Australia Days

Gone native

"I was ply-ying outside with ..."

"Pardon, Tim?"

"I said, I was ply-ying outside with my friends ..."

"You were what?"

"Ply-ying! Ply-ing! You know, playing."

A better punchline

Rob: "What did a male Member of Parliament say to a female Member of Parliament?"

Tim: "Let's go out and make an amendment."

Rob: "No, actually he said she was blowing it out of her arse'."

Tim: "Really?"

Divided by a common language

So far my speech has been intelligible to the Australians, and vice versa. A few glitches:

• a voicemail that informed me of a missed delivery and my "Phoenix tracking number". I had to listen to it 5,311 times to hear "Fedex tracking number".

• the recommendation to visit the "Hillsville Wildlife Sanctuary". Half an hour on Google yielded this.

More often it's a problem of nomenclature. The search for school supplies in OfficeWorks took hours, as we tried to puzzle out what display books, pockets, and HB pencils are.

And I did receive an odd look when I asked for graphic novels for my eleven year old son in the secondhand bookshop.