What is it like living in Australia?

G’day guys! It’s Australian for Good day! I’ve decided to do an episode on what it is like living in Australia to answer a question from one of my listeners. There is plenty of new vocabulary here, so don’t miss this episode! Enjoy :) Also, check out Steve Irwin’s biography online, one of the greatest Australian wildlife experts and a true animal lover.

You can find more about Steve Irwin here -> Steve Irwin’s Biography

**Disclaimer: Jon Bon Jovi is not Australian as I mentioned in my episode. My source aka weon inteligente was incorrect – he was incorrect. My source was drunk. (haha!)

Transcription

G’day guys! You are listening to English made simple, this is episode forty, numero cuarenta (40)
G’day everyone! Crikey! this is episode forty, Crikey!

And we are still here learning, Awesome! how to speak English with confidence! excellent! you have come to the right place, welcome to the new listeners and welcome back to the old listeners.
Thank you for joining me! My name is Milena, and I’m your weona and your podcast teacher.

Hey, did you enjoy my last episode? it was supposed to be short and sweet but it turned out to be long and sweet. Regardless, it was sweet nonetheless! I thought there was a lot of valuable tips in the last episode.
We learnt how to spell our names. It sounds so simple doesn’t it? Spell your name, but if you have a complicated name like my last name for example, my surname, then you have to be a little bit more creative when it comes to spelling your name.

Oh! and we learnt about nicknames in the last episode. It would be a good idea to give yourself a nickname if you have a long name, yeah. That’s just a suggestion, you don’t have to of course.

So I trust you have been having a great weekend so far, I hope you had a great weekend.

First of all, let me send a shout-out to a special listener Maria Gabriela, who is another raving fan of English made simple. Thank you so much for your nice comments Maria.
Wow! Latin countries have so, so many nice and exotic names don’t they? Maria Gabriela, Paola, Marcela, so keep listening Maria, and don’t forget to share this episode with your friends.

Alright guys, let’s begin! Today’s lesson.. It’s going to be a little bit different, I’ve decided to step away from the grammar, but we are still going to learn some new things. We are going to learn a few phrasal verbs and slang in this episode, so we will learn new vocabulary that’s for sure, so keep listening guys.

We will learn some facts about Australia and what it is like living in Australia

This is because i wanted to answer question from one of our listener Eliandro from Brazil
what it is like to live in Australia? Are there poisonous and dangerous animals everywhere?
Yea! and I’ve decided to do an episode about this. I would also like to share some common misconceptions about Australia.

Let me ask you, when we say Australia what is the first thing that comes to your mind? Probably you are thinking that everyone is blonde, you know, rubios I think in Spanish, blonde hair, everyone is blonde, there is tall people, everyone is surfing
Yea! these are some common misconceptions about Australia.

I also want to dedicate this episode to one of the greatest Australians there are, this guy cared a lot for animals and the wild life, his name is Steve Irwin you might know him as the Crocodile Hunter he had a TV show as well he was an Australian wildlife expert television personality and he was a conservationist. He started the crocodile show in the Australia zoo this is located in Queensland in the north of Australia I’ve been there before.

He also started this catchphrase Crikey!
is very Australian, it just means wow! Amazing!
Crikey is a very Australian thing to say

If you have some spare time look him up online – go on the internet and type Steve Irvin
I will put a link to Steve Irwin biography, truly a great guy and there ought to be more to be more people like him in the world for sure.
Right!
Let me be honest guys, I had reservations about moving here from little old New Zealand, there is a lot of kiwis living in Australia, kiwis are people from New Zealand, we call them Kiwis.

As soon as I think of Australia, I think of crocodiles and snakes and spiders and sharks.
To think of means to think about something or somebody, it is just another way to say to think about, so when I think of Australia I think about crocodiles (cocodrilos), snakes (serpientes), spiders (arañas) and sharks (tiburones) yes. That’s the first thing that comes to my mind.

In today’s episode, I want to to cover five topics about Australia, general facts about Australia culture, food, sports and the wildlife just the animals that are free in the wild.
Let’s start off with some quick facts about Australia because I am not really good at Geography as we all know I approached my master my teacher Google to find some interesting facts about Australia.
Well, Australia the name itself is derived from the Latin Word Terra Australis meaning Southern Sand, two words actually, Terra Australis meaning southern land, Australia is also known as Down Under by Australians, it is slang, you will sometimes hear it in the movies when they refer to Australia. They will say Down Under these are two words Down and Under – Down Under is slang and informal name for Australia, it is just a joke between friends.

Well my friends in Europe often confuse New Zealand and Australia I don’t know why, they are completely different countries. New Zealand is independent of Australia. They are two different countries. They have English as the official language and these two countries are also part of the Commonwealth of countries, Commonwealth is the formal British Empire.

Excellent, so we are learning new today, everybody is learning something.

Well some famous Australians let’s start off with something easy. Some famous Australians you might know already, actors such as Mel Gibson from Mad Max remember? Nicole Kidman, we have singers like Kylie Minogue, rock bands like AC/DC there is another one Jet, Bon Jovi, Peter Andre, do you know who Peter Andre is?….He sings this song, Mysterious girl… yes, Do you remember this song from the early nineties (‘90s)? that was a blast from the past, yes, he is an Australian guy.

Right, the population of Australia is twenty-four millions (24 million) ok? that’s not a lot for such a huge land mass there is a lot of area to cover in Australia, and twenty-four million people is not really big population. There are six hundred million (600m)people in Brazil alone ok? it is just Brazil as a country. In the whole of Australia as the continent is twenty-four million right? you can see the comparison there.

So I moved from New Zealand about nine years ago now, and in the last nine years while living in Australia I got to meet people from different parts of the world, I have friends from Singapore, China, Malaysia, India, Sri Lanka, Colombia, Brazil, Mexico, Chile, Bolivia Peru Canada Italy Argentina, Holland, oh my god, now when I think about it, there is just so many, so many different countries, there is a lot of New Zealanders as well here and Australians of course, but it is very very multicultural. That’s what I like about living in Australia.

Thanks to the immigrants that come from different countries around the world, they come and they settle in Australia, Australia now has a diverse range of cuisine, different types of food, so let’s talk about food now.

Australian cuisine has been transformed after the World War II, because there is a lot of immigrants coming from Europe after the World War II particularly from the Mediterranean like the Greece and Italy they basically helped to build the thriving Australian coffee culture, we have a really strong coffee culture here and I mentioned this in one of my episodes before there is also strong influence of Asian cultures, that have introduced their own cuisine their own delicious cuisine like Thai and Chinese and Malaysian types of food, oh delicious.

What is the food of Australia really? what is the typical food people eat here?
Typical food of Australia is Vegemite, pavlova, lamingtons, and meat pies, they are kind of regarded as the iconic Australian foods.

Vegemite is something that Australians would have for breakfast and Vegemite looks like Nutella it is nothing like Nutella. Vegemite you take a little bit of the Vegemite and you spread it on toast with butter ok? and it is really really salty food and people here love it, but it’s not something that anybody new coming to the country will enjoy.
Pavlova is a desert, lamingtons are Australian desserts as well, meat pies are something that is very Australian and it’s also popular in New Zealand. Australia and New Zealand food are quite similar.

Now the best part, the Australian wine, this is produce in the southern part of Australia the cooler parts of the country, like Melbourne, like Victoria, the state of Victoria, it has really really yummy wines, but I got to say you know, even though the wine in Australia is good, I do prefer the Chilean wine, I do prefer the wine from Chile, I still like the taste of it.

Did you know there are over two hundreds of different languages and dialects spoken in Australia including forty-five indigenous languages? The most common non English spoken languages spoken are Italian Greek Cantonese, Arabic, Vietnamese and Mandarin, they are the most common ones after English.

What do people do here for sports? the main sports here are cricket very British thing, cricket I know is popular in India and Sri Lanka they are really good at cricket, the rugby league, Australian football league, swimming and surfing.

Melbourne is the main city for sport activities there is a lot of sporting events happening in Melbourne like the Formula 1, we have tennis, Australian open, there is also horse racing as well, there is a surfing in Victoria on Bells Beach there is a world championships in surfing here close to Melbourne.

And now guys, the fun part, animals, the wild life.

The highest number of the poisonous creatures are found here in Australia, yes, everything you can think of, because it has a tropical and subtropical climate we have like sharks and snakes and crocodiles living in different parts of Australia.

Ok, one typical native Australian animal is Koala you have probably heard of this one. It’s a cute little bear-like animal with sharp claws. Koala sleeps twenty hours and only move from one tree to another to look for food, it’s a very lazy animal.

Kangaroos, another symbol of Australia, they can be seen everywhere outside of the cities, they can be seen everywhere in Australia. There are even farms with kangaroos that are not wild, they are tamed, they are trained a little bit, they are open for tourists, so you come close and feed the kangaroos and they are really really magnificent creatures, really strong.

I have fed a kangaroo once, they are really big, really intimidating to look at.

And crocodiles, oh my goodness, I haven’t seen a crocodile in the wild, I have seen it in the zoo.
They usually live in the north of Australia in the tropical part of the country there are cities like Cairns or Darwin they have crocodiles living close actually, close to the cities.

Yea, I don’t know, I haven’t seen one in the wild but I have seen one in the zoo, they are really scary, scary looking things.
Another thing I have never seen a snake since I have been living here for the past nine years, I have never seen a snake but I know for sure that they live somewhere in the suburbs, they are somewhere close but there are instances of snakes appearing in the suburbs and people seeing snakes, yes, I read in the news and it happens but I have never seen one myself.

I have seen spiders though, I have seen spiders, it’s very common to see a redback spider, the spider, little spider that has a red back, and another spider called huntsmen spider, yes, I’m just waiting to see one, and these spiders they come out, and they are probably in my car, and they are probably, sometimes I see them in my house, they are quite big spiders, they are big, they are really ugly, muy feas, really ugly but they are not poisonous and some people keep them as pets (mascotas)
That’s not really the fun part of living in Australia and seeing these animals and we have to adjust living with them. It’s not scary.

Overall guys, Australia is a really safe place to live in.

And now we are approaching the end of the episode guys, I hope you enjoyed it, I hope you learnt something new as well, this show was a little bit different, we learnt something new about Australia, something interesting about Australia now I would like to know what’s interesting about your countries, I would like to know do you have fun facts or interesting things about your countries where you are living right now.

I am now active on Instagram and Facebook group, you can let me know on the Facebook group or just a tag at English Made Simple on Instagram @englishmadesimple, and show something that’s unique to your country and if you enjoy today’s episode guys please don’t forget it to share it with your friends, sharing is caring.

Don’t forget all transcriptions are available on my website www.englishmadesimple.net if you have any questions on any of the topics we covered in this show please let me know in the Facebook group English Made Simple or on my website, this podcast IS for you and I’m here to help you learn so let’s do this guys! Arrivederci!
Hasta la próxima!!