Aussie English Nonsense is often Australian Humour

Australians can often be dry and they have what is sometimes referred to as graveside humour. The one thing people really need to understand about Australian humour is that the worse a situation seems or becomes, the better the humour that they make of it.

Australians often use humour as a bulwark against a hard reality. It's our coping mechanism.

On the other hand, it is a very irreverent humour and respects no one. In the past this often got a lot of young “Diggers” into trouble with superior officers who thought they were an “impudent lot” instead of just a mob of larrikins out for a lark.

I will always remember a friend of my brother who had the surname of Littlewood. Poor bloke went through all his high school life known simply as “Big Timber”. I doubt anyone ever remembered his first name was Bill.

Today the weather is cooling down fast as we come into the southern winter season. Australia is divided into three temperature zones. If you draw Australia into thirds, with lines from east to west, The top half of Australia is tropical, the centre section is subtropical and the bottom half is temperate. Today on the radio during the early morning breakfast show, they asked the question “How do you know when winter comes in the North?” and one bright spark suggested the answer could be “Because that's when they wear sheepskin thongs” A good way to start the day when one lives in the subtropics.

For those few people who may know a bit of Australian history; during the second world war, when the Japanese invaded Australia and bombed Darwin in 1942-3. By the way, Darwin is the capital city for the Northern Territory, which is still just a Territory, and isn't yet a full Australian State; even though one area called Arnhem Land would fit Texas in and still have area to spare just in Arnhem land. The Northern Territory is a big area.

Anyway, one Australian writer by the name of Douglas Lockwood wrote in one of his books “That so-and-so got such a fright when the first bombs fell, he hopped on his bike and reached Berrimah before he realised that the bike he was riding didn't have a chain”. To an Australian, this is a very descriptive piece of writing so we all recognise immediately just how afraid the poor chap was! Yes, we all laughed but it wasn't at him but rather with great sympathy and total understanding.