I hate the idea of being a ‘fly in fly out’ tourist, but the distances in Australia are so vast that sometimes you are forced to jump on the plane. The other issue with certain parts of Australia is that you need to be there when the weather permits. Low season is low season in the desert because it’s too hot. And at the very back end of October, time was running out for me. 

I wanted to see a bit of desert and I also felt my year wouldn’t be complete without seeing Uluru, or Ayers Rock as I knew it growing up. So I flew to Alice with the idea that I would drive out of it somehow, and south towards Adelaide. Further if I was lucky.

As much as I gritted my teeth at the idea of flying, the flight itself is worth a blog post. One of the reasons I wanted to come to Australia s because I’d flown over it a few times before and was always totally amazed by the vast, empty space below the aircraft.

I was interested in two things. First: I wanted to see how much of the Blue Mountains was still on fire. Answer: from what I could see, quite a lot and there were fires still burning near settlements. We didn't fly anywhere near the REALLY big fire.

The second thing I wanted to see was, again, that vast landscape. But what I wasn’t expecting was the different types of terrain, the variety of patterns and the amazing salt lakes that can be seen from the air. There are some criss-cross patterns that form across massive areas, and I’d love to know what they are. I found the whole desert impossibly beautiful from above.

I loved the fact that the sky map named a couple of places, and then was forced to label the rest ‘Australia’ because there’s simply nothing there. The flight from Sydney to Alice Springs takes 3hrs 20. It’s a touch quicker to fly from London to Romania. And Alice is only halfway across this massive country. 

When I got to Alice, I didn’t do a lot. I had an outback Halloween party to attend with a friend from the ABC, Uluru tours to research, and a hugely different climate to get used to. It is dry, dusty, full of flies, utes, scrub and dry river beds (like this one, the Todd 'river'), it’s mostly beige with spindly trees and a bright blue sky and rusty red dirt as you get out of town. You drink litres upon litres of water and are still thirsty, and at this time of year it’s almost always above 30 degrees. I LOVED it! 

The best thing in Alice was meet the wonderful Chris ‘Brolga’ Barns or ‘Kangaroo Man’ as I knew him. I’ve seen a bit of the first programme they ever did on him, which was aired just before I left the UK. I hear they call him Kangaroo Dundee these days. 

He runs a sanctuary just south of town and hardly any Australians have heard of him! He does a grand job and fame doesn’t appear to have affected him. Not that much can get to anyone in Alice…there’s 1500kms of emptiness in all directions!  

It was also my first experience of an outback sunset. Unbeliveable. 

Since I’ve lived in Sydney I’ve written an overview of my life at first, a bit of a look at the weather and then my observations about the way the Aussies use the English language.

I’ve now left to go off on my travels again. I had nearly seven months in this great city and I’ve lived in three different suburbs: Redfern, Glebe and Ryde. All were pretty varied ways of life.

Redfern was a rough and ready suburb…although we lived at the ‘Surry Hills end’ which was near a strip of posh bars on Crown Street. Glebe was just my sort of place. My last abode in the UK was in the ‘Golden Triangle’ area of Norwich. I call Glebe ‘Sydney’s Golden Triangle’. It’s brimming with independent shops, lovely chilled out bars and eateries, but best of all, it was near to a very beautiful foreshore walk, from which you could look across Blackwattle Bay and take in a view of Anzac Bridge, and the city skyline. It was also a short walk to the ABC via some quiet back streets. The area was a joy to live in. 

I then started housesitting to bridge a short gap between my lease in Glebe coming to an end, and the legal limit on how long I could work for the ABC. You are allowed 6 months with any one company on the Working Holiday Visa. I took up a position in the suburb of Ryde which gave me a sense of how most Australians live. 

My first night in the house sit I was ecstatic. I had a sofa to sit on, a TV to watch, and a dog on my lap! They might sound like small things, but the TV and sofa combo is something I’ve lived without for about four years! I adore dogs but my life isn’t set up for dog ownership, so house sitting (which is really pet sitting when you look at the detail) is an ideal solution for me while I travel. 

As you can see, the roadkill is a bit different here in Aus. I think this is a blue tongue lizard that me and Chanelle the toy poodle found on one of our strolls. 

I was still working like a mad woman…knowing I’d be back in Sydney when I didn’t have work…my plan has always been to see most of the sights when I visit as a tourist. But I did get out and about a little. I took myself whale watching. Seeing a whale’s tail disappear into the sea has always been on my bucket list. This was the moment I saw that happen for the first time. The whales migrate right past Sydney and I was living in the city at just the right time for it. 

Myself and Seven News journo Laura had a rare day off at the same time so we spent a sunny day on Cockatoo Island. We didn’t know much about the place before we arrived, but it’s had an interesting history involving convicts, ship building, and these days rows and rows of mysterious tents which you can apparently stay in! I think it would make an excellent venue for a slightly odd party. 

And talking of ITV Anglia journalists, I found myself in the extraordinary position of being one of SEVEN former or current Anglia people who happened to be in Sydney at the same time. And we didn’t plan to meet up either – it was a coincidence! From left to right you have me and Laura who are here on the 417 visa, Lauren Hall who was over here on holiday, Wendy Hurrell who dropped by during honeymoon, Andrew Sainsbury, Stephen Lee and Alex Gore all emigrated in the last five years. 

My final days in Sydney were very much concerned with the New South Wales bushfires. They were the worst fires the state has seen in a decade. It was exhausting and pretty horrible to work on….phoning up people affected and trying to persuade them to come on air. I will never forget the moment I smelt smoke from the office and thought ‘crikey, these are a good hour’s drive away so they must be pretty large’ and as the days rolled on the situation got worse and worse. My throat would hurt after my morning dog walk as the air was thick with smoke, and I started finding ash in the back garden of the house in Ryde. I don’t know how people live with this threat. I find the idea of bushfires totally terrifying. To the left is a picture of the sun during the fires. Taken from the street I was staying in at Ryde.

After six months without a break and working much more than full time, with the addition of garden maintenance and dog walking, the bushfires just finished me off! I was exhausted. Sydney was so, so kind to me. I learnt so much and have made some terrific friends, but I was very pleased to have a flight booked to Alice Springs!

TTFN Sydney….I shall be seeing you in all the glory of New Year’s Eve! xxxx

Since I’ve lived in Sydney I’ve written an overview of my life at first, a bit of a look at the weather and then my observations about the way the Aussies use the English language.

I’ve now left to go off on my travels again. I had nearly seven months in this great city and I’ve lived in three different suburbs: Redfern, Glebe and Ryde. All were pretty varied ways of life.

Redfern was a rough and ready suburb…although we lived at the ‘Surry Hills end’ which was near a strip of posh bars on Crown Street. Glebe was just my sort of place. My last abode in the UK was in the ‘Golden Triangle’ area of Norwich. I call Glebe ‘Sydney’s Golden Triangle’. It’s brimming with independent shops, lovely chilled out bars and eateries, but best of all, it was near to a very beautiful foreshore walk, from which you could look across Blackwattle Bay and take in a view of Anzac Bridge, and the city skyline. It was also a short walk to the ABC via some quiet back streets. The area was a joy to live in. 

I then started housesitting to bridge a short gap between my lease in Glebe coming to an end, and the legal limit on how long I could work for the ABC. You are allowed 6 months with any one company on the Working Holiday Visa. I took up a position in the suburb of Ryde which gave me a sense of how most Australians live.

My first night in the house sit I was ecstatic. I had a sofa to sit on, a TV to watch, and a dog on my lap! They might sound like small things, but the TV and sofa combo is something I’ve lived without for about four years! I adore dogs but my life isn’t set up for dog ownership, so house sitting (which is really pet sitting when you look at the detail) is an ideal solution for me while I travel.

As you can see, the roadkill is a bit different here in Aus. I think this is a blue tongue lizard that me and Chanelle the toy poodle found on one of our strolls. 

I was still working like a mad woman…knowing I’d be back in Sydney when I didn’t have work…my plan has always been to see most of the sights when I visit as a tourist. But I did get out and about a little. I took myself whale watching. Seeing a whale’s tail disappear into the sea has always been on my bucket list. This was the moment I saw that happen for the first time. The whales migrate right past Sydney and I was living in the city at just the right time for it. 

Myself and Seven News journo Laura Burns had a rare day off at the same time so we spent a sunny day on Cockatoo Island. We didn’t know much about the place before we arrived, but it’s had an interesting history involving convicts, ship building, and these days rows and rows of mysterious tents which you can apparently stay in! I think it would make an excellent venue for a slightly odd party. 

And talking of fomer (and current) ITV Anglia journalists, I found myself in the extraordinary position of being one of SEVEN Anglia people who happened to be in Sydney at the same time. And we didn’t plan to meet up either – it was a coincidence! From left to right you have me and Laura who are here on the 417 visa, Lauren Hall who was over here on holiday, Wendy Hurrell who dropped by during honeymoon, and Andrew Sainsbury, Stephen Lee and Alex Gore, who all emigrated in the last five years. 

My final days in Sydney were very much concerned with the New South Wales bushfires. They were the worst fires the state has seen in a decade. It was exhausting and pretty horrible to work on….phoning up people affected and trying to persuade them to come on air. I will never forget the moment I smelt smoke from the office and thought ‘crikey, these are a good hour’s drive away so they must be pretty large’ and as the days rolled on the situation got worse and worse. My throat would hurt after my morning dog walk as the air was thick with smoke, and I started finding ash in the back garden of the house in Ryde. 

This is a picture of the sun that I took from the street I was living on at the time. I don’t know how people live with this threat. I find the idea of bushfires totally terrifying. 

After six months without a break and working much more than full time, with the addition of garden maintenance and dog walking, the bushfires just finished me off! I was exhausted. Sydney was so, so kind to me. I learnt so much and have made some terrific friends, but I was very pleased to have a flight booked to Alice Springs!

TTFN Sydney….I shall be seeing you in all the glory of New Year’s Eve! xxxx

‘LOOK!’. I’m gonna have a fair crack of the whip, and try to explain some of the differences between how Australians use the English language, in comparison with a Pom such as myself.

Words like ‘look’, ‘so’ and ‘yeah’ are all familiar territory to anybody who speaks English – but they’re VERY important in Australia. This doesn’t apply to absolutely everyone, but a fair proportion of them like to start sentences with a choice of the aforementioned words. And if it’s ‘yeah’ then that will be immediately followed by ‘nah’. ‘Yeah nah I had a great weekend’. Nobody quite knows what this means….the use of both words together make the sentence totally pointless, but that doesn’t stop them.

‘Yeah’ also forms half of the general acknowledgement ‘yeah right’ which they use to show genuine interest in what you’re telling them…as opposed to a sarcastic reaction of cynicism, which would be the normal British usage of ‘yeah right’.

It was my friend Laura who spotted how Australians often start sentences with the word ‘so’. I hadn’t heard it until she pointed it out, and of course I've heard it EVERYWHERE ever since. But she hadn’t realised my very first observation about Australians…their need to punctuate sentences with the word ‘look’. 

There are some Australians who find it absolutely impossible to say anything without preceeding it with the word ‘look’. And there I was thinking it was only Tony Blair who did that. Has he spent some time over here? It seems to be a particular affliction of those in positions of power, as I notice it more when people are interviewed rather than in general face-to-face conversation. Or maybe ‘look’ can be used as a comfort blanket during stressful situations like interviews. It sounds rather harsh to the English ear, and I must admit, I find the constant use of the word ‘look’ terribly distracting. If I ever hear myself using it I curl up into a ball of cringe. It’s only happened a couple of times but when you’re surrounded by people telling you to ‘look’ the whole time, then I suppose it’s inevitable that the odd unconscious imitation might slip out. Aggghhrrr!

So, look, that’s the way they use words the Brits are used to…but what about the words that are unique (as far as I know) to Australians?

Now when it comes to new words, I have started using some of them, because there are no better replacements and some of them sound amusing. My favourite FAVOURITE word of all is ‘bogan’. It’s the Aussie equivalent of ‘chav’…but they don’t have chavs over here. A bogan has been described to me as an uneducated, beer swilling Aussie. Perhaps similar to American ‘trailer trash’. I met a rather odd character while travelling alone and as I described him, my new housemates confirmed that I had, indeed, encountered a bogan. This one didn’t have a passport, had no desire to travel, worked in a meat factory, lived in a caravan, and had clearly never met any females before as he proceeded to text me for FIVE MONTHS without getting any replies. You don’t want to be unwittingly encouraging bogans, trust me.

Another word that has crept into my vocabulary, which I think is brilliant, is ‘rort’. It describes something akin to embezzlement, or taking advantage. For example, we have a few MPs over here who’ve claimed expenses to attend weddings. One could describe that as ‘rorting the system’.

Another word that I have only used in jest is ‘spruiking’. It means ‘talking up’.

And then there’s ‘stoush’. An absolute favourite of the media…it describes some sort of argument or row.

I feel like a child learning to speak over here. Sometimes I’ll have a natural grasp of what a word or phrase might mean…I’ve just never heard it used before. Like ‘renegged’ (gone back on), ‘Peak organisation’ or ‘peak body’ (the main authority to do with a certain issue), and ‘lollies’ (sweets, although I knew this one from New Zealand).

The Australians are fantastic at shortening words. The one that amuses me greatly, and it may just be a newsroom thing, but it seems to be far too much trouble to say the word ‘details’. Instead it is shortened to ‘deets’. ‘Please can I get some deets on this story’. Or ‘Deets to come’. I just do not get this. How did a seven letter word ever become too much trouble to say or write in full?!

But some of the shortened versions are quite endearing. My first ‘bushfire day’ was the day I learnt the word ‘firies’ to describe firefighters.

A news script would also say the bushfires are in ‘Sydney’s west’ as opposed to ‘the west end of Sydney’ or ‘to the west of the city’.  

There are some things I say which the Australians just do not get. I wish there was an equivalent to ‘three line whip’ but people have NO idea what I’m talking about if I use this phrase to get a sense of the importance of something. ‘Y’alright’ as a greeting is another. I don’t think I’ve ever received a normal reaction when I’ve said this. They look at me as if to say ‘yeah, why?’….or they look confused…like they’ve misheard me. But I am not about to start using ‘g’day’…so the best I can manage is ‘hey, how are ya’ which seems to work.

Oh by the way, Australians LOVE to ask you how you are. When me and Laura frst arrived we both described the use of this question by shop assistants in particular as making our blood boil! I soon realised a lot of Aussies don’t actually react to this in shops…they will simply launch into asking for what they need. It seems that ‘how are you’ is no more than a greeting. And the answer to this question, by the way, is ‘good thanks’. You wouldn’t hear anyone say ‘very well thank you’. 

In fact, if you were really well or very pleased with something you might say it’s ‘heaps good’. Or something might be ‘heaps funny’. They’re a positive bunch, the Aussies, and if you were to show gratitude for their assistance on some matter they would probably reply ‘no dramas’ or ‘too easy’. 

Don’t even get me started on industry lingo. I have a pommie colleague at the ABC who taught me the new language on my first day. For any television journalists in the UK, I can tell you that on a daily basis you might help create simsats, VSVs, RVOs, crosses, grabs, slabs and rants. And you’d put them out from the ‘control room’ rather than the gallery. Luckily the amount of swearing in newsrooms is about equal, so I didn’t feel totally alienated. :)

I saw this sign at Circular Quay in Sydney and thought of my ITV colleagues. It stands for 'Overseas Passenger Terminal' as opposed to meaning a split broadcast within a programme.....

So, there you go. Too easy. Look, I hope you enjoyed me ‘spruiking’ these ‘deets’ on how the Aussies like to talk. After all that I need to sink a bloody schooner (which, by the way, contains less amber nectar than a pint…but, like everything here, is a damn sight more expensive).