Being Straylyan
 

At last, a yardstick by which you can measure an "Australian" For those of you who haven't met an Australian and are not sure what one is REALLY like!
You're not Australian 'til...

1) You've mimicked Alf Stewart from the TV show Home and Away's broad, Australian accent, eg. push off, ya flamin' drongo!"

2) You've had an argument with your mate over whether Ford or Holden makes the better car!

3) You've done the "hot sand" dance at the beach while running from the ocean back to your towel.

4) You know who Ray Martin is.

5) You start using words like "reckon" and "root" and call people "mate".

6) You stop greeting people with "hello" and go straight to the "how ya doin'?"

7) You've seriously considered running down the shop in a pair of Ugg Boots

8) You own a pair of ugg boots.

9) You've been to a day-nighter cricket match and screamed out incomprehensibly until your throat went raw.

10) You kind of know the first verse to the national anthem, but don't know what "girt" means.

11) You have a story that somehow revolves around excess consumption of alcohol and a mate named "Dave".

12) You've risked attending an outdoor music festival on the hottest day of the year.

13) You've tried to hang off a clothesline while pretending you can fly.

14) You've had a visit to the emergency room after hanging off the clothesline pretending you can fly.

15) You own a pair of thongs for everyday use, and another pair of "dress thongs" for special occasions.

16) You don't know what's in a meat pie, and you don't care.

17) You pronounce Australia as "Stralya"

18) You call soccer soccer, not football

19) You've squeezed Vegemite through vita wheat to make little Vegemite worms.

20) You suck your coffee through a Tim Tam.

21) You realise that lifeguards are the only people who can get away with wearing Speedos.

22) You pledge allegiance to Vegemite over Promite.

23) You understand the value of public holidays.

24) Your weekends are spent barracking for your favourite sports team.

25) You have a toilet dolly.

26) Your Mum or Nan made it.

27) You've played beach cricket with a tennis ball and a bat fashioned out of a fence post.

28) You firmly believe that in the end, everything will be ok, and have told a mate in tough times that "She'll be right, mate"

29) You use the phrase, "no worries" at least once a day.

30) You've been on a beach holiday and have probably stayed in a caravan.

31) You constantly shorten words to "brekkie", "arvo" and "barbie"

32) You've adopted a local bar as your own.

33) You know the oath of mateship can never be limited by geographical distance.

34) You measure a journey in beer, not kilometres or time. (That's a 3 beer trip mate).

There's a lot of reasons that I make of hanging out with the Straylians at the international conference I go to every other year. Several of them are on that list.

What actually charmed me about this year's crop is that they made a point of becoming acquainted with the homeless guy who was sleeping on the leeward side of our hotel.

lol...did they invite him for a beer?

Courtesy of an old mate of mine:
"the australian sailor's hornpipe" (to the tune of the sailor's hornpipe)

tiddlywinks old bean,
have you ever seen a queen?
have you ever seen a salmon up a dead sardine?
I've seen a tinker up a tailor and a soldier up a sailor
but I've never seen a slamon up a dead sardine!

I want to move to straylya.

I passed more of those questions than I do on the red or blue necks quizzes.

I can relate to #3, 11, 12, and 32....all apply to South Florida as well!

Add a #35: You have ever got 3rd degree burns from touching your steering wheel when you go out to your car after work.

You have a mate that you don't kiss.

That depends, are we talking footwear or underwear?http://www.cellar.org/images/smilies/wink.gif

If you just want to pretend to be Strine: Let Stalk Strine.

We apparently do this in Philly, too.

But...no ugg boots for me! I like biker boots.

What happened to G'day? And why does the 'how ya doin'?' remind me more of New Jersey?

That's because Australia is the New Jersey of the Southern Hemisphere.

No, how YOU doin'?

If australia had fatwas I'd issue one against you but we're too lazy mate.

Can you adopt me?

It's too damn cold here right now!

add #36: You've been on a pub crawl

new Aussie definitions

billabonk: to make passionate love beside a waterhole
bludgie: a partner who doesn't work but is kept as a pet
dodgeridoo: a fake indigenous artefact.
fair drinkum: good quality Aussie wine.
flatypus: a cat which has been run over by a vehicle
matesh*t: all your flatmate's belongings lying strewn around the floor
shagman: an unemployed male roaming the Australian bush in search of sexual activity
yabble: the unintelligible language of Australian freshwater crustaceans
bushwanker: a pretentious drongo who reckons he's above average when it comes to handling himself in the scrub
crackie daks: 'hipster' tracksuit pants
shornbag: a particularly attractive naked sheep
technicolour lawn: the front yard after a rave party


My first Cellar post - ripper!

hahahahahahaha...that was a great first post! Made me laugh. I'm going to have to use some of those ones.

just joshing ya, mate.

But you do have fat wallas?

Welcome to the cellar. The above entitles you to at least half a dozen thoroughly inane posts over which nobody will bust your shoes. It's that good.

The thing I like most about "Straylyans" is they can laugh at themselves openly. :thumb2:

What lovely, welcoming people you all are :blush:. I had all but stopped posting on any websites - too much bitchiness as a rule; I even got cold shouldered on an online knitting group :worried: . I think I'm going to like it in here! Here's another bit about we Antipodeans:

The following tips were issued to “blow ins” during the Sydney Olympics in 2000:

1) The bigger the hat, the smaller the farm.

2) The shorter the nickname, the more they like you.

3) Whether it's the opening of Parliament, or the launch of a new art gallery, there is no Australian event that cannot be improved by a sausage sizzle.

4) If the guy next to you is swearing like a wharfie he's probably a media billionaire. Or, just conceivably, a wharfie.

5) There is no food that cannot be improved by the application of tomato sauce.

6) On the beach, all Australians hide their keys and wallet by placing them inside their sandshoes. No thief has ever worked this out. We might have very stupid thieves. Or really stinky sandshoes.

7) Industrial design knows of no article more useful than the milk crate.

8) All our best heroes are losers.

9) The alpha male in any group is he who takes the barbecue tongs from the hands of the host and blithely begins turning the snags.

10) It's not summer until the steering wheel is too hot to hold.

11) A thong is not a piece of scanty swimwear, as in America, but a fine example of footwear. A group of sheilas wearing black rubber thongs may not be as exciting as you had hoped.

12) It is proper to refer to your best friend as "a total bastard''. By contrast, your worst enemy is "a bit of a bastard''.

13) Historians believe the widespread use of the word "mate'' can be traced to the harsh conditions on the Australian frontier in the 1890s, and the development of a code of mutual aid, or "mateship''. Alternatively, we may all just be really hopeless with names.

14) The wise man chooses a partner who is attractive not only to himself, but to neighbourhood mosquitoes.

15) If it can't be fixed with pantyhose and fencing wire, it's not worth fixing.

16) The most popular and widely praised family in any street is the one that just happens to have the swimming pool.

17) It's considered better to be down on your luck than up yourself.

18) The phrase "we've got a great lifestyle'' means everyone in the family drinks too much.

19) The poisoning of Phar Lap remains the purest example of what happens when Australians attempt to take on the outside world.

20) If invited to a party, you should take cheap red wine, but then spend all night drinking the host's beer. Don't worry, he'll have catered for it.

21) If there's any sort of free event or party within a hundred kilometres, you'd be a mug not to go.

22) When tipping in a restaurant, we add 10 per cent, and then round down to the nearest large-denomination note. Yet, miraculously, we still believe we've tipped 10 per cent.

23) The phrase "a simple picnic'' is not known. Or at least not acted upon. You should take everything. If you don't need to make three trips back to the car, you are not trying.

24) Unless ethnic, you are not permitted to sit down in your front yard, or on your front porch. Pottering about, gardening or fence-leaning is acceptable. Just don't sit. That's what backyards are for.

25) Out in the bush, the tarred road always ends just after the house of the local mayor.

26) A flash sportscar driven by a middle-aged man does not incite envy as in America but hilarity.

27) On picnics, the Esky is always too small, creating a food versus grog battle that can only ever be resolved by leaving the salad at home.

28) When on a country holiday, the motel neon advertising the pool will always be slightly larger than the actual pool.

29) The men are tough, but the women are tougher.

30) The chief test of manhood is one's ability to install a beach umbrella in high winds.

31) There comes a time in every Australian's life when one realises that the Aeroguard is far, far worse than the flies.

32) And, finally, don't let the tourist books fool you. No-one says "cobber''.

Helpful? No worries.

I love it!

I think some of the funniest phrases are said in everyday life over there. We were driving down the road, and the wife of our host gets a call from the babysitter. She talks to the babysitter for a few seconds then hangs up. (Bear in mind these are first time parents and their child has them wrapped around her finger)

Wife: "Wayne, Millie is crackin' the shits"
Husband: "oh no, do you think we should go back"
My husband: "is there something wrong"
Husband: "Oh every time we leave her behind she cracks the wicked shits"
Me: "Oh my god, is she going to be OK?"

This goes on for a while before I realize that Millie is throwing a fit at the babysitters, and not having some kind of bowel issue.

Oh - speaking of bowel issues, I love that toilet paper is called Poo Tickets!

or bog roll. ;)