Always fun to make fun of our cousins across the Ditch

 

States of Australia – Western Australia

Here is the last instalment of my monthly feature going through the States of Australia in alphabetical order to check out how they got named, what their flag is like and other things of interest. 

Location – Western Australia is huge.  It takes up the entire left hand third of mainland Australia.  It is almost a million square miles.  That's quite a lot bigger than Texas.

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Capital – Perth (also the state's largest city). Perth is named after Perth in Scotland. Perth is closer to Singapore than to Australia's capital, Canberra.

State Bird – Black swan (for a long time people believed there were no such things as black swans)

State Animal - Numbat

Signature foods – wines from Margaret River, Seafood, Mangoes

Famous places to visit – The Pinnacles, Nature's Window's (Kalbarri National Park), Horizontal Waterfalls, Rottnest Island, King's Park in Perth (larger than New York's Central Park)

Famous people from Western Australia – Heath Ledger, Alan Bond, Rod Marsh (wicketkeeper)

Australian State of the Month – Tasmania

Here is the next instalment of my monthly feature going through the States of Australia in alphabetical order to check out how they got named, what their flag is like and other things of interest. 

Location – Tasmania is different from other states – it is an island off the Southern Coast of mainland Australia.  The British settled it as a penal colony.

Origin of name – Tasmania was first called 'Van Diemen's Land' but in 1855 this was changed to Tasmania.  The name recognises the Dutch explorer Abel Tasman who was the first European to sight the island.

Nicknames – Tassie, The Apple Isle

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Capital – Hobart

Flower – Tasmanian Bluegum

Animal – Tasmanian Devil ( a small fierce looking marsupial)

Signature foods – Tasmanian Scallop Pie, Tasmanian Apple Cake, Farmed salmon, wild abalone, honey

Famous places to visit – Port Arthur (beautiful now but with a violent history as a penal colony and the site of a massacre in 1996), Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart (one of the oldest cities in Australia and is overlooked by Mt Wellington), Wineglass Bay (great name), Sunset at Strahan

Famous businesses/brands – Cascade Beer, Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race

Famous people from Tasmania – Mary, Crown Princess of Denmark, Elizabeth Blackburn (first woman from Tasmania to get a Nobel Prize), David Foster (wood chopping world champion), Ricky Ponting (said to be a cricketer)

Australian State of the Month – South Australia

Here is the next instalment of my monthly feature going through the States of Australia in alphabetical order to check out how they got named, what their flag is like and other things of interest. 

Location – South Australia has borders with every other state except Tasmania (which is an island).  Just under 2 million people live in the state, about ¾ of them in and around Adelaide.

Nicknames – The Festival State, The Wine State

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Capital – Adelaide (largest city too) – named after the wife of King William IV, founded in 1836 as a planned capital.  It was formed from free settlers – not as a penal colony.

Flower – Sturt's Desert Pea

State Bird – Piping shrike – important enough to be on the flag

State Animal – Southern hairy-nosed wombat

State Sports – Australian Rules Football (don't understand it at all but quite like  the outfits) and in the summer, Cricket

Signature foods – Pie floater ( a classic meat pie sitting in pea soup)

Great places to visit – McClaren Vale, Barossa Valley, any of the many festivals

Famous businesses/brands – Australia builds most of its submarines here.

Famous people from South Australia – Sir Donald Bradman, Maggie Beer (born NSW but farms in SA), Robert Stigwood (producer),Vernon Knowles (writer),  the Chappell brothers (cricket), Lleyton Hewitt (tennis), Sia (eccentric pop star)

Sorry about this... Marking Australia Day ... have a great day, all my Aussie cousins

Where Did That Come From? The Aussie Edition

This time I'm sharing some Australian sayings and trying to explain what they mean and why they are what they are.  Expect a little bias here – I am a New Zealander and we have a big brother, little sister type of relationship with our closest neighbours (still a 3 hour flight away to their closest coast).

No it has nothing to do with Burl Ives – but I just liked the picture. Give it a burl – this means go on, give it a go or a try – this one works in NZ as well.  I always thought that 'burl' might be a distortion of 'whirl' but according to various online dictionaries 'burl' was actually 'birl' and related to putting something into a rotary action – such as flipping a coin.

It's gone walkabout – as in my phone's gone walkabout ie it's missing, I don't know where it is.  This one's very Australian – it refers to the Aboriginal peoples – as part of becoming a man teenagers would go out into the bush/wilderness for a period. 

He's a few sandwiches short of a picnic – if someone says this about you – be offended – it suggests that you are either dumb as a brick or mad as a hatter.  Why sandwiches?  Sandwiches to Australasians are 2 pieces of bread around a filling like a slice of ham with mustard.  My best guess is that if you were a proper picnic you would have more food – but you come up short so the picnic is inadequate.

Budgie Smugglers – you can see from the pic what are called budgie smugglers.  And it doesn't take too much imagination to work out why the saying applies – when walking along in these you look like you are smuggling little birds.  Poor birds!  The guy in the pic was the Australian Prime Minister at the time….sigh….

Happy as Larry – who the heck is Larry?  One theory is that Larry was Larry Foley (an Australian boxer) who won a large prize fight – and a newspaper headline was 'Happy as Larry'.  Another possibility is that it was a shortening of the term 'larrikin' – which means someone who is out for a lark, a bit of a rough diamond.  So if you are as happy as Larry, you are very happy indeed.

Spit the dummy – we would say 'throw his toys out of the cot' instead but the meaning is the same.  It refers to someone who in a fit of temper does something childish or silly.

He doesn't know whether he's Arthur or Martha – Like Larry, we don't know who either Arthur or Martha is.  The original phrase has nothing to do with not knowing your gender – it means not knowing whether you are coming or going ie you are totally confused.