My Life in Words

Now that I have been here a few months, I thought I would put together a list of some of the terms and expressions that are very commonly used in Australia, but not at home. There are lots of different slang words that I’ve come across, but the ones listed below are the ones commonly used in everyday conversation. I find myself using some of these expressions more and more. When I do, I feel like a bit of an imposter, but it’s not intentional. When you hear everyone saying the same things all the time, you can’t help but pick it up. Also thought I would share a few “cultural” differences; things that I wouldn’t even think twice about at home, but that are different here. Terms and Expressions 1. “Flick” – As in: to flick an email (instead of “send an email” or “forward an email”). For example: “I’ll flick you the email I got yesterday,” or, “Can you flick me those instructions?” 2. “Mate” – Before I moved here, I thought this was just an Australian stereotype (like the way...

Time for another blog post. This time, however, I have some travel stories to discuss that involve something other than mines (although...I do have some of that to talk about too). Trip 4 – Sydney->Tamworth->Gunnedah->Tamworth->Sydney I was up early last Monday to travel again for work; you’ll never guess where I went this time. A coal mine! Surprise surprise. By the time this secondment is over I’m going to be a coal mining expert. We flew into Tamworth on Monday morning, which is about a 45 minute flight from Sydney. It’s north west of Newcastle, but farther north and west than Gloucester (where I was last week). After that, it was supposed to be a 50 minute drive to Gunnedah, but of course nothing is ever easy. There had been heavy rain that weekend and the road had washed out. So we ended up having to take the long way around and drive about 2 hours to get to the client. We were lucky though… the other team of people who were going up to the other mine ...