So we’re still on holiday, visiting our mother, who lives in North East Victoria. It’s lovely and green up there right now. (And pretty cold, too.) It’s beautiful.
In four to six months all that green will be brown. If there’s any grass left it will be tinder-dry. Or there won’t be any grass at all, and it will look more like this.
Brown dirt.
A quick lesson in Australianisms.
1) Bushrangers are (were) the equivalent of highwaymen in the UK, or an outlaw in the US. Think Dick Turpin or Jesse James. I don’t know what it’s like in the US or UK but bushrangers were (are) often looked on as folk heroes. Despite the fact that they robbed, and on occasion, killed people.
2) And while we’re talking Australianisms, what about a language lesson?
How do you pronounce Carraragarmungee? (It’s a real place. A friend of ours went to school there. There isn’t much more than the school, but …)
Kah-rah-rah-gah-mun-gee. Sound out the syllables. Then, speed it up. Say it at least three times as fast as you did sounding it out.
There, now you can pronounce it like a local.