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    On the Wallaby Track: Essential Australian Words and Phrases
    On the Wallaby Track: Essential Australian Words and Phrases
    On the Wallaby Track: Essential Australian Words and Phrases
    Ebook1,365 pages1 hour

    On the Wallaby Track: Essential Australian Words and Phrases

    By Laine Cunningham

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    About this ebook

    Think Aussies speak English? Think again!

    Between the strong accent, Aussie slang, Aboriginal words that have become a common part of speech, and words garnered from their United Kingdom-based history, understanding Australian English can be a challenge.

    After Laine Cunningham spent six months camping alone in the Outback, she wrote this book to help other travelers make the most of their vacations. She began by traveling from Sydney, New South Wales to Adelaide, South Australia. From there she headed to Coober Pedy, and then further to Alice Springs,, Northern Territory. A jog east took her to a cattle range near the Queensland Coast, up to Cairns, and then back out to Darwin. Another wide arc headed down the coast of Western Australia through Monkey Mia and Perth. Then she made the long drive across the Nullarbor Plain back to Adelaide.

    By covering over 17,000 miles, Laine compiled a wealth of information about Australian and Aboriginal slang. On the Wallaby Track contains most of what you’ll need to eat, sleep, and survive in the beautiful and astonishing country called Australia. Every visitor will get more out of their vacation from accommodations to tours. And you won’t have to spend six months figuring it out!

    Many words and phrases are used in quotes from award-winning novels and nonfiction books by the same author. Travel tips and Australia facts about wildlife, food, rental cars, camping, adventures, travel and tourism, cultural tours and more are touched on in the definitions, making this nearly as useful as a Lonely Planet guidebook for Down Under.

    On the Wallaby Track is part of a series that offers fun and fascinating information to travelers. Other titles include Woman Alone, a warm and funny women’s adventure travel memoir about her six-month solo camping journey through the Outback popular with fans of Eat Pray Love and Wild.

    For fans of Urban Dictionary, Brain Pickings blog, Travel Dictionary, Smartling, Grammarly, WordReference language forums, and travelers who want to prepare for the best experience from the Outback to the Northern Territory.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherLaine Cunningham
    Release dateAug 23, 2018
    ISBN9780998224053
    On the Wallaby Track: Essential Australian Words and Phrases
    Author

    Laine Cunningham

    Laine Cunningham is a three-time recipient of The Hackney Award with prior publications in Pangyrus, Reed, Birmingham Arts, Fiction Southeast, Wraparound South, As You Were, Pensive, Borrowed Solace, Keeping Room, and Garfield Lake Review. She is the editor of Sunspot Literary Journal, an international arts and literature publication dedicated to speaking truth through every voice.

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      Book preview

      On the Wallaby Track - Laine Cunningham

      On the Wallaby Track

      Essential Australian Words and Phrases

      On the Wallaby Track

      Essential Australian Words and Phrases

      Copyright 2016 Laine Cunningham

      Published by Sun Dogs Creations

      Changing the World One Book at a Time

      Cover Design by Angel Leya

      ISBN: 9780998224053

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, digital, photocopying or recording, except for the inclusion in a review, without permission in writing from the publisher. Thank you for supporting authors and a diverse, creative culture by purchasing this book and complying with copyright laws.

      Praise for Laine Cunningham’s Books

      Laine Cunningham combines tenacity and courage along with profound insight. Her bravery is contagious. I keep Laine’s books on a special shelf in my library, referring to them when I need inspiration.

      —Pamela King Cable, Author, The Sanctum and Televenge

      The fact that Laine Cunningham spent six long months on her own in the Australian outback before writing this book leant a rich authenticity to her voice as she shared from her abundantly full, and talented, heart.

      —Leah Griffith, Author, Cosette’s Tribe

      Laine Cunningham gifts us with a collection of essays that tie into traditional Aboriginal stories, teaching us that Dreamtime Energy is a timeless energy that can address modern issues with love and relationships, friendship and community, illness and joy. Each of these stories stem from myths but Laine's presentation of the stories or myths proves more enlightening on how to live in peace and love for all. She is our spiritual messenger bringing us universal truths from an ancient yet extant culture. Mesmerizing and meaningful and inspiring.

      —Grady Harp, Vine Voice, Hall of Fame Reviewer

      The best part about these short stories is that they give us a glimpse into a world many of us know little about, Aboriginal Australia.

      —R. Perron, Reviewer

      Loved it! The traditional Aboriginal stories are fascinating reads. From reading Laine's book, it's easy to feel the sacredness in the Aboriginal culture. I hadn't felt this moved by Aboriginal spirituality since viewing Oprah Winfrey's visit to Australia's Uluru rock.

      —V. Lathan, Reviewer

      Table of Contents

      About This Book

      Introduction

      A

      B

      C

      D

      E

      F

      G

      H

      I

      J

      K

      L

      M

      N

      O

      P

      Q

      R

      S

      T

      U

      W

      X

      Y

      Z

      Free Sample from Woman Alone

      Free Sample from Seven Sisters

      Free Sample from The Family Made of Dust

      About the Author

      Also by Laine Cunningham

      About This Book

      Aboriginal Words and Phrases

      The traditional hunter-gatherer lifestyle of Australian Aborigines, along with the lack of domesticated pack animals, meant everything a person carried had to serve various purposes. Many of those uses are listed in the definitions that follow but these descriptions are by no means exhaustive.

      When settlers arrived, an estimated 300 tribes were speaking over 500 different languages or dialects. The included words have found their way into relatively common usage in Australian English either as adaptations or place names. Although the names for traditional instruments would have varied by language group, certain ones have become nationally recognized for their traditional meaning and are used in common conversation.

      The tribal language from which each word originated is not often listed because historically, little effort was made to honor the tribe from which the word came. Whenever possible, notes are made about actual and possible origins.

      European Words and Phrases

      Quite a few of the words and phrases used by modern Australians are holdovers from their originating UK usages. While Australian slang has developed into a rich collection of words and phrases, many common words and terms will sound like slang to visitors. These unique items have been included to clear away confusion and help visitors become comfortably engaged with Australian citizens.

      Quotes

      The quotations used to illustrate the usage of different words and phrases come from other works by the same author. These books are:

      Woman Alone: A Six-Month Journey Through the Australian Outback. Of special interest to fans of Cheryl Strayed’s Wild and Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love, this memoir covers a spiritual sabbatical taken by Laine Cunningham.

      At twenty-seven years of age, she seemed to have it all: tons of friends, a college degree, plenty of all-night parties, and a secure job. Yet every morning she dragged herself through a life that was corporatized and overly industrialized, a life that falsely glamorized everything she was supposed to want.

      Guided only by a map pulled from an old copy of National Geographic, Laine camped in the Australian Outback for six months…and she did it alone.

      Told with wry humor and sparked with suspense and warmth, Woman Alone conveys a desperate search that became a journey of comedy and compassion in a landscape that brought her peace.

      The Family Made of Dust. This novel, which won two national awards, was called One of the best novels in ten years by the Hackney Literary Award Committee. Fans of Sara Gruen's At the Water's Edge will appreciate the suspenseful elements and fabulist mysteries. Readers of Sue Monk Kidd's The Secret Life of Bees will feast on lives that are so different and yet so similar to their own.

      In the story, Gabriel Branch is a man displaced. Having lost his boyhood family to brutal adoption policies, his carefully constructed adult life balances on an emotional razor's edge. Then his best friend disappears in the vast Australian interior. The only clue is an Aboriginal artifact that leads Gabe back to the land of his birth.

      As he searches for the friend who was like a brother, memories arise unbidden. Memories of the uncle who swung him up into a tree and called him Little Breeze. Memories of the mother he lost. Memories of the sickly sweet candy social workers used to steal him away to an orphanage where he and his brother were separated first by walls and then by adoption. Armed only with his totem animal, Gabe must find himself before a tribal shaman and the weight of his past crush him completely.

      Seven Sisters: Spiritual Messages from Aboriginal Australia is a unique self-help book that received an honor in the Carolina Woman’s Inspiration Award contest.

      According to Australia's ancient cultures, all creatures and things emerged from the Dreamtime. The Dreaming is not just a collection of lore or a long-ago time; it is a living energy that flows constantly through the universe. It is then and now, divine and human, spirit and law.

      Because the energy is as vibrant today as ever, the ancient stories retold in this book show us how to survive in a harsh world and how to thrive in our souls. Seven Sisters harnesses the Dreamtime energy by pairing these stories with essays that address today’s challenges.

      For readers of The Secret, A Course in Miracles, and Paul Coelho's works.

      A free sample from each of these books is included at the end of On the Wallaby Track.

      Further Reading

      On the Wallaby Track is part of a series that offers unique, fun, and fascinating information about Australia. The other titles are:

      18,000 Miles: An Australia Travel Guide Companion to Woman Alone is packed with practical tips and advice for anyone interested in their own Australian walkabout.

      Amazing Australia: A Traveler’s Guide to Common Plants and Animals. The entries are curated to provide readers with a broad understanding of the most common and the most unusual flora and fauna…including the dangers associated with certain plants and animals.

      Fairy Bread and Bush Tucker: Surviving a Gastronomical Adventure in Australia (With Recipes). From the disgusting to the sublime, this book tells you everything you need to know about the odd quirks of Australian cuisine, experience the best wild foods, and avoid entrees that aren’t worth the effort.

      Recipes are provided for a number of dishes; when the original ingredients are hard to find outside of Oz, close substitutions will bring Australia to any table.

      Introduction

      Australia is a land unto itself. Its culture is surprising and its people wonderfully welcoming and warm. Many travelers who speak English expect to have an easy time whether they visit for a few days or a few months. But between the strong accent, Aussie slang, and words garnered from their United Kingdom-based history, understanding their particular form of English can be a challenge.

      At one point, I spent six months camping alone in the Outback. During that time I visited a number of cities and small towns. For the first thirty days, I was lost. A lifetime of travel has honed my ability to understand unusually thick accents but in Australia, I honestly understood only half of what I heard.

      The accent was only part of the problem. The other was the heavy use of slang words and terms mixed liberally with words and phrases that originated in the United Kingdom. Add to that my own accent, which was lazy, consonant-slurring American mixed with German vowels, and the Aussies had a hard time understanding me!

      A few weeks into my journey, I went to a restaurant in Adelaide to dine on kangaroo steaks. When the waitress took my order, I asked for a glass of water.

      What did you want to drink? she asked.

      Water, I said again, which was pronounced wood-der.

      Sorry, love. What was that?

      I would like a glass of water, I said slowly, as if the extra words might help.

      At this point the waitress fell silent with her pencil poised over her notepad. We stared at each other for a long minute. We both knew this was going nowhere. The menu didn’t list water as an option, so I couldn’t just point like you might when you don’t speak the native language.

      I racked my brain to find another way to ask for water but the only thing I could come up with was H2O. And, sorry, asking for a glass of H2O would sound like I thought I was

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