AE 1295 – The Goss: Australia’s Most & Least Ethical Jobs

AE 1294 – The Goss: Australia Just Had the Best Aurora in 500 Years!

AE 1293 – The Goss: Should Aussie Schools Ban Homework?

AE 1292 – How Aussie Do Asian Australians Feel? r_AskAnAustralian

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English pronunciation, use of phrasal verbs, spoken English, and listening skills!

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English pronunciation, use of phrasal verbs, spoken English, and listening skills!

Leave a comment below & practice your English!

The post AE 1290 – Expressions: Nip It in the Bud appeared first on Aussie English.

AE 1289 – The Goss: Swearing in Australian English

Peter — Sun, 11 Aug 2024 06:14:30 +0000

AE 1289 - The Goss

Swearing in Australian English

Learn Australian English by listening to this episode of The Goss!

These are conversations with my old man Ian Smissen for you to learn more about Australian culture, news, and current affairs.

In today's episode...

Fair dinkum, we’ve got a ripper of an episode for ya!

Pete and his old man, Ian, take a deep dive into the wild world of Aussie swearing.

We’re talkin’ the history, the cultural quirks, and when it’s fair dinkum to drop a C-bomb or just plain inappropriate.

We even chuck in a few yarns about the Queen’s hubby and a hilarious Italian nonna who swears like a trooper.

So, if you’re keen to have a bloody good laugh and learn a thing or two about the colourful language Down Under, grab a coldie, chuck on this episode, and let’s have a chinwag.

Fair warning, though, it’s not for the faint-hearted!

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Improve your listening skills today – listen, play, & pause this episode – and start speaking like a native English speaker!

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Transcript of AE 1289 - The Goss: Swearing in Australian English

And we sometimes also talk about whatever comes to mind, right? If we can think of something interesting to share with you guys related to us or Australia, we also talk about that in The Goss.

So if you really, really want to improve your listening skills fast, get the transcript, listen and read at the same time. Keep practising and that is the quickest way to level up your English. Anyway, I've been rabbiting on a bit. I've been talking a bit. Let's just get into this episode, guys. Smack the bird and let's get into it.

How the fuck are you, you old bastard?

Piss off!

Get fucked, you cunt!

Yeah. Good old Rodney Rude. He was a comedian, guys. So anyway, you've obviously, hopefully, worked out that we're 'taking the piss'.

We're swearing deliberately.

And we're swearing deliberately. Yeah. So, um, I thought we could do an episode of Australian swearing. We could talk a bit about what it is, how it differs from other places, and also when and when not to. Um, so yeah, I guess what would you consider swearing? Because it is a very objective, a subjective kind of thing.

Yeah, it's sort of it's, it's one of those weird things because it's subjective but it's well understood.

Mhm.

Every, even people like you and I swear a lot. Um, but people who swear a lot more than we do would know exactly what they were doing. You know that. They know they're swearing, they know that some people are offended, but they don't give a shit, so to speak. Um, and and so yeah, it's and it's bizarre, though when you look at it and go, why are there some words in any language? I mean, you speak two and a half languages. Um.

Three and a quarter.

Yeah, three and a quarter. Well, yeah. Your French probably isn't as good as it was ten years ago.

Definitely not.

Um, but, you know, Brazilian Portuguese has lots of swear words.

Yeah.

Every language does, and..

Japanese apparently doesn't. It's how you speak to someone.

Yeah.

It's the tone.

But how, how those words, which often came from and certainly in English, they came from Old English or medieval English. And they were my understanding is a lot of them were used in, you know, working class, labouring class people. Um, and upper class people decided that they didn't want to use those words. They were just, you know, looked down upon and then they just became forbidden, you know, you didn't use them. And, um, so they became what we now call 'swear' words.

Well, and it's interesting, I was reading that book, um, the I can't remember what it was called. 'Holy Shit' or something. 'The history of swearing'.. Sorry, I can't give a shout out. There's a female author, but it was a really good book because it went through effectively swearing in, um, the last 2000 years from sort of the Roman time through to present and how it's changed. And in Roman times, it was interesting that apparently swearing was much more related to, um, class and..

Yeah.

And like, what your role was sexually in interactions. So homosexuality wasn't really a thing in ancient Rome. Like you could you would have relationships. You could have relationships with men. And it wasn't seen as a, a really a negative thing, obviously, depending on the situation. But it was more about whether or not you were sort of receiving the cock, right? Like, to be, to be quite blunt.

Who was on top.

If you were the giver, you were the one who was doing the penetrating. You were the masculine person involved in that interaction. So you were fine. But the person who was in the effeminate kind of role was was seen as, you know, degraded and, you know, so they had a lot of slang or slang, swear words related to effectively stuff like 'cock sucker', right. Like, if you called someone a cock sucker in Australian English, we don't really use that. It's sort of American.

Yeah.

And I guess it would be referring to. It's weird. I had never thought about it until recently, but I didn't realise it was a homophobic slur.

Yeah.

I honestly didn't realise that because I thought you just. You don't have to be a man to suck someone's cock. Typically most people..

I suspect most of the cock sucking that gets done in the world is not by men.

And so I only saw that recently where I think a footballer in Australia had used it and got done for a homosexual vilification. And I was like, what? Oh, okay. Yeah, that totally makes sense, I guess if you're using it on a man. But anyway, so in Roman times, apparently there was some I can't remember the exact word, but there was a word they used for someone who effectively received the penis, and that was seen as the most offensive thing that you could say to someone. Whereas today, if you were to say that, call someone a cock sucker. It's almost like a a light way of calling someone a fuckhead, right? Like to, to, just an idiot. I again, I wouldn't, I wouldn't have even thought of it as a homophobic slur.

It's a, it's a reference to somebody being a lesser person.

Yeah. You're just a dickhead. You're a fuckhead. You're a cocksucker. You're a moron. You're a motherfucker. You know, like. But it's funny how I think 'cocksucker' and 'motherfucker' are very American.

Very American.

We would not typically use them. Um, unless kind of being, like, trying to pretend to be American as a joke kind of thing. Ah, motherfucker!

'Hey, motherfucker.'.

Yeah.

Mofo.

Yeah, exactly. That's very American. Um, so. Yeah, it it started in apparently Roman times, sort of like that around power and masculine and feminine roles. Who was the dominant figure? Who was the submissive figure? And they had swearing related to that. And then in the Middle Ages it was much more around religion. And that's where all that bloody oath.

Yeah.

Um, 'Jesus Christ', um, 'for God's sake'.

'Damn'.

'Damn you', yeah. 'Damn your eyes', 'go to hell'. Those sorts of things became really offensive. And the stuff that we use today wasn't saying, you know, 'shit' and 'fuck' and 'piss' and, you know, 'cock' and 'cunt' and all those sorts of words, stuff related to excrement and going to the toilet and nudity wasn't rude because it was something that everyone experienced all the time.

Exactly.

Like, you typically lived in the Middle Ages in a single room house.

And those were the words that were being used by labouring class people to describe upper class people who didn't want to have anything to do with it. You know, 'the Queen doesn't shit', you know? So.

And that's it. But you apparently your big thing was the invention of. I think it was the fireplace, where they took the fire out of the main room and they put it into a wall, and then they started creating different rooms in the house. And then all of a sudden, people had privacy. So you wouldn't be having, you know, if you had a family.

Nudity was no longer a thing.

Yeah. You weren't getting changed in front of other people. You weren't having sex in front of other people. You weren't going to toilet in front of other people.

Queen Victoria sort of completely exacerbated that by, you know, being so prudish.

Yeah.

And it became a thing amongst the certainly the middle class and the upper class.

Who'd want to replicate that.

Wanting to replicate that. So you, nudity just went out the window. You didn't talk about sex. You didn't, you know, it was..

It was very taboo.

You. Yeah. Clothing went from, you know, exposing legs and chests and things was perfectly reasonable to being, you know, particularly women being covered up from neck to ankles. Yeah.

So it's, it's been, it's funny I think having that realisation of swearing not necessarily being something that has a solid foundation that never moves, it's something that is kind of static and it changes based on social norms and and what's considered taboo or not taboo. Um, and we have these differences between countries like Great Britain and Australia, where they would use words, and especially Great Britain uses a whole bunch that are just sort of like cringey and funny, like calling someone a twat.

Yes.

That's, it's apparently a word for vagina, right? Like, you know..

Female reproductive, external reproductive.

But it sounds like a bird to me. And so if someone calls you a twat, and they use it to each other to be effectively idiot, right?

Yeah.

It just doesn't seem to be powerful.

No.

It just seems to kind of be like a mild, um 'Oh, you silly Billy' kind of phrase where it's like, 'Surely you can think of better than 'twat', right? Like, come on, mate. And 'nonce'. They use 'nonce' loads, which is apparently paedophile, right?

Yeah. No. It's nonsense. It's sort of an effeminate man.

Really? I thought it was a paedophile. Or it may be a gay man or something, but it's one of these things that, again, it just doesn't sound..

Nancy Boy. It came from, I think.

Okay.

Yeah, but yeah, I remember it just being like, hearing these and, um, bollocks, you know?

Balls.

Yeah. And just. Yeah, like the dog's bollocks or, you know 'Oh, you got a bollocks.'

Yeah. We don't use 'bollocks' at all in Australia. We're aware of it because we get so much British culture.

But again, it's just kind of embarrassing. Kind of almost. I don't know, it's one of those things where I feel like British people, they can swear when they use the C bomb, right? It's almost like you don't want to use it because it's just, it's so, so rare to come out of your mouth but can't, right, saying 'cunt'. And it does feel good.

Yeah.

It does have, what, it's those words that have the..

But, but again it's one of those words. And I think we might have mentioned this ages ago. Um, where the use of these words is we're no longer referring to the real thing.

No.

Yeah. We still use for 'the dog took a shit. Go and clean it up'. But, but we also use the word in a completely different context of 'get your shit out of here', which means 'shit' is just a generic noun for stuff.

Yeah, but it's..

Sorry, I don't use it to refer to reproductive..

Yeah. We don't, we don't use it. You know, they can't do, you know, you know, 'stick it in your cunt' is. People would use it but it's not used generically in that. And you know we will use the word 'fuck' to mean having sexual intercourse. But, but we also say 'get the fuck out of here'. That has nothing to do with having sex.

That's emphasis. And that's..

And getting the fuck out of here can literally mean 'leave now'.

Yeah, it doesn't mean 'leave fucking'.

Or 'get the fuck out of here'. It could mean 'you're kidding'.

Yeah.

Yeah. And..

And so tone comes in.

Yeah.

But it is funny because I'm writing a slang guide at the moment, and I have to put in the definition. And I'm putting in example sentences for a lot of these swear words. And it is just so hard when like the literal translation of 'cunt' would be 'vagina'.

Yes.

But it's so rare that you would never say, 'check out this chick's cunt'. Like, or 'I have a problem with my cunt. So I'm going to go see the doctor.' You know, like.

Exactly.

'He had a look at my cunt.' You would just be like. No. Ever, ever. Even, even if you were being rude.

However.

It's just so weird.

There would be people who would use that word for it. They would use 'vagina'.

You reckon they'd say cunt?

Yeah. yeah. Some would. But. But at the same time, you know, the typical use of 'cunt' is referring to a man of lesser status. Somebody that you do not like.

Or someone who..

It's a real, it's a real insult. However, the words, you put an adjective in front of it and it changes it completely. So if I call you a 'cunt', it's an insult. If I call you 'a mad cunt', it's a compliment.

Yeah.

That's..

That's it. Yeah, that's. It's not that you can just do that with any adjective.

No you can't.

You can do it. Usually you can in a negative kind of way. Like 'Oh he's a dodgy cunt. Slimey cunt', you know. But then we have some, some rare ones I guess we're kind of going all over the shop, but.

Yeah.

So who swears in Australia? Do you think that there is..

Most people.

Do you think there's a group of. Do you think it's like Britain, where there is the upper class. And they would typically are? Again, in my experience and imagination, they would actively avoid swearing to appear more upper class.

Or in terms of publicly, yes, I and that's I think that's the thing is that there are people who will swear most of the time, and you and I can probably in that realm where..

There's a spectrum.

Yeah, where there are. But there I wouldn't swear in a professional setting. Um.

Yeah. It's so interesting if I wouldn't do it in public unless it was around people that I was comfortable with, or knew. I wouldn't just walk up to the doctor and say 'fuck, I've had a kind of a day, mate'. And my dick is, you know, like, I wouldn't use just all these words randomly with a, in a situation like that.

But in the formal setting..

There are, there are people, though, that you typically like bogans, very lower class, uneducated kind of- excuse me, I'm burping away. Um, people where they drop in the F bomb and the S bomb all the time.

Ah, well, my..

'Fuck, I went to the fucking shops with my fucking camera..'

Yeah, exactly..

And you're like, 'mate, you just wasting my time..'

'You just wasting your breath!'

.. all these extra.

Get to the point quicker!

Tell me the story. Well, it no longer means anything.

I know.

I'm using it all the time, but.

But whereas there's. Yeah. Billy Connolly the, bless him, the Scottish comedian who who says that it's the best word in the English language because it's the most expressive word in the English language. Because it can. It's an emphasis word.

Yeah.

Um, uh, and so, you know, there are times where you, you know, you're going to use it to an audience that may be inappropriate, but you're making an emphasis. Um, yeah. We get people saying it on television now.

Yeah, I remember John Cleese, right? He, wasn't he saying he was the first person to say 'shit' and then 'fuck' on TV in Britain?

Yeah.

Oh, man. Yeah. But so yeah, there is that spectrum. You'll have people that are typically that kind of like lower class, uneducated, not all of them, obviously, but there are people who belong to that kind of part of, um, our..

My sister used to call him 'the fork' and 'forken boys'.

Yeah.

Yeah. You get on a train and be 'fucking..'

Yeah, exactly. And young boys, typically, too.

Yeah.

.. and the boys are. .

Yeah, they're showing off and..

Trying to figure out, you know, how to be cool and everything. And then you'll go through..

.. I can swim..

You'll go through to the spectrum of people similar to us, I imagine, where it's kind of like I probably do it more than anyone else in our family, just because for whatever reason, I just, you know, turn it on a little more. Um, you guys typically don't, but then in private settings, say, like you and I talking to each other, we're going to do it more often than we would otherwise. And then you'll probably keep going further up the ladder.

Well, you'll also, I think that's true in most conversational styles, is that you will mirror the other person. You'll you'll speak in a manner that is acceptable. It's sort of this implied acceptance of how you will talk to each other. Um, and you will not do it with other people, like in a professional context.

I find that with tradies..

Transactional context.

Tradies will start swearing, usually in a strangers if I'm meeting their trade. Like I remember one of my, one of Noah's friends dads, um, I met him at day-care or whatever and he was just straight away just swearing. And I was just like, Oh, okay, all right.

And that's unusual.

That's where we are. Like, that's, you know, that's the level I'm at. I don't mind swearing then, but yeah, if you walk up to one of Noah's friends mums or something, the first word..

'Where the fuck are you.'.

'Yeah, what's up cunt!' Yeah. Good, good. And here are the cops.

Yes. Yeah are you uhh..

But I remember watching a video. I think it was, um, the Queen's husband. What's his name again? Prince..

Well, the ex queen's ex-husband.

Well, yeah. The Queen's.

Yeah. They're both..

Prince Philip.

Prince Philip. Where they're sitting down, taking a photo. This blew my mind. I remember they're sitting down taking a family photo, and they're faffing around taking, you know, piss farting around. Um, and he's getting pretty fed up and he just says, you know, looks at the camera and he just says, 'Take the fucking picture.' And I remember like, Oh my God, even the Queen's husband swears. Like, and it probably..

He was in the Navy!

.. wait. Even more wait, when it's someone like the Queen's husband is swearing.

Because of Edinburgh? Yeah.

It must be such a weird thing when you do have those kind of power differentials. Like you wonder what it would have been like if you'd been in that inner circle. If you hear the king swearing, do you match him? Or do you just, do you just..

.. let that one ride?

You're like, Ah, no, I'm not going to start dropping F bombs.

Exactly.

And yeah, there is a power position thing to that. You know, that you probably...

You forget yourself.

You forget your- exactly.

I can do it. You can't.

There's mirroring, and there's mirroring here. So.

Don't forget yourself.

Yeah, yeah. So look. Yeah, I think it is. It's one of those things where it's just judging where it's appropriate and when it isn't. Um, you're only going to get it wrong once.

Yeah. Well, and this is one of those things. When I was learning Portuguese, I kind of mucked around a lot with swear words to begin with, with Kel, because I wanted to gauge them and get a sense of where they sat in intensity. Because I think a big problem, and I've had this with students before, where they'll tell me someone swore at them. And then when you dig into it a bit more, you just hear, Oh no..

They were just swearing.

They were just swearing, but they weren't actually vilifying you or, you know, saying, saying anything awful like about you. They were just talking to you and being like one of those kind of like, ah, fucking thing, fucking sucks, and fucking. But they weren't having a go at you. And so I think there's, there's multiple reasons why it's important to understand swearing, whether or not you decide to use it. It's obviously that you want to be able to really understand situations when someone is having a go at you.

Yeah.

And when someone's just trying to be informal with you because it's a way of relating or trying to be friendly. Because again, if if a tradie comes up to me and starts swearing or, you know, he's chatting to me and swears, my first reaction is, Oh, he's relaxed around me. Yes. He's not treating me like I'm, you know, some sort of upper class fuckwit. You know, he's just he's just treating me like he would someone that was on the job site working with him. Um, so it can be a good sign that you're accepted. But it can also be that people are getting, you know, sort of racially vilified or treated awfully. And you need to be able to..

You've got to be able to distinguish- and you can't do that by analysing the words.

Yeah.

It's all presence..

Absence. Yeah.

It's all contextual. And certainly I mean. I spoke a little bit of French when I was at school, learned French at school. And first, things you learn other than what you're supposed to are the swear words. And French swear words are really the same as English swear words. They're, you know, they're exactly the same contextually. But when I remember talking to you, you and Kel about, you know, Brazilian Portuguese, and you cannot translate them.

Well, they're not easily..

But the translation in English either doesn't make any sense at all.

No.

Where you go, that's actually not offensive. But in Portuguese, it's extremely offensive.

Yeah.

And so, you know, you can't just go, oh, I know what that word means. Unless you know the context and you understand how its usage is related to particular socio economic groups or, you know, countries like, you know, you're talking about England and Australia, we we understand each other and we can translate. But there are words that we use that they don't and and reverse.

Well, I think that's, I'm watching at the moment. Shogun.

Yeah.

If you've heard of that series, this is the newly redone one and it's really good. But I always find Japanese culture so interesting because it's just so different.

So formal and literal.

But when they translate, obviously the show is, the show is done. It's an interesting kind of setup where, um, the protagonist is like an English pirate who's washed up in Japan, like the ship is sort of just been adrift and smashed in a storm. And they wash up in Japan. And this is like, I think it's the 15 or 1600 where Portugal has access to Japan, um, for trade. And they have their Catholic priests and everything. They're sort of proselytising and trying to convert Japan to Christianity. Um, but there's no English. There's no, the English haven't found the place. They know of it, but they haven't never found it. Um, so anyway, the show is interesting because it's kind of like done as if the English guy speaks really good Portuguese, but he's speaking English to us, the watchers, the viewers the whole time. But he's interacting with, like one of the, um, priests, uh, students who's learnt Portuguese. That's a Japanese high born kind of person. And so they're speaking in English the whole time on the TV show, but they're actually speaking Portuguese to one another.

Yes.

Like, but then they're interacting with the Japanese people. And on the show, the Japanese people are actually speaking Japanese to one another. And so it's so interesting watching how they translate on the TV show The Japanese to English, because you'll get the subtitles for it, and the Japanese to Portuguese, which is actually English. And then they have a conversation and everything.

Yeah.

And so because there's swearing sometimes and there's informalities and everything, but it's so hard for that to carry across from Japanese like they have different I think it's verb forms that you would use on people who are above you versus below you societally, right? Like class and caste and all that was way more important there than it is in Australia. But you can't translate that into English with verbs.

No.

Really. And..

We don't have the same grammatical structures.

And it's you wouldn't even be able to do it with sir or ma'am. You have to, like the meaning is just totally lost effectively. And with swearing. Like how would you, if you were to call someone you know, this 'dirty fucking cunt' in English? How do you translate that into Japanese, right. Like because they don't really have swear words per se, at least as far as I know. They use other ways of of showing disrespect to people, or respect. So that side of it I find just endlessly fascinating with language learning. And how you, you know, translate these things because, yeah, there's been certain things where I'll be joking around with my wife, and we'll be swearing at each other in one language or another, and you'll say something, and the other person will just piss themselves laughing because it just makes no sense.

It's just not funny.

Yeah, yeah. Like, you know, if you were to say.

I think this is not funny..

If you were to say, 'go fuck yourself', you know, that sort of thing, like, oh no, I think I said something like, um, 'I fell over and ate shit' the other day.

Yeah.

And she was just like, What?!

Yeah.

What the fuck are you talking about? You ain't shit..

That's a very- that's an Australian term. Yeah.

It means I fell over and hurt my..

It fell over and hurt myself. Badly.

Yeah, there's loads of those sorts of things. That's just hilarious.

Exactly.

And it's funny because I think Australians in particular like using this stuff to be comical.

Yes.

To some degree. So we have these kind of like, 'take the piss'. Um, 'piss farting around', to 'eat shit', you know..

'Fuck around'.

Yeah, that are just kind of funny..

And 'fuck around' doesn't mean having sex with multiple people.

No.

It means having fun and playing.

Yeah, or mess around.

Yeah.

There are loads of those things, but there's also obviously in, um, English and Australian English in particular, uh, homophobic slurs that, that are used or racial slurs that are used. And I think that's probably where you and I both draw the line to some extent. I think the only time I would ever really use any of those would be when I'm trying to describe what they are to someone like, and I'm almost. Yeah, well, I am avoiding using them in this episode, just just for the sake of not having snippets out there of me using that could be taken..

To mean that those things are not swear words in a sense that they are not words that we have acquired from an older form of the language. And some of them are in a different context. Mostly, they are words that were deliberately created as being pejorative.

Yeah.

And and so that's you know, I think that's the difference.

Yeah.

Um..

Well, I guess like to talk about one of them, right. 'Fag' and 'faggot' that are pretty much words that I think I used when I was a teenager, a lot more than I do now. And I think it's that thing of you don't really appreciate the harm or the..

You mean 'cigarette and a collection of sticks'.

Yeah, that's it, exactly. But you don't, you don't understand the context and how it hurts people who are, say, homosexuals. And it becomes when you get older, typically you're like, I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings. I don't want to..

And you never. And that's the thing, is that it's, those words were just acquired from completely different meanings in English for the pure purpose of being pejorative, for being a negative and insulting. You would never say, Oh, my friend's a fag! Well..

This is, this is, this is the interesting part of the conversation that I wanted to get to, right? Like it's become kind of repossessed by that group, sort of like the N word in the US. Where if you are one, you're allowed to say it and use it to describe- not necessarily every single say gay person is going to go out there talking about their friends as being fags. But you do definitely hear and see it in, um, TV shows with gay characters.

Yeah,

But I think it's a way of them showing..

They do it as the the tongue in cheek pejorative.

Yeah.

Yeah. 'Ah, you silly fag.' You know where it's 'ha ha, slap you on the back', you know.

Yeah, and I think it's also we can use that word kind of thing, right? Like we're taking the power out like 'slut walks', right? Or the the, the whole thing of protesting being a, you know, called a slut as a woman, they would wear scanty clothing and go protesting and being like, Yeah, I'm a slut or whatever to, to own the power of that, to get that back and sort of take it away from other people.

Yes.

And show that there's nothing wrong with, you know, that. But the, the 'fag' and 'faggot' thing is interesting because it comes 'fag', obviously. Or at least it's one of those weird words where Brits seem to use it all the time for talking about cigarettes.

Yeah, and Australians..

.. makes me cringe..

Australians used to, in the 60s and 70s, when I was growing up.

.. never. Ever. Use that today.

No, but you wouldn't. No. You'd never call somebody. 'Oh he's gay' back as in being happy.

Yeah.

Yeah. Because now it has a completely different meaning.

Oh. Yeah yeah yeah, yeah.

And so it's one of those words that the original meaning of the word still exists, but the colloquial usage is now got a negative connotation to it.

Yeah.

So we would never, we would just find another word for the original meaning. We wouldn't try and use it.

But yeah. So 'fag' was often is often used in other places for cigarettes and it still makes me cringe.

Yeah.

Um. And 'faggot', again. It just feels so bad saying it, but originally it was what? A bundle of sticks?

A bundle of sticks to put on a fire.

And then it was used for the old women that used to go out and collect the bundles of sticks. They were old fags, which is, I guess, where similar to like old hag or whatever. And then interestingly, I guess it's probably got a connotation with penises, right? And that's where..

I have no idea how..

.. switched over.

You. I think you're drawing a long straw there along, if you'll excuse them very bad pun. But, you know, I have no idea how the connection got made. But, you know, it is one of those words that you looked at it and went, What?

But there's, going back to South Park again. It was really interesting. And this was that sort of.

An interesting lens on society?

Well, it was, it was, it was funny because I remember watching this episode when I was probably at high school, and it kind of resonated with me a bit, because 'fag' was one of these words that we used a lot, but it was one of these words where as a kid, you, you, you've obviously learnt it from someone who was using it as a homophobic slur, and then you start using it to mean just an unpleasant person or someone you don't like, and it or someone who does something but it like..

But it is only used in that context because it has the homophobic../

I totally get that now. But the South Park episode was funny because they had these guys on Harley-davidsons that would always drive around making a lot of noise because they wanted to be noticed. And I think it's like Eric Cartman, um, you know, gets like all the kids, including Eric, start calling those Harley-Davidson riders 'fags'. Like, 'Get out of here, you fags!' Like, 'Stop doing it, you fags.' And they just, the home, they get more and more offensive with making noise, like carrying drum sets and whistles because they're like, Notice us! Notice us! And the parents of the town hear about the kids calling them fags and are just like, You can't do that. That's homophobic and everything. And they're like, this has got nothing to do with gay people.

Yeah.

Like, what do you mean? And I think they get them, they get taken to court or something. And Kyle gets up and he's like, they said, Well, what do you think a fag is? And they're like, Harley Davidson riders! Yeah. But then they also say 'You can be a gay fag, but you can also be a fag who isn't gay. You just ride a Harley.' And so they had this whole really funny thing where the kids didn't even realise. And I remember it being like that sort of, to some extent when I was a kid with some of these words where you wouldn't even necessarily think about where the original word came from, but you were using it.

Yeah. So I think that's a distinction between so I wouldn't use things like fag or faggot.

I don't think I've ever heard you say them.

Well I wouldn't use them, but I also don't, I also don't see them as swear words.

Yeah.

There's a distinction between a swear word, as in a word that people will cringe at because it is used- it is inappropriate, in some circles, as opposed to one that is deliberately designed to be insulting.

Yeah.

Yeah, the word fuck is not deliberately designed to be insulting. Um..

When there's, it's sort of a way..

Yeah, the way, the way you choose to use it might- Ya stupid fuckhead. Yeah.

I-I identify as a fuckhead, and I find that very offensive!

Exactly. So you're choosing to use it in context to be offensive, but the word itself isn't. Whereas that cultural acquisition of a word that was a homophobic slur to just be insulting to somebody still has the homophobic slur as part of it. So.

Yeah.

Yeah. So it's the difference between a swear word and an insult. So.

Yeah. There's, it is just endlessly fascinating. That sort of, that sort of thing. But 'gay' was another one that we used as kids to mean something that was just silly or stupid.

Yeah.

You know, Ah, don't do that, man. That's so gay. Like.

But again, but culturally acquired from 'gay', meaning homosexual.

You grow up. And at least my personal journey was that you sort of get to that point of realising whether or not you mean it. It can be taken the wrong way. And if you have friends who are gay and they hear you saying that all the time, it has the potential to be something that that can be upsetting to them. And so you just sort of stop doing it. But it is funny. You'll still hear kids like younger kids using that kind of language, but it's very rare for you to kind of hear people my age or older using, I don't know, I just find that sort of the use of swearing and how it changes through different classes of people, different age groups. Probably different genders too. I would imagine..

And different generations?

Males swear more than females.

And not just age groups. As in like I would use words now. I'm the same generation that I've always been. You know, I was born in 1957. I'm, you know, the end of the baby boomers. Um, but I use words now that I wouldn't have used in the 1970s.

Yeah.

And not because it was Oh no, you don't say that word.

Which, it wasn't common.

It just wasn't commonly used. And I can't even think of anything off the top of my head..

Well, there'd be loads of words like that..

So that's that generational things just come through and. And like, you know, swearing has just become more acceptable generally. Um, yeah. Swearing in public is still against the law in Victoria.

Yeah.

Um, if somebody gets offended by it, you know, being offended is not against the law. But. Yeah, but if somebody is offended by you swearing or reports of the police, the police can charge you with offensive behaviour.

Yeah.

Um, swearing and, you know. Really!?

Make sure you only swear in front of one person. So it's hearsay.

Yeah.

Two people.

It's the only witness. Really?

Yeah. Are you fucking serious?

Exactly. Pretty much. Um, and so, you know, there's there's an element of that too, that you look at it now and go, is it generically so acceptable? You know, if, if, if you can watch a prime time television show and not a show with actors on because they're playing a part, but just, you know, somebody's being interviewed or a, you know, reality TV show or whatever, and swearing is perfectly acceptable to put in there. Why is swearing still against the law?

Yeah.

Like why is, why why doesn't somebody ring up and go, Excuse me. On channel seven last night, somebody said the word 'fuck'. Um, I'm offended by the use of that term. Can you please sue Channel Seven, or get Channel Seven taken off the air until they stop using that language? Which technically, by the law, it could be doing? No, it'll get thrown out of court immediately because it's just stupid. But you go, all right, why is it still against the law? And that comes into this whole thing, and we're sort of getting into the, you know, right down to a tangent, but, um, that we now, you know, where technically the word 'offended' is not in the laws, but, um, the word 'vilified' is.

Mmm.

And I see there's a distinct difference between those two, but the law doesn't. And that's the challenge, is that if I insult somebody, not because I'm choosing to be to be insulting, but they choose to be insulted based on the language I use, if it's homophobic, if it's racist, if it is against their religion or whatever, then I'm breaking the law and I look at that and go, No, I'm not. If I'm deliberately vilifying somebody, as in I am trying to hurt them, either physically or I'm promoting other people to hurt them or whatever just by the use of the language, that's vilification. If I'm insulting them, they are choosing to be offended and insulted by the word that I'm using. It's a very different- it's a fine line, but it's a very different thing. Um, and that's that boundary, if you like, in terms of culture. Not the law, but in terms of culture is, is it okay to say to to swear in general conversation? It's a personal decision. You've got to decide, um, am I going to offend other people and do I care?

Mhm.

If other people are offended, is that their problem or my problem?

Well, that's it, right? It's kind of like you, if society is going to work you out one way or another.

Yes.

You know, you're going to get the results of what you sort of reap, right? You're going to..

Society is made up of multiple layers. There'll be a whole series of people who won't be offended by you using that word, and a bunch of people who will.

When you have that story of that. Was it a Greek woman who ran a restaurant in..

Oh the Italian..

Italian or..

The Italian?

The grand- you're talking about the one in..

Yeah the grandmother.

Yeah. Years ago.

..'I can fucking get you..'.

Yeah, yeah. This is. It's one of my favourite stories. This is one of my favourite restaurants ever told it, and it only lasted for a couple of years that I after I was aware of it, and was while I was a university student. So. And it was in Fitzroy, um, which is an inner suburb of Melbourne, close to the University of Melbourne, where I was a student, and you were a student. Um, and a couple of my friends found this place and said, You've got to go here. It's this great little Italian restaurant. The food's great. It's really cheap. Um, good food, cheap when you're a university student. Yeah, give me more of that. And a couple of friends and I went, all right, we'll go down there. We walked in the door and there's this little old lady, and she was probably about 60. But, you know, she's when you're 19, you think that's a little old lady? Um, and she's sitting at the front door, you know, clearly, she turned out she was the grandmother in the family that ran this business. And you'd open the door and she goes, What the fuck do you want? Um, we just wanted somewhere to eat!

Is this a restaurant?

Yeah. Sit over there. Sit where you fucking like. Go over there. Get your own bloody plates and things. And she didn't know she was swearing! Because she just learned to speak English from her grandchildren.

Who spoke like that.

Who spoke like that. So she was greeting people at the door. But it turned out that people would go there to be deliberately sworn at. It was like, You've got to go here. The old lady is going to swear at you!

.. Like, a sign code skit, right?

Yeah, exactly. So, um, it was it was hysterical. The food was fantastic, but it was one of those places where you go, there's no menu. It's what's on. It's spaghetti and meatballs tonight.

.. the fuck you want.

And, yeah, spaghetti and meatballs tonight. And they just bring this big bowl out, plonk it on the table. And none of the chairs were matching. None of the cutlery or crockery was matching. It was just a fantastic place. But. Yeah. 'What the fuck do you want' when you walk in the door. And I think she meant 'What would you like?' You know, that'd be.

It'd be even more disconcerting and strange if she was smiling at you and everything.

Exactly.

'How the fuck can I help you?' 'How can I help you?'

'Where the fuck would you like to sit?'.

Exactly!

Which is pretty much what she was doing. But.

Um, the last thing to touch on, I guess, is. Yeah, racial sort of, um, swear words or insults. Do you typically are they common? Like, it's one of those things where I feel like most people know, but they don't ever use them.

Um, you know, I, I won't say you because I can't tell what you hear. I very rarely hear people using racial, racially offensive words now, in comparison with what I was like when I was a child.

Yeah.

In any way.

Really?

Yeah.

So when it was, when you were a child, it was everywhere, was it? Yeah.

Yeah, and I won't use some of the words because..

Yeah, that's it..

And that's it. Yeah. Perfect. You have to say 'You fucking cunt' but I won't call somebody the A word or the N word or um, but that was really common. Really. Yeah.

Because I think that..

And even common on, and that's, and I will use them uh, just as a context. You would have somebody interviewed on television, and it was very rare to interview somebody on television in the 60s and the 70s, because it was really..

Just in general.

In news. Well, the news was, a newsreader would sit in front of a TV camera and read the news.

Mhm.

Um, but every now and then you'd get a, you know, a video from somebody. 'Oh the bloody abos around here, there', you know. And you would never say that now.

Well no..

And this is in the 1970s.

.. say it. Even if..

It would never go to air. It would never go to air.

Unless somehow it was..

Whereas the same, the same person now being interviewed in there. You go, Ah, these fucking people.. They wouldn't, that wouldn't go to air.

Mhm.

And so that's where we've moved from. That using swear words now is acceptable to go on to live television.

Yeah.

Um and even in newsprint now they will print the whole word. Yeah. Typically now. Rather than, even five years ago, it would just be you would see the F asterisk asterisk asterisk.

Yeah.

And and you go, well, we know what the word is. You just put it in there,

.. for God's sake. Yeah.

Um, whereas those sort of racially offensive terms are just never going to be used now, and you don't hear them. I don't know what you.

I think you would. It would depend, right. If you're into African American culture and watch TV shows with pretty much any of those, kind of like Lois..

Oh yeah, I'm talking about in Australia. You're wandering around the streets in Australia.

No, no, typically not. And it would be as a result. It's funny. I think if someone were to use that kind of language, it punches home even more. You're just like, Whoa, massive taboo dude.

Yeah.

Oh look. And like-.

I think that he knew! And..

As a as a good example of that if you're talking about, you know, homophobic slurs and racial slurs, um. Popular sport like AFL football, um, NRL, rugby league. Um, you go to the AFL football now 20 years ago and more. There would be homophobic slurs and racial slurs going all the time whilst people were playing. Yeah, people in the know, people in the crowd.

Oh really? Okay.

And players on the ground. But mostly people in the crowd. Yeah, yeah. Um, at other supporters or, you know, at the players on the ground and so on. That still happens today. It's very rare. But when it does happen, it's almost like a thousand people will point and go. He said it! He said it! Police! Come and get them now! And they're tossed from the crowd.

Often banned.

And banned. And if it's, you know, said against a player, it's it's it's pulled out. And so it's, it's not that those things are just sort of let ride now. They're now being called out publicly.

Yeah.

Um, which is a good thing. You know, I don't you know, I have no problem with swearing, but I don't think, you know, vilifying somebody else based on..

It is funny how there's..

Something over which they have no control.

But even..

Sexuality or their race or anything else..

Even if you use those words, not vilifying anyone. I think the average person, just because typically they're only used for that. You would just be like..

Well, it's the fag, isn't it?

Yeah.

You're not going to..

No, no no don't. And it's funny like with 'fag', I feel uncomfortable when gay people use it. You'll just be like, Just don't man. Just don't. Because I feel like someone's watching. I'm going to get caught on film. It'll be like that thing of the gay person sitting across from you saying, Just say it, man. Just say it once.

Yeah.

Like, yeah, and you do. And the cops are instantly there. Like, Come with me, sir, and you'll be like, You did this on purpose, you son of a bitch!

Just keep it back. Yeah.

Fucking..

Yeah.

I know there was. It was so funny. I saw, um, Norm MacDonald. Is it him? The comedian? Is it Norm MacDonald? He was talking with..

Garry MacDonald.

No, it's Norm something. I've forgotten. And he was talking with Mike Tyson, right. The boxer.

Ah. Norman Gunston.

No.

Ah.

Um. But he, this this comedian who's passed away was talking with, um, Mike Tyson and he was getting him, Mike Tyson to read something out and it apparently had the N word in it. And he was just like, I just want to hear you say it. And then afterwards, Mike's like, You say it. And then he's like, Fucking say it! Say it! What are you, what are you going to say it, you pussy? And he was like, throwing his fists around and Norm was just like, Holy shit! I'm like. It's like, I feel like I'm gonna die! And it's so funny because you just see him suddenly, like, just freeze .because he's like, Am I going to have to say the N word on TV? Or Mike Tyson's going to kill me? And Mike Tyson kept switching out of, like, deadpan, like aggressively telling him, Say it! Say it! And then just laughing and then saying No, but say it. Like you. Just like, talk about a rock and a hard place.

I know. Yeah.

Anyway, this has been a long episode.

It has. Yeah.

I guess..

Probably not the place to end it, with Mike Tyson.

No, but it was one of those things. I wanted to talk about it because I often get asked, how do you swear in English? When should you swear, when should be? When you should be worried about being sworn at? And I remember from learning foreign languages, even when you get to a really high level in that language, quite often you're not necessarily apt, you know, talented at swearing or understanding it because it may not be something you use.

Yeah. And I think the, and it's not just swearing, it's use of local vernacular. You will, you're better off not doing it.

Yes.

Yeah. You're, you're never going to be looked down on if you don't swear.

If in doubt, go without. It's the opposite of condoms.

Yes. Exactly. Yeah. If it's not on, it's not on.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. So. Yeah. Exactly. So you're never going to be looked down on if you don't use it. But if you do use it, understand the context in which you're doing it. And that's not just swearing. That's just use of vernacular.

Yeah.

If you're going to start to copy people, understand what they are doing. There's nothing wrong with trying it out. But there's also nothing wrong with asking people.

Yes. Yeah. Well and that..

Well if you hear it in conversation. You know, Is it okay for me to say that?

But that's a good way of practising using it too, where you can in a kind of, uh, you know, calm situation that isn't, isn't aggressive. You can use these words without the fear of offending anyone, right? Like, if you had friends that you speak to in English quite often, or who are native speakers, obviously in an environment where it's effectively a private conversation.

Yes.

You could ask them questions. Like how would you use this word? I heard this the other day. Someone said this to me, am I worried about this? You know.

'Is it okay for me to say that?'

Yeah, and I would be doing that all the time. When I first was with my, you know, wife Kel, she was, and I was learning Portuguese and trying to get better. I wanted to use the words, you know, because I often heard people swearing and I wanted to use them, but I wanted to use them correctly. And I didn't want to sound like an idiot, and I didn't want to needlessly offend people either. You know, we've talked about it before with, like, calling someone 'black'.

It's easy enough to deliberately offend people. You don't have to do it.

But I didn't want to get it wrong. And so quite often I would end up having these long kind of conversations. And they were quite entertaining because quite often they were. How do I say that in English, though? Because I would be like, hey, you say [Portuguese language] and all these things in Portuguese, like what are the. When do you say this? When do you not say this? How do you shorten it? What's like as you say "caraca"? And then you also say "caralho", is one of them like less polite than the other? They both kind of the same word, "caraca". That's another one, you know. Can we say that in this situation? If I said this to your grandmother, would this offend her? You know, like..

That's a good test.

You know, and then they would often be like, Hey, I've never thought about it. How do I do this in English? You know, like if I was chatting to so-and-so, can I just say the equivalent of "caralho"? Or like, do you have one? And I quite often, you know, you just they're going I don't think we do. I think you just, you just, just wouldn't. Just don't. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, hopefully it's been an eye opening convo and.

Convoluted though, it may have been.

Yeah. Well hopefully it's been entertaining. But also hopefully you haven't been too offended by the fact that we've used, you know, a significant, significantly higher proportion of swear words than usual. So.

Yes. Not that we don't swear.

Yeah. I hope you had a fucking good time, guys. Anyway.

Good shit, Pete.

Yeah. That's it. Thanks for joining us.

Bye!

See ya!

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The post AE 1289 – The Goss: Swearing in Australian English appeared first on Aussie English.

AE 1288 – The Goss: Why is Hitchhiking Illegal in Australia

Peter — Sun, 04 Aug 2024 09:00:00 +0000

AE 1288 - The Goss

Why is Hitchhiking Illegal in Australia

Learn Australian English by listening to this episode of The Goss!

These are conversations with my old man Ian Smissen for you to learn more about Australian culture, news, and current affairs.

In today's episode...

G’day, you mob! If you’re keen to have a yarn about the good ol’ days of hitchhiking Down Under and how things have changed over time, this episode’s for you!

Pete and his dad, Ian, spin a yarn about how hitchhiking was once a common way to get around, especially when cars were as rare as hen’s teeth.

They’ll also get you thinking about how things have changed, not just with transport, but with technology and even what we put on our plates.

It’s a fair dinkum Aussie chat that’ll give you a good laugh and a bit of a chinwag about the past. So grab a cuppa, chuck on your headphones, and have a listen!

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Transcript of AE 1288 - The Goss: Why is Hitchhiking Illegal in Australia

G'day you mob. Pete here. And this is another episode of Aussie English, the number one place for anyone and everyone wanting to learn Australian English. So today I have a Goss episode for you where I sit down with my old man, my father, Ian Smissen, and we talk about the week's news weather locally Down Under here in Australia or non-locally overseas in other parts of the world. And we sometimes also talk about whatever comes to mind, right? If we can think of something interesting to share with you guys related to us or Australia, we also talk about that in The Goss.

What's going on?

Hey, Pete!

Show me cat pictures.

Yeah, I'm not showing you cat pictures. That is literal!

Um, okay, so my computer's lost battery.

Uh oh!

So I'm gonna have to look up. This.

Sorry. I'm about to do it again!

Do it. [background sound]

Okay. Yes. Hitchhiking.

Yes, hitchhiking?

Hitchhiking has gone the way of the dodo in Australia, apparently.

Yeah. It's become extinct.

So there was an article here. Uh, you guys can look this up on ABC News. "Hitchhiking was once common in Australia and abroad. What changed?"

Mhm.

So it's a, "It's rare to see a hitchhiker on the side of any Australian road these days. It's also against the law in Queensland and Victoria, and illegal to hitchhike on motorways in other parts of the country. But in the mid 1970s, when historian and author Alice Garner was young, she used to do it all the time."

Yeah.

So the article effectively goes on to say that, you know, it would have been around the time of the invention of the car, obviously.

Well, would have been earlier than that, but nah, people used to hitch rides on horse and cart all the time..

But in the article, I think she was saying the hitchhiking on roads became really common. Obviously with cars, post the advent of the car. Funnily enough.

Really?! Everybody used to do it before it was invented!

And then as soon as it was invented..

Soon as it was invented, they went, Oh, we've now got a purpose for walking down the street with our thumb out.

Yes. That's it. So, um, she was saying it was very common in, like, the 1920s to, you know, 50s and 60s and onwards. Um, but it was different, in different countries, apparently, like in, I think she was saying in Canada, that women and America, women and children would often use hitchhiking as a way of getting to the beach, um, you know, or going on, on a little day trip or something. So anyway, in Australia, it was really common after World War two as a way of just getting around because cars were incredibly expensive.

Yes. Not so many people had cars.

You only had one per kind of family, right?

Or even often not one.

Really?

Use us as an example. My family, when I was growing up, my father had a job that a car came with it. So we had a car, but we didn't have a family car.

Well how much was the car worth? How much would that have cost to buy new?

Ohh.

At the time?

I, in the 1960s?

I want to compare this to the cost of the house that you guys had as well, because you'd, I imagine it would have been a significant chunk of whatever the house was worth.

Yeah, well, my parents bought the house for $1,000 in the 1950s.

Pounds.

£500.

Yeah. Okay.

$1,000.

Converted to.

In the 1950s.

Which is probably about 20 grand today. You know. That would be bugger all! Yeah.

Um. I don't know, my..

Hundreds of dollars back then?

$1,000, probably..

Really?!

For a new car.

So okay..

60s..

House price?

No, but that's ten years later.

Okay.

The car would have cost what, the house cost, ten years before.

But that would be like me, that would be like me buying a Ferrari to drive around, right? The house to affect..

My, yeah, but my, um, I don't know what my father earned, but I suspect $1,000 was probably half his annual salary.

God.

Double? Yeah. Half to his whole annual salary.

That just blows my mind, I think. I don't know..

So, very few people had new cars. A lot of second hand cars.

.. car new, one half my salary.

No.

No, no car, brand new or anything. Maybe a very small one.

So cars probably are around roughly the same price.

Yeah.

Like, all the time. But yeah, it was expensive, but it was just rare. People didn't have that sort of money.

Mhm.

We have a lot more- people keep- we're way off track here. But the um we keep hearing about how, uh, the cost of living is a crisis and people are, you know, struggling to put food on the table. And, you know, and most of that is a media beat up. There are plenty of people who are struggling financially at the moment. Um, and I suspect there were most of those same people were probably struggling five years ago before interest rates went up and house prices went up and rent went up and so on. It's just been exacerbated now. Um, but people just didn't spend money on things that they do now, you know, 50 or 60 years ago. Um, nobody wanted, you know, nobody in a lower income family had new furniture or they just didn't have a car coming back to where we were talking about. So it wasn't that families only had one car. Most families didn't have a car.

Well, I imagine at that period, too..

They used..

The oldest cars out there would have been, what, 30 or 40 years old? And there wouldn't have been very many of them.

No.

So there wouldn't have been a huge, thriving second hand market.

Exactly.

So your only option would probably have been to get a brand new car. Not..

Yeah, exactly. Um, and so there really wasn't, you know, people just use public transport. And so the only way you could get around. If you wanted to go somewhere that was, there wasn't public transport available, or you couldn't afford it. Um, you walked.

Yeah.

And if it was too far to walk, you hitchhiked.

Yeah. And so.

Well, I imagine in regional and rural Australia, that would have been pretty much the only way to get around if you didn't have a car.

Yeah.

There may have been a bus to the main town or something in a in a certain location, but if you're going somewhere to visit someone who lives kilometres out of town, tens of kilometres or whatever, it's like, what other option? You're not going to jog it?

No!

You know, you're not going to buy a horse when you arrive..

I mean, I remember there were times when when I was a teenager, um, when I would, um, I used to do athletics all summer, every Saturday, competing in athletics. Some of which was not local, some of which was competing for a local club. But once you got to a certain level of competition, you weren't just competing against local clubs, you're competing against all the clubs at that level in Melbourne. And so I was competing in Melbourne, so living 20km out of the city, um, about 16 or 17km anyway, uh, from where the, you know, Olympic Park, as it was at the time. It's now the Collingwood Football Club training area. Um, but when competing there every now and then, it would be. Oh, well, I'm finished for the day. Um, if I didn't have friends that I was competing with that were going my way, I could catch the train and a bus to get home. Um, or I could walk. And and often the walking was or the intention was, I'm going to walk 16km home. Um, but I'll have my thumb out. And so it was almost never, I don't think I ever walk the entire way.

Yeah.

Um, or even the same thing from, you know, catching the train. I could catch the train to two different, on two different lines. One was probably a 4 or 5 kilometre walk home. The other one was a 6 or 7 kilometre walk home. I would do that quite a bit.

That's 6 or 7- so that would be about the distance from my house here to your house, right? About eight, ten, ten to our place, because I'm thinking that would be like a two hour walk. Yeah, that's that's quite a distance.

Well, walking from Sandringham to Beaumaris was, took an hour and a half.

Two hours.

Walking from Mentone to Beaumaris was probably an hour and a bit, you know. So.

It's so funny how foreign that- like it's, it's sort of connected, right. Where the idea of Oh, I'll just, you know, oh, ah someone's calling me. Why? Spam? You know, as soon as it comes from an interstate or something, you're just like..

Yeah, particularly it's not a mobile number.

Get out of here!

I know. Um, it would be so foreign to think about having to walk for half an hour, an hour, to go to someone's house. Like, that's. I remember having to walk around Ocean Grove, where I grew up, obviously to go to other kids houses. And there may be someone's house was, you know, a 20 minute walk away and, or you'd walk to the shops or even there were times when I remember we, you know, the kids, you and I mean, you and me, my, my friends and I, as kids would walk to the bluff, you know, in Barwon Heads. And that was like six K's or walk to the lighthouse in Point Lonsdale again, about eight.

Acres.

And then back. And that would be like quite a quite an ordeal, but usually a social kind of thing of just like, fuck it, let's do it.

Yeah, I'm doing it deliberately, not as a mode of transport.

I can't imagine ever being like, ah, I'll just walk to Geelong to go see my mates, you know. That's a 20 K, 20 K walk. And you're like back in the day, those sorts of things. I guess..

We used to be much..

.. more accepted.

Yeah. We used to walk to. Yeah. Well my girlfriend that I had when I was a teenager, a girlfriend from high school, she lived about three and a half, four K's away.

Mhm.

Um, if I was riding my bike, I would ride my bike there and ride it home again. But often at night, you know, bike didn't have lights. So, you know, you didn't ride your bikes at night unless you wanted to get caught.

But 'caught'?

By the police for riding it illegally without a light. You know how to ride a bike without a light.

Really? See, I have no idea. I've never ridden a bike without a light, so.

No. Exactly. Um, and and so even if I had the bike, I'd be walking home with the bike.

Mhm.

Um, and, but that was just what you did, you know.

Yeah.

It's uh yeah. School was kilometre and a half away. So you'd walk to school every day you know. So.

Yeah.

But yeah. So I think that hitchhiking thing was just if you wanted to go somewhere that took longer, um, then you hitched, but then it became a, you know, beyond the sort of- we're talking 40s and 50s, I think, when it was a mode of transport to for families to say go longer, you know, longer distance than he wanted. But most people are not going to pick up a family of four people. They don't have room in their vehicle. Uh, you might have back in those days, got on the back of a truck or something.

Yeah, that's illegal.

But. Yeah. Uh, it wasn't- when we were kids, we had a couple of friends who had utes.

Kel was telling me about Brazil. She's like..

We have ten kids in the back of this thing going down the beach.

That's how you end up on the news, killing everyone, right? Like that's you have an accident and there's people in the back of the ute. They're dead.

But this is before seatbelts were required, you know? And so we do that all the time! You know, go to, you know, athletic club training.

Yeah. God.

Somebody had a ute and just went, Hey, I'll drop you all home. And you just do the sort of lap of the suburb, dropping about 5 or 6 kids off, and leaping at the back of the ute.

Safety first, guys!

Yeah. Exactly. When you're 14 years old, you don't give a monkey's. You think you're immortal. But then the, uh, the context that we, you know, you sent this to me in to, to discuss was more around the whole what we call now backpackers.

Mhm.

Of, of people going on holidays with a backpack on and getting public transport and so on. Backpacking in the 70s, when I used to do it, um, was hitchhiking.

Yeah.

You'd literally be walking down the road with your backpack on and you'd, you might have an idea of where you intended to go that night, but it was more, well, I'll get as far as I can. And if that's walking 15km down the road, that's where I am, and And I work out where to sleep that night. Um, but if you got picked up, you could end up 100km down the road or further, you know. So.

Yeah. Yeah. What's funny, though, was they had a letter in this article that was apparently from a pub in Tassie where someone was writing saying, you know, we've really appreciated the hospitality of Tasmanians because we got from Devonport to Hobart in a single day in the afternoon because someone gave us a lift and that's hundreds of k's.

Yeah.

Um, but yeah, today it's funny, I guess. Yeah. So you in the 70s, right? The late 70s. Did you do backpacking and hitchhiking around New Zealand?

In New Zealand, yeah. Six, six weeks.

Six months?

Six, six weeks. Over summer.

What was that like? Were you ever scared?

No.

Weird experiences? What was it like?

Oh, it was weird experiences, but not, not frightening, weird experiences.

Yeah. They get in and they just pull the knife out.

Yeah, yeah. The other thing is, you're a 19 year old male. You're, nothing's going to scare you.

Yeah.

Um, even when it should. But, but the world was different in the 70s to from what it is now. And I think this is where we're going, is why hitchhiking doesn't happen now, but.

Yes.

Um, but, yeah, six weeks of hitchhiking around. Now, some of the hitchhiking, some of it was public transport. Where you're going. Yeah. There's some parts in the west coast of the South Island that are fairly remote, and it's 50, 60km or more 100km between towns. You're not going to walk.

Yeah.

And hitchhiking is, the assumption with hitchhiking is that you're going to get picked up.

Yeah.

But the plan B is you're just going to walk.

Yeah.

And you're not going to do that if you're. And particularly with the weather on the west coast of the South Island of New Zealand. Um, it can be cold and raining even the middle of summer. And I had one night there where it was 30 degrees during the day, which I think was the hottest they'd ever had.

Really.

In Te Anau, which is right down the south of the South Island. Well, not quite, but..

Betcha won't be any more. Bet you'll be beating that.

Yeah. Probably. Not by much, though. Mm. Um, and it was 30 degrees during the day, and I'd been out walking around and I was camping little, you know, you know, backpack, a tent. Um, and I had a hammock, a little string hammock. Um, and I strung that up between two trees next to the tent, and I was just lying around that and went, it's better sleeping outside than it is inside tonight. So. Fell asleep 3:00 in the morning. It was snowing on me. So in the early January this was so, um. Yeah, that was a bit of a circus. Um, so there were times where I would actually catch buses, or one time I caught a train. Trains are more expensive, but it was because I deliberately wanted to get from one city to another city, because I wanted to go to an athletics, um, event, not to compete, but just to watch. Um, which in itself had some interesting things about hitchhiking home from a pub at 1:00 in the morning when you didn't really know where you were in a town that you'd only been in for about six hours, because after the athletics meeting, I had a couple of friends who were competing, um, and uh, and they said, Ah, we're all going to the pub. Do you want to come?

Yeah.

Well, okay!

Fuck it.

Fuck it. Yeah. What do I care? Um, so I went to the pub. They all buggered off by 11:00, you know, because they were competing and therefore they had hotel rooms and things. And I was staying in this little backpackers thing on the other side of town. I ended up pitching. Yeah, 1:00 in the morning. You don't get too many lifts in a little town in New Zealand when you're walking along. Um, but yeah. Anyway, that was that was an interesting event because, um, not only did I have a good time at the athletics meeting, went to the pub and sitting there with two Olympic gold medallists having a chat.

Jesus.

But um, but anyway, the the hitchhiking thing was it was just easy. And mostly you were getting picked up by other people who are on holidays, you know, so I reckon 50% of the time that I got picked up hitching around New Zealand, it was by Australians not they knew I was Australian, but Australians,

Well, they're probably the biggest demographic, yeah..

.. demographic of people. And, and back in those days cars were expensive in New Zealand, so hiring a car was expensive. So people tend to do it in a group of people, you know, Hey, we've got four friends and, you know, hire this dinky little car and drive around and they go, Oh, we'll fit you in! You know, just as long as you're willing to sit with your backpack on your lap.

Yeah.

Squeezed in with three people in the back seat of a small car. Um, but yeah. So that was really the experience. It was. It was good fun. Yeah.

Yeah. So did you ever feel unsafe? Was it like, was hitchhiking ever something that..

Not unsafe. Not unsafe in the sense of threat from other people. But there are times where it was unsafe in a sense of I don't know whether I'm going to get to somewhere where I can sleep tonight.

Yeah. Okay. So you may just be turfed on the side of the road.

Because you might. There you go. All right. We're turning left here now. Want to go straight ahead? Or you start off walking from a campground and go. The next one's going to take me two days to walk there. If I don't get picked up, I'm going to be on the side of the road. Side of the road? Yeah. Finding somewhere to sleep. Um, I've only done that once. Slept on a beach. Um, that one must.

Be such a weird experience doing that. Like that wasn't. It was the blink of an eye. You know, in the past where we would often, you know, as hunter gatherers, be moving around and not know where the next meal or food or water or whatever was coming from shelter was going to come from. But today, that seems like such a foreign idea, like, for you to not be out and about.

We're not equipped now either, physically as in the ability to just walk all day, every day.

Yeah.

Um, we don't have the hunting skills, nor is the the prey available to us.

Most of us could last quite a while without food.

Oh, yeah. Exactly. But, you know. But it's that it was more the, you know, in those sense of, you know, it wasn't afraid, but it was concern, I suppose, about where am I going to get to sleep tonight? But that only happened once and it was just sleep on the beach. Safer than sleeping beside the road.

Yeah, true, I guess. Yeah. And so in the late 80s and 90s. Dad, what changed in Australia that made, um, hitchhiking a little more, uh, dangerous? Are you going to mention his name?

Well, you know who I'm talking about. I don't think Ivan Milat was really was really the thing that changed people's behaviour. I think it had changed well and truly before then.

Okay. Because that was brought up in the article, it was a bit..

Oh, yeah, I'm sure it was. And not necessarily that it was. It changed people's generic behaviour of hitching. I think what it changed was and, you know, for background, Ivan Milat is an Australian criminal who would.

Serial killer.

Serial killer who was picking up young women hitchhiking.

And males.

Backpackers.

Yeah, basically taking them off into the bush and killing them.

Raping and killing them, you know.

And, and so the, I think it, it made people aware that the idea of going on a holiday where you were going, your only mode of transport was going to be walking and picking up lifts from strangers was a was a way of doing things. I don't think it necessarily changed people's behaviour of, Hey, you know, I'm out at the pub at night, I've got a ten K walk at home, I'll just hitch home at 1:00 in the morning.

Yeah.

Um, but I think it. So the Ivan Milat factor was part of it.

When you, I guess to, you know, insert the this went on for half a decade or so didn't it, before they caught him. And so there was actually you forget reading about it in history. You think, oh he just did it one day, killed seven people and then got caught. But it's like there was a long period of time where it was just backpackers disappearing.

Yes.

And never been found.

We found out that most of them were this..

But I think, they didn't even really- like they got enough to convict him and everything, but I don't think they ever really got to the complete bottom of any of it. I'm not sure if they got all the bodies.

Not that I'm aware of.

It's such an interesting story. If you go down into it, because he had a whole bunch of brothers and sisters and they found a bunch of backpackers equipment and gear at his brother's house. And so they they still don't know if his brother was involved with it. He's been on interviews saying, Oh, no, I never had anything to do with it. Ivan just had this spare gear that I just wanted to take off in. And you're just like, there's so much more going on.

But I know the whole, that whole. Well, apart from the horror of it, it was was a bit weird.

But I imagine at that point two cars were becoming more and more prevalent around the place, and so it would have been stranger to see people without them needing a ride, right? I imagine that was gradual over..

Public transport became more available and relatively cheaper. Obviously not an absolute term, relatively cheaper. But I think the other thing was that people were less likely to pick up hitchhikers.

Yeah.

Because of the fear of something going wrong.

It's interesting, isn't it? Because I think there were. You wonder if you were to tally it all up, you know, were there more crimes that were committed against people picking up hitchhikers.

Or by the hitchhikers?

Or no, or by the people doing it to the hitchhikers, right. Like so were there more criminals getting who were hitchhiking, getting in cars and then robbing people or murdering people or vice versa, like Ivan Milat picking people up and then being like, let's just go for a trip..

Who knows what the proportion is. But but I think I was certainly more aware. Well, I by the time I was driving, I was a lot less likely to be hitchhiking, obviously. Um, but I was more aware of not picking up hitchhikers myself.

Yeah.

Than not hitchhiking myself.

Yeah. So..

And so I go out and hitchhike..

No, I actually no, I wouldn't, because I already had a car. But if I, if it had been an option, I probably would have gone, oh that'll still be okay. But driving I can remember a time and I can't remember exactly when it was, but I can remember a time where I went passing people who were hitchhiking going a few years ago. I would have stopped and picked them up.

Mhm.

Not now.

See, I've done it. I think I've done it once and I ended up sort of becoming pretty good friends with the guy. Um, this was I think I got him out of Barwon Heads. He was going out of Barwon Heads, walking towards Geelong, and I'm like, Fuck, this is this is probably like, you know, multiple hours walking, you know, it's 20km or so. And he was just a funny character. He was kind of like, um, Bernard Fanning, right? From um, powdered, Powderfinger. He reminds me of him. He was a guitar player. He just had a guitar. And he was just a really rough, kind of funny dude who was living in Barwon Heads and, you know, um, moving around the place, but transient. Um, but today. Yeah. If it from memory any of the hitchhikers that I've seen, they typically look like dudes who you just would not want to pick up.

No.

They look like guys who have probably just gotten out of prison and don't have a car license.

Yeah.

You know, and they're that sort of like, I'm just not risking it. I'm sorry. Like, maybe if I was, uh, 6.5ft. Um. You know.

Jack Reacher.

Yeah. That's it. You can get in..

Who, ironically, hitchhikes.

Yeah, exactly. I'll give anyone a lift, but um..

That was just a reference to a fictional character, but,

Mhm.

Um. Yeah, I can remember the last person, the last hitchhiker I picked up, and it was. We were living in the Dandenong, so that's at least 30 years ago.

Do you remember where you buried him?

Yeah, I do! I buried the, buried her at her boyfriend's 21st birthday party.

As in let her out of the car and so she could safely go away to heaven.

And it was one of those weird one I was. I had been playing basketball in Melbourne, and I was driving back home and going, you know, living in the Dandenongs where the direction I was going in because I wasn't playing right in Melbourne, I was playing just south of Melbourne. So we were driving. By the time you get to the second half of that drive back in those days, it was wilderness, you know, it was rural. Um, and I remember driving along and this young girl on, you know, a couple of kilometres past the last bit of civilisation, which was a pub, and it was about midnight. And I went, what is this? She looked like she was about 16 or 17, you know. What is this girl doing walking along the road at midnight? And I wasn't intending to pick her up. Um, I just pulled over, wound the window down and said, Are you okay?

Mhm.

And she just said, Ah, I haven't got any money. So I couldn't get a taxi. I was at the pub but I closed and they kicked me out and I'm going to my boyfriend's 21st and I went, This sounds like bullshit to me. And I'm..

You were just like, Really? I'm about to be wrong.

And this is before the days of mobile phones.

Yeah.

And, and I looked and went and she had nothing. She was just walking along the road. No, not even a handbag or anything. I went..

You should have just been like, All right, see ya!

Yeah, well pretty much. And I just sat there and went and I said to her, I said, what have you, why would you trust me?

Yeah.

Picking you up? And she just said, I just need to get there.

Mhm.

I mean there's a risk here of all sorts of things that..

I'm about to get stabbed!

Exactly. But the bigger risk is the next person who comes along to pick her up.

It's funny isn't it, because you have to kind of weigh those things up.

And this is, yeah, this is the, I was a school teacher at the time teaching teenage kids. Um, and I just went, If it was one of them, I'd want somebody..

Turn around. Any weapons? Any weapons.

Exactly.

Like, please stand in the car.

And look, you know, there's also the, you know, the risk of, you know..

Her just saying something.

Her just saying, Oh, you know, this guy picked me up and look what happened. Um.

You'd be like, God damn it.

And so I said, so where's the. She said, Oh, you can just drop me at the corner. And I said, there is no chance I'm going to drop you at the corner. Give me the address.

Yeah.

And I drove her to the house. She said, You know, just drop me here and I said, Nope!

Yeah.

Come with me! And we walked up the door, knocked on the door, and it was a party in midnight. It was a party going on. And there's this woman who was a bit older than me, answered the door, and and she looked at the girl and went, Oh, whatever her name was. And I just said, I'm just going to tell you, you can deal with this how you choose. I picked her up on this spot. She'd just been at the pub.

Yeah.

And this girl looked at me and went, You bastard! I went, Nah, I'm sorry.

Yeah, I'm not gonna. I'm in trouble.

I picked her up because I didn't want to leave there. And this was the boyfriend's mother. It turned out that the whole story was legit.

Yeah.

But it was. And the woman just said to me. She said, thank you for doing that.

Yeah. Jeez.

If. And then turned her and said, Why didn't you call us from the pub? Oh, I didn't have any money. He said, surely they would have just let you use the phone, you know? And then, Why were you at the pub? You know, you're 16 or 17, you know, so. But. Yeah. And that's the last time I've ever picked somebody up.

Yeah.

Yeah. So, um. Yeah. Hitchhiking. It's, um. And you just never see it. Now, I can't remember the last time I saw somebody.

I think there'd be areas in Australia. It's one of those you don't.

See in Victoria because it's illegal. So.

Yeah, but I imagine there are areas where if you're regional or you're, you know, the small towns, you probably know people recognise people. It probably happens more frequently where. Yeah. And it's one of those weird things like the smaller the town, the more friendlier people are and the more I think, you know, open to those sorts of things. But as soon as you there's a certain threshold of population size that you get past, where people stop waving and smiling at each other and just being like, ah, my, my own business and keep to myself.

Oh, look. And I've had times where I've stopped and asked if people are okay on the side of the road, particularly out in the country. Um, you're not going to do it in the city. People walking down the street.

'You okay, mate?'.

What's he got to do with you? I'm just walking this down with a dog.

.. sad!

.. taking my dog for a walk down the street. Um, but. And I had it the other day when to me, I was just, you know, out up in the country photographing birds..

I imagine people come up and they're just like, Are you okay?

'You bastard.'

'Are you okay, mate?'

Um, 'You look like you're going to have a heart attack!' No, I just parked the car and, you know, saw birds flying around in the, you know, roadside vegetation, um, parked the car, got out, walked probably 7 or 800m back up the road following these birds up there. The guy's just driven past. Said, Is that your car up there? Yep. Said, You're okay?

You're like, I'm trying to find mushrooms!

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

'You want to come for dinner? I'm cooking beef Wellington.'

Yeah. That's it.

Yeah. And and he and he just said, Okay, I just want to make sure. I said, Well, thanks for stopping, you know. So.

'Get out.'.

Yeah.

'Give me your car.'.

Exactly.

'Where are your keys?'

And so I mean, that's a pretty common thing. If you're out in the country and you see somebody doing something that appears to be stranded. But but there is also that element now of the fear of carjacking and stuff, 100% that people go and, you know, I to be frank, I am not the typical sort of cohort type carjackers that you would assume. I'm walking down the street with a camera, pointing it up in the trees, you know.

'He's gonna rob us!'

He's gonna rob- he's going to hit us with his camera!

What's worse is he's going to show us his pictures.

Of his fucking birds.

'And then there's this other one..'.

'Just take the man! Just take the car!'

'.. yellow tufted honeyeater was down here.'.

Yeah. Jesus. 'Just take the car, man. Don't. Don't punish us.' 'We don't care about your fucking birds.'.

Exactly.

Yeah, I don't know. I found it interesting. Yeah, because it's one of those things that obviously, the further we go into the future, the more I'm sort of becoming interested in going back and watching films from Australian history and like the 50s and 60s and 70s. And I feel like there would be a lot of this kind of cultural stuff that's slowly crept out of the normal, you know, behaviour of people, or our normal culture that you guys would do, but like smoking indoors, right? That was something that happened when I was younger.

Smoking!

Smoking. Yeah.

Smoking will stop- but seeing people smoking in pubs and restaurants and trust me, you see that in in all sorts of shows. Is it that 'we're a weird mob'? That, that movie from the 60s about an Italian migrant who comes over and looks for work and he's, it's effectively a whole..

The thing about him, understanding the culture and the language.

Yeah, it's a great film and I think you'd find it on YouTube. 'They're a Weird Mob', right? They're a weird group of people. 'They're a Weird Mob.'

It's based on a series of books that he wrote.

Yeah, but there's a scene where he goes into a pub and I think they're all smoking and having a drink straight after work altogether. Like it's that.

Yes.

That rush hour time, right?

Yeah.

And that..

Well, that was 6:00.

.. happens anymore. Yeah.

That was 6:00 closing.

Yeah. And so watching that though, I remember watching that a few years ago and being like, these are so foreign to me, these cultural things that at the time would have been so normal and natural are so foreign to me, and I only know of them through film and through stories and through other people telling me. So I wonder how many, how many things today, you know, that we do that we take for granted. Um, that in a number of decades you'll look back and be like, what the fuck were we thinking?

That's an interesting thing, isn't it? Because I think, I look back at the last 60 something years about the changes that have happened. Um, and most of the last 20 years have been technology related.

Yeah.

Um, that, you know, communications is the obvious example that we we all walk around with a camera in our pocket that is also a communications device. Well, and you've.

Seen those things on TikTok and Instagram and Facebook, the little, um, videos reels of people asking, uh, their daughters and their partners how they answer a phone, do they? The signals with your hand?

Yeah.

How do you hang up a phone? And they show usually the younger person pressing their hand, like a button on their hand.

Yeah.

Or holding their flat hand up to their ear.

Yeah.

And these are all weird..

Doing the thumb and the little finger..

Yeah. Exactly. Like you've actually picked up one of those..

And they put it down horizontally.

Yeah. There's a whole bunch of..

What does the word 'hanging up' mean?

Yeah. What are you hanging it on.

Yeah. Because originally and even..

That never made on the wall.

That never made sense even to me when I was a kid because we didn't have a wall phone.

Yeah, yeah.

We had a handset. But to 'hang up' meant to actually put the receiver, as we called it, which was a transceiver, but with the receiver down. Whereas the- back in the olden days before that, the old phones, you would literally hang it up on the wall.

Yeah.

You click it off.

Well, even just calling people randomly that aren't, you know, that on a landline or there's like, I just don't answer anyone's phone number who isn't in my phone now. Because I got, I've been spammed so much. This is probably the last 3 or 4 years, of just somehow your phone number gets out there. You've entered it into something online.

It's random now.

Really, they just generate them. Yeah.

Now half the spam is..

Get a hit.

Is legitimate spam, in a sense that they already know your name.

Mhm. And the other half's..

The other half is just, is is a scam. There's a difference between a spam and a scam. Spam is they know who you are.

Mhm.

A scam is where it's just randomised numbers. They just got to, you know, a computer that is just generating calls. And if it answers then it'll either be an automated robot talking to you or a person who doesn't know who you are. But um, but But yeah, I'm the same. I. You know, there was a while, you know, when I was working, um, I had to answer the phone because I didn't know the phone numbers of clients, particularly when I was working for a company that and from all over the world, you know, I had people ringing me from Singapore or India or Canada. And so you'd effectively have to answer the phone from anywhere. You know, you might not answer a phone if it came up as Uzbekistan, but. But now I probably wouldn't even do it, you know. Now, I'd just let it go to voicemail. And if they don't leave a message, I won't call them back, you know, and I won't pick it up. Um, so yeah, there is that sort of thing. But yeah, I think technology is a thing that has changed the way we live so much.

Eating meat will be one of them. Eating meat from animals that were, that were killed and the meat was harvested from them. That the moment that that becomes, it becomes as affordable, if not cheaper to grow it in a lab. We're going to look back on the fact that we factory farmed and everything in horror. I think it's one of those things that morally and ethically, you're going to look back and be like, you guys were fucking psychos.

Yeah.

You know, the fact that you had billions of of, you know, intelligent animals that were being raised on farms just to be consumed. It won't be one of those things where I think you would judge them so harshly because you had no other option. But it'll be that thing of, I can't imagine doing that today, if you had the option.

Yeah, it's funny one, isn't it, because I'm, I think the, the equivalent step back to that is hunting and killing.

Yeah.

You know, I don't think I would be I'm probably physically capable, but I don't think I would be emotionally capable of going out and hunting, shooting a kangaroo, slaughtering it and eating it.

Well, not just the step between there, preparing it to be eaten as well.

Yeah, but I, you know, I don't I don't know that I would, I would be emotionally capable of doing that in that same sense, the whole idea of actually killing the animal myself and preparing it to eat. Whereas I'm perfectly happy to go and buy kangaroo meat, or beef or lamb or pork or chicken or fish or whatever.

Outsource all of the gross stuff.

Well, it's not even outsourcing the gross stuff. It's just, yeah, there's a bit of it. That's the gross stuff, but it's just outsourcing to specialists.

Yeah.

But we're not hunter gatherers anymore. Um, so, so I think it's that step, but I perfectly understand that people did that and they still have to do it in order for me to eat the meat. But it's not the you know, I'm not trekking through the bush with my rifle anymore. I'm using meat that has been, you know, grown on the farm down the road. So.

Yeah, it will be interesting.

How do we get on this from hitchhiking?

I don't know.

Yeah.

I don't know.

Life.

Anyway, thanks for joining us, guys. Hopefully you enjoyed it. And you'll have to let me know if you guys hitchhike around your home. Home countries if it's still acceptable elsewhere.

Yeah!

Apparently it's more acceptable than, you know, New Zealand and Ireland. Apparently those two places, at least based on this article, they were saying it's more acceptable there to hitchhike, which I can imagine because again, smaller population.

Like, tourism..

Tourism and places close together.

Yeah. So. Cool.

See ya!

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