Goodbye Australia

Friday 20th March – Goodbye Australia

Left Hervey Bay just before 06:00 and drove south-westwards, joining the Bruce highway at Maryborough. The drive was slow due to speed restrictions until the road became motorway close to Noosa and the speed limit increased to 110 km/hr. Dropped car off at the airport at 10:00 after a big Aussie breakfast in the Coolabah Cafe at the nearby service station.

Superb flight to Darwin over outback and then the Gulf of Carpentaria. Darwin airport has free internet access so I can get up to date whilst waiting for the flight to Bali!





Notes on a Large Island

Aussie Speak

In Australia, they seem to be using English in an idiomatic fashion. Someone will tell you a fact, then invite you to wonder at it. For example the statement ' These trees are 30m tall.' may be followed by the question 'Isn't that amazing?', or 'This lake is 80,000 years old.' by the question 'Can you imagine that?'. The standard reply in most cases is 'Awesome!'. Conversations are thus carried out as a series of interposed statements and questions, inviting short appreciative responses. This fits in well with the cadence of the speech where phrases tend to be delivered with a rising pitch towards the end.

Possibly in an immigrant country where English is frequently not the first language, this form of speech allows the speaker to frequently monitor whether the respondent is actually understanding the information being imparted, similar to the use of 'innit?' or 'OK?' in some vernacular English dialects.

Questions are also used as introductions, so you are frequently asked ' How are you today?' by way of opening a conversation.

Inanimate objects are often imbued with personality, so I've heard ' A truck has decided to off-load its contents on the motorway' and ' Our submersible decided to go walk-about during the cyclone'.

Names are often abbreviated to end in 'y'. So Rockhampton is referred to as 'Rocky', Tasmania is 'Tazzy' and Bundaberg is 'Bundy'. I have no idea what 'Sydney' is the contacted form of.

Aussies.

From the media, I was expecting to meet Australians who were beer swilling, drunken, loud, opinionated and boorish. What I found was that those attributes seem to be confined to a few professional football players whilst the vast majority of the population are sober, happy, friendly, well educated, polite and charming people with a natural exuberance and inquisitiveness.

Aussie Driving

Australia is big. Everywhere is quite a distance away and you need to allow a lot of time for travel. The roads are like the UK in the 1960s. Speed limits are low, and because of urban sprawl along ribbon developments, speed restrictions make long distance driving extremely tedious in populated regions. Most accidents seem to be caused by drivers falling asleep and I think the soporific nature of the driving conditions is mostly to blame. Motorways are more like main roads. Bypasses are infrequent and where they do exist are likely to be restricted to similar speeds as driving through the town centre, and may actually take longer to drive round. Main roads tend to be single carriageway, one lane each way, with an additional passing lane every 5km or so. Petrol stations are infrequent and even on main routes may be over 50km apart, so it is important to refill more often than normal in order to maintain a range of at least 100km.

Hire cars are restricted to sealed roads, so you need to check on a map to make sure the road to your destination is metalled.