All Things Australian

Meat pies in the oven at home.









Derek, Terry, Blaise and Braeden getting ready to dig in to their meat pies. Derek and Blaise were working on their tans, thus the oily chests!

Double coat Tim Tams are chocolate coated cookies, they are delicious!

Cordial is a concentrated juice/beverage that you mix with water. Flat Mrs. Abbott loves the Mocha Chill which is chocolate and coffee milk.

Here is Rice Bubbles or what we would call Rice Krispies. Nutr-Grain is what the boys like to eat and Flat Mrs. Abbott likes the fruit yogurt and muesli. Muesli is like granola without the sugar.

The grade ones in Mrs. Bouma, Mrs. Ryder and my class have been asking Flat Mrs. Abbott questions about life in Australia. I took a few pictures to show them the foods we like to eat here. Australians also have their own slang and even though we have lived here before we are still learning new words. Thanks to the Rydings, the family we are exchanging homes with, we have an Australian slang dictionary to help us figure out what people are talking about!

Here is some Australian slang and some information about school in Australia.

G'day is a pretty easy one it means good day.

How are you going? This is the same as asking how are you doing?

Heaps of fun. We would say lots of fun.

Last weekend my friend Jenny asked me to meet her at the groin on the beach. Huh? I'm sorry Jenny, I don't know what you mean! It turns out that a groin is what we would refer to as a breakwater. Good thing Jenny could explain it to me, I didn't have to look that one up in the dictionary.

A mate is a friend. We learned this time that a cobber is another name for for a mate or friend.

The other night we were watching the news on tv. A man was accused of hooning. Can you guess what hooning is? It means to drive recklessly. This guy was the mechanic at a shop and he took a customer's lamborghini and went hooning down the freeway at over 150 kmh.

When students graduate from high school they are called school leavers. We call our school leavers, graduates.

In school instead of saying you are in grade one you would say you are in year one.

If you are in Kindy here you are 3 or 4 years old. If you are in pre-school you are 5 years old.

Footy is the word to describe Australian rules football.

A capsicum is a pepper, such as a red pepper.

Bathers is the word for a bathing suit.

A bottle shop is a liquor store and petrol is gas.

A biscuit is a cookie.

If I said "go and put that rubbish in the bin", I would mean "go and put that garbage in the garbage can."

People in Australia use the word reckon a lot. We would say I think it might rain today, whereas Australians would say I reckon it might rain today.

On the news the announcer would say "sport is coming up next", in Canada the news announcer would say "sports is coming up next".

When saying the date, in Australia they would say November thirty. We would say November thirtieth.

I think the thing we have noticed the most about our language differences is that Australians like to shorten words, for example, choc muffins, instead of chocolate chip muffins or air con instead of air conditioning. It doesn't take long to start adopting the Australian lingo. It certainly saves time!