New South Wales Female Reading

Reading

The Rainbow Passage

When the sunlight strikes raindrops in the air, they act as a prism and form a rainbow. The rainbow is a division of white light into many beautiful colors. These take the shape of a long round arch, with its path high above, and its two ends apparently beyond the horizon. There is, according to legend, a boiling pot of gold at one end. People look, but no one ever finds it. When a man looks for something beyond his reach, his friends say he is looking for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

New South Wales Female Conversation

Conversation

David’s a geologist and he worked for an Australian company, Woodside, but now works for Shell. Yeah, four years in July, yeah. Got another four. Perth, Western Australia. We were there for four and a half years. Yeah, so, big difference. Perth only has one point two million people living in it. Our eldest one in Northern New South Wales, North of Sidney and Ewan was born Canberra, the capital, and Zallymeg in Perth.

Male: Zallymeg?

Zallymeg, yep. And you know, we say zed instead of zee, and, like, for instance, the word color, we spell c-o-l-o-u-r. Yeah. I mean I think ours is predominantly based on the British system. Our schooling systems are similar. I think, you know, we have slang so there’s some things we say… instead of hello, we say g’day which everyone knows, and I mean as you can tell I don’t sound like Steve Irwin. A lot of people – yeah – think that's what Australians sound like, but a lot of us don’t. I think definitely where he’s from, he's from Queensland which is the state North of me, and he's from Central Queensland and they tend to speak – I mean if you think about the way he speaks, his vowels are quite long, his words are longer. I think it's just the area definitely. I think it's a region thing but I think because we are such a big country with such a small population than the US, I think regionally we seem to pick up a common slang dialect through our areas definitely, and I mean, like, one of the things that Australian say all the time is you know, “bloody hell” and you know, you say that over here and Americans look at you, and it's not so much that we're swearing or anything like that, it's just a terminology we use, you know. Something’s astonishing or terrible, it's “bloody hell.” Yeah and it's not that we're being crass. Well you know talking about shit, the word shit and I'm going to tell you this. We find it amazing that they actually don't allow to show it on TV here because we look at that as a lesser swear word than, say, the word bitch or bastard. Definitely. Yeah, definitely with that it’s more censored in Australia. I mean I've got used to the fact that that's just something they do, you know, but at first I was like wow, that's – and I don't know why because I don't know the history but yeah. That’s a difference.

I think we have very similar statistics with divorce in Australia as the US. I think a lot of people aren’t getting married. Like my brother and sister are not married and my brother has a child; I don't think they'll ever get married. My husband and I had two children and got married. My two children and a mortgage, and then got married. I think over there – I mean religion is a thing in Australia but it seems to be such a larger thing here in the US and I think by that, you know, marriage is a little bit different here in the US, maybe it's regional but here in Houston, it's – I think Australia is a little bit more relaxed like Seattle and Austin. It's not such a taboo thing to have children and not be married.

He was born in Australia but he lived in London. He lived abroad twice. He studied his education in England. So when we were offered this opportunity, we just went yes. Yeah, he just saw the benefits for the children, and we were to be going home this year but – cause he changed companies, we're going to be living a while lot longer. About once a year, yeah, we just went home at Christmas. It is twenty-four hours each way. It's hard and then I think going, your body within about three days is fine. Getting back, it is hard. Yeah, it's harder.

Sydney Male Reading

Reading

The Rainbow Passage

When the sunlight strikes raindrops in the air, they act as a prism and form a rainbow. The rainbow is a division of white light into many beautiful colors. These take the shape of a long round arch, with its path high above, and its two ends apparently beyond the horizon. There is, according to legend, a boiling pot of gold at one end. People look, but no one ever finds it. When a man looks for something beyond his reach, his friends say he is looking for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

Sydney Male Conversation

Conversation

So recently I went to Russia. Firstly, I went to St. Petersburg. It's a very beautiful city. I went to the Hermitage and-- yeah, other Russian museums, but also just the city itself I really liked. So the streets were beautiful, and the architecture, and also the metro. The metro is so much better than here in Sydney; it comes more often, it's cheaper. And yeah, overall it just feels a lot better there.

After that, I flew to Novosibirsk, which is sort of like in the middle of Russia. And that's a part of Siberia. I stayed there for about three days, and didn't really get to see much. Just there visiting friends. But yeah, the metro there also was pretty, pretty decent; better than here in Sydney, again. That's how bad Sydney is. The fares here are like really expensive; the trains come late; and the timetable is terrible as well; and the trains are really slow.

And, yeah, back to Russia. After Novosibirsk I went to Kemerovo. So it's a little bit of a smaller town, about five hours away from Novosibirsk. So, I actually caught a bus to get there. And yeah, again, just visiting friends and they showed me around the city. It was kind of like a quiet town, but I liked it nevertheless. And probably the most interesting thing over in Russia was the weather. It was very cold. Minus twenty-five degrees when I landed. But yeah, I got used to it and yeah, enjoyed my time there. Compared to the weather here in Sydney, which is two weeks ago it was like forty degrees here. Lately, we've been having a storm so it's only been about twenty-five degrees. It's warm, cooler.

Sydney Male Reading

Reading

The Rainbow Passage

When the sunlight strikes raindrops in the air, they act as a prism and form a rainbow. The rainbow is a division of white light into many beautiful colors. These take the shape of a long round arch, with its path high above, and its two ends apparently beyond the horizon. There is, according to legend, a boiling pot of gold at one end. People look, but no one ever finds it. When a man looks for something beyond his reach, his friends say he is looking for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

Sydney Male Conversation

Conversation

I was born and raised in Sydney, Australia. I’ve also lived in small country towns in Australia, as well as Tokyo and Kyoto. Other things that come to mind, hometown accents. One thing I've noticed is that when I was a child the older generation used to say that we were speaking more and more like Americans. But it was never really true. But I've noticed the younger generation now is definitely picking up more American words -- not completely, but a lot.

Sydney Female Reading

Reading

The Rainbow Passage

When the sunlight strikes raindrops in the air, they act as a prism and form a rainbow. The rainbow is a division of white light into many beautiful colors. These take the shape of a long round arch, with its path high above, and its two ends apparently beyond the horizon. There is, according to legend, a boiling pot of gold at one end. People look, but no one ever finds it. When a man looks for something beyond his reach, his friends say he is looking for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

Sydney Female Conversation

Conversation

I live in Sydney, Australia, and I have my whole life. I did all my training after school in animal care, so I did it in both domestic and wildlife. My first job was at a boarding kennels, so that's where people obviously bring their pets to be cared for when they are away on holidays, things like that. I did do a lot of volunteer work at a lot of wildlife sanctuaries and zoos; that was a lot of fun. I have two cats. I rescued two cats. And I have a dog as well. I now currently work in a Speck Savers company. Obviously, it’s UK. You would know about that. I am about four-and-a-half years into the company. I can effectively work on my own without needing any help throughout the various jobs and tasks that are given daily. I am currently learning drums as a hobby. I also do try learning a little bit of sewing, and I did a bit of cosplay, photography. I love going to the movies, and music is a big hobby for me. So I love listening to music and finding new songs. I'm a huge fan of going to concerts as well. The town and suburb that I live in is very close to a lot of different things, so I'm only about a fourteen-minute train ride from the city; like the center of Sydney. I'm very close to the beach and also the Blue Mountains. So, my suburb is very central.

Nana Glen Male Reading

Reading

The Rainbow Passage

When the sunlight strikes raindrops in the air, they act as a prism and form a rainbow. The rainbow is a division of white light into many beautiful colors. These take the shape of a long round arch, with its path high above, and its two ends apparently beyond the horizon. There is, according to legend, a boiling pot of gold at one end. People look, but no one ever finds it. When a man looks for something beyond his reach, his friends say he is looking for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

Nana Glen Male Conversation

Conversation

Okay, so I was born in nineteen ninety-four in Armadale Hospital and lived there until about two thousand and one, I do believe. When me and my family moved to Nana Glen, right near Coffs Harbour, which is a charming little town with a population of about forty-five thousand people. The property we bought actually used to be a wildlife park, which I've always thought was pretty cool. My father got here and set up a business with a portable mill. My mother is a registered nurse. In terms of heritage, I think the only noteworthy portion is that I'm a quarter Irish. Some people do assure me that I look Irish; I'm not so sure. My grandfather on my father's side was a doctor and immigrated from Ireland quite some time ago. On the same side, my grandmother's last name is Brockoff. She has done some family history; I’m sure there are some hints of French and perhaps German there. But they're pretty diluted. Accent-wise I've always loved the idea of the Australian twang, but never really picked up on it until we had French and American family visit for a while who said we spoke far too fast. I have three younger siblings: two sisters and a brother. What else? I spent three years doing an IT degree at Southern Cross University, which I am not a big fan of. I would really quite like to learn French mainly because I have French cousins, But I would very much like to learn many other languages and travel to pretty much everywhere as well. I'm not really sure what else to say, especially in terms of me growing up. But I hope you get what you need and let me know if you need anything else. Cheers!

Sydney Male Reading

Reading

The Rainbow Passage

When the sunlight strikes raindrops in the air, they act as a prism and form a rainbow. The rainbow is a division of white light into many beautiful colors. These take the shape of a long round arch, with its path high above, and its two ends apparently beyond the horizon. There is, according to legend, a boiling pot of gold at one end. People look, but no one ever finds it. When a man looks for something beyond his reach, his friends say he is looking for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

Sydney Male Conversation

Conversation

Yeah, so I was born in Sydney, and raised in Sydney as well. For the first really ten years of my life I was raised in this little sort of industrial suburb, actually pretty close to the city, in Sydney. And it was pretty cool. It was actually my grandmother’s house, but my… our family lived there. It was pretty quiet. Had a few cool neighbors. And then my grandfather had a stroke. And so we had to switch places to my great-grandmother’s place. And we just… we like… our family and them, they just lived probably… we all just lived probably five minutes away from each other. So it was all good. It wasn’t a hard move. We always visited them anywhere. Anyway, so we moved to Newtown in Sydney. And that’s… so five minutes by car. So it was pretty close, but actually a huge difference in the environment to grow up in. In Newtown, you know, we, you know, we had heaps of neighbors, you know, to play cricket and stuff with. We’d play… used to play soccer with them all the time. Go bike riding. You know, always just, you know, just bike ride through the city and we used to just play together all the time. So that was a really… It was… And actually it’s quite a different suburb, like just culturally even. So it was… that was really cool.

Obviously lived there until I was… let’s say nineteen. But those are the two houses… the two family houses, I guess. My parents didn’t pay rent ‘cause they… it was my grandparents’ place. Yeah, which was pretty cool. Especially in Sydney. Saved them quite a bit of money. But anyway, once I was nineteen I… You know, after being out of high school for about a year, I headed off to, you know, obviously working as well, I saved up some money and headed off to South America to Medellín in Colombia. That’s the town of Pablo Escobar. Everyone knows it. But used to be such a violent city actually, but now it’s, you know, obviously there’s shady parts still, but you know it’s actually a really beautiful city now. Fantastic infrastructure. Really beautiful weather. Amazing place to live. Great parties. Everyone’s so nice. And I was there for about six months and that was really good experience, especially, you know, when you’re young and you’re living in a different place, it changes you quite a lot. So I lived… Where did I live? I lived in… Well, within that city I lived in a pretty… a… like a neighborhood which was pretty much just for the locals. Like I pretty much never saw foreigners around there. And I suppose it was good because if I had seen a lot of foreigners, I probably would have hung out with them, but I didn’t really get the chance to. And it was good, ‘cause you know, obviously hanging out with the Colombian locals, you know, you practice your Spanish much more. You really get into what the locals do. And I really, you know, fell in love with the culture there. I suppose anyone who really travels for the… for a long time for the first time has a similar experience.

Yeah, obviously, come… after coming back, stayed with my mom for a little bit, got a job, and then moved out as soon as possible, as you can imagine. The freedom’s pretty good so I didn’t want to miss out on that. And then I moved to Bondi Beach, which is where a few of my friends were at. I didn’t live with them, but, you know, that’s where they live. Bondi Beach in Sydney’s a really cool spot. Sort of a mix between a lot of, you know, I guess rich, health-obsessed Australians, which was not me. But… And a lot of foreigners. Backpackers. Just such a cool vibe, you know, just living on the beach, you know, doing a little bit of surfing whenever you can. And yeah, just constantly going out. A lot of beautiful restaurants. You know, tons of interesting people to hang out with. Very young neighborhood, so, you know, a lot of Spanish, Italian, French people. South Americans. English people. People from all over really. Yeah, probably Bondi Beach and Medellín are probably the… two of the best places I’ve ever been in my life. Even after traveling quite a bit. Yeah, I think if I go back to Australia, probably settle down in Bondi Beach. Yeah.

I guess one of the best things about… Well, actually you asked me to talk about accents. Well, I mean, if we’re talking about accents specifically, I find, you know… I mean, I’ll talk first of all about Colombia actually. Well, Colombian accents are pretty interesting, ‘cause even within Colombia you have about five distinct regions where the accents are… you know, vary quite a lot. You have… I mean, I don’t know if you want to hear about Colombian accents. But you have, you know, the people who live on the coast. Coasteños, and they speak really quickly. Choppy. They slur a lot of words together. Then you’ve got people from… I mean, I didn’t meet too many people from two of the other regions which are pretty small, but people from Bogota, which is the capital, and they… It’s sort of funny, I think they speak more like English speakers in Spanish. They speak really without any rhythm or song to their voice. Whereas where I lived in Medellín, they have like a such a sing songy quality, yeah, to their Spanish. It’s super interesting.

If you go back to Australia… If we go back to Australia, I suppose the accents… It’s an interesting accent situation in Australia, because I think if you go around the world, you know, in every country you have your distinct accents. You know, even in the States you got, you know, you have the Southern accents, you have the Northeastern accents, West Coast. And then obviously all the variations of that. And it’s obviously not only that. You have all the different cultural divides. You know, you have, you know, obviously Latina… the Latinos. A lot of the black Americans, African Americans, and they got their accent. And then the different types of, you know, ethnic groups within even white America for example, you know, the Italians, the, you know, New York. It’s pretty interesting. I don’t know, I think it’s an interesting, you know, the way American culture, American accents work.

Obviously, so going back to Australia at least, there is not really that distinction. I think if you can divide Australia up into two main parts, you got the rural… sort of rural… or rural-ish accent. And that’s, you know, that’s… It’s pretty difficult for a lot of people to understand. It varies in intensity. Basically, a lot of slang. A lot of really, really strongly pronounced words. You know, the slang is the main part, I think. You know, when you’re hanging out with some of these older guys, for example, who work in, you know, physical labor jobs or anything like that, they are incomprehensible to people… to, you know, even some other, depending on how isolated they’ve been. How much they’ve traveled they’re almost incomprehensible to even other English speakers, just ‘cause of the slang they use. I guess you could compare it to some of the rednecks in Canada or the States, you know. When they start talking about their trucks and all that. Just, it gets lost in translation. But then again, those people are not the majority. Those people, I would say, I couldn’t really give you a percentage. Maybe five to ten percent of the population. And then… even then if you’re visiting Sydney or Melbourne or anything like… any place like that, you’re not gonna hear a lot of it. You can hear a lot of it in Queensland or any of the other states once you get outside the city.

And then what you have as well, I mean, Australia is a very urban place so you have probably, I would… just off the top of my head I would say probably ninety-three to ninety-five percent of the population who lives in cities. And, you know, with a lot of exposure to, you know, American television, American music, American movies, American everything. You know, we… That’s pretty much the vast majority of our media and what we… of our entertainment. So, I mean, I know one chick, she grew up in the country in Australia; she had an American accent ‘til she was five, ‘til she went to school, because she just loved like just watching, you know, American television.

And I don’t think we had the same issues, but you know, I don’t know how much the American accent affect it. But I do notice that our style of speaking, I don’t know accent so much, but our style of speaking, the rhythm and the, I think maybe the rhythm with which we speak is fairly similar to some Americans. Where the British have… Ah, the British do have a different rhythm. Hard to describe, but I definitely I could illustrate. Yeah, and then once you get past the main accent, which is really quite neutral, which is the majority of the people. Possibly myself. I mean, I would say I’d be included in that. Then you have, you know, probably maybe ten percent of Australians who are a little bit more educated or from upper class or they spend time with people from the upper class, and they speak with a much more… with an accent which has a much more of a British tinge. And depending on the situation, of course, I mean they’ll change their accent depending on who their speaking to as well, ‘cause they don’t want to sound too posh. You know, when they’re hanging out with normal people. Yeah, like it does sound quite British. Although, to us, we can definitely distinguish that they’re probably from upper class Australia, they would just sound British to other people. But I don’t know, I think it’s all pretty interesting.

Sydney Female Reading

Reading

The Rainbow Passage

When the sunlight strikes raindrops in the air, they act as a prism and form a rainbow. The rainbow is a division of white light into many beautiful colors. These take the shape of a long round arch, with its path high above, and its two ends apparently beyond the horizon. There is, according to legend, a boiling pot of gold at one end. People look, but no one ever finds it. When a man looks for something beyond his reach, his friends say he is looking for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

Sydney Female Conversation

Conversation

I was born and raised in Penrith, which is an outer suburb of Sydney in New South Wales, Australia. I grew up there until I was about thirteen years of age, and then we moved to the mid-north coast of New South Wales to a tourist area called Port Macquarie. I’m currently fifty-nine years old, so I’ve spoken to a lot of Australians over my time and lived in a few different areas. For example, for almost twenty years we lived further out west in a farming area. I must say that I don’t think the Australian accent varies greatly from region to region. The most differences come from the use of particular words and in particular the use of different slang words. But as far as the accent goes, unless there’s some sort of ethnic background, I don’t think it varies a lot.

Where you will find a big difference in accents though, is people that live in Outback Australia or in the true farming areas, particularly those that have been born and raised out there. Those that, you know, just make a lifestyle change carry their more city-fied accents with them, but the guys out west have a whole different array of slang. They talk a lot slower. Very slow actually. And have some rather unique sayings. And in particular in Queensland particularly, the northern areas, they tend to hang ‘eh’ on the end of their words or sentences, sorry. So you might hear them say, “Oh, you know, I went into town, eh. And this, you know, old mate was there, eh. And, you know, we had a beer together, eh.” That sort of thing. And it’s more pronounced the further north and the northwest that you go.

Villawood Male Reading

Reading

The Rainbow Passage

When the sunlight strikes raindrops in the air, they act as a prism and form a rainbow. The rainbow is a division of white light into many beautiful colors. These take the shape of a long round arch, with its path high above, and its two ends apparently beyond the horizon. There is, according to legend, a boiling pot of gold at one end. People look, but no one ever finds it. When a man looks for something beyond his reach, his friends say he is looking for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

Villawood Male Conversation

Conversation

I was born in a town in southwestern Sydney, about thirty kilometers from the center, called Bankstown. When I was about one or two years old, we moved to a little bit further west to a little town called Villawood, and I grew up there. Left home when I was about eighteen. Moved to a place… Well, moved to a beach town called Bondi. Oh, sorry, not Bondi. Bronte. Just south of Bondi. Since then I’ve actually been… After working in the city for about three years, I’ve been traveling for pretty much most of my life since then, working in the IT industry.

I found quite interestingly that when I was working in Europe when I… for the first time, that I began to find it difficult for people to understand me. Now that, I say that in the context of that I was a presenter. I was doing presales. So I was… for an IT company. So I spent quite a lot of time in front of very senior people throughout Europe. In the UK, Denmark, France, most of the Nordics, and so on. And so you might notice, and I quite often get accused of this, that I’ve lost some of… at least some of my Australian accent. Which I mostly attribute to the fact that I’ve stopped using many of the colloquialisms and slang that we often used. So if I spend a few weeks at home with my brother and family and friends, I tend to revert back to my core Australian dialect. But I do still swear a lot. That’s something that’s hard to let go of. And I have a, yeah, I would say more bland Australian accent. And it is often difficult for people to understand me… sorry, to understand that I am Australian. Having said that, I had a job interview yesterday where it was immediately picked up that I was from Australia.

I’ve lived here now in Denmark for about twenty-three years. And during that time, I’ve become fluent in Danish. And I guess even that has somewhat found its way into my accent. Although, I try to keep it nice and clean. At the same time, I’ve had a couple of kids. They were both born in Australia and moved here when they were two and three years old. And I’ve done my best, very best, to ensure that when they speak English, they speak in an English… sorry, in at least an English slash Australian accent. So that they have sort of that little bit of Australia with them. Even to the point as when they were, you know, when they were arguing as toddlers, or a little bit older, five, six, seven years old. They start… If they started arguing and swearing at each other in Danish, I would insist that they use their English, and preferably Australian slang, to abuse each other. So…

Wollongong Female Reading

Reading

The Rainbow Passage

When the sunlight strikes raindrops in the air, they act as a prism and form a rainbow. The rainbow is a division of white light into many beautiful colors. These take the shape of a long round arch, with its path high above, and its two ends apparently beyond the horizon. There is, according to legend, a boiling pot of gold at one end. People look, but no one ever finds it. When a man looks for something beyond his reach, his friends say he is looking for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

Wollongong Female Conversation

Conversation

I’m from Wollongong in Australia, which is about an hour south of Sydney. And I have a slight cold today, so hopefully that doesn’t affect me too much when I’m talking and hopefully you still get my accent. Okay, I’ll just go through like all the interviewing questions that you had. So, I’m a female. I’m Caucasian, and I am twenty-two. I am studying at university at Wollongong, and I am studying mathematics. I don’t want to be a math teacher. I want to be… I want to work in finance and things like that. So, I have lived in Wollongong my entire life, except for a brief period last year where I lived in England in Sheffield, and I studied abroad over there.

So one, talk about where you’re from and what is was like growing up there. How is it different from other cities or countries you’ve visited? So, I have grown up in Wollongong, which is actually the second-largest city in New South Wales, which is the state I’m from. Sydney being the largest. I always thought it was quite a small town, but I’m learning more and more that it’s bigger than I kind of realized. So, I live in like the suburbs area, so I… It’s not the closest to the city, and it takes me like about a fifteen-minute drive to get into university, but that’s not really too bad. But I definitely couldn’t live here without a car. I’m… The public transport is like pretty poor. If I needed to get somewhere it would be very, very difficult without that. Whereas I know that my parents grew up in much smaller towns than I did. So, towns of roughly three thousand to five hundred… five thousand people. And I have been out there and visited those, and they’re much more rural.

I find that growing up in kind of this area is a university town, so it’s quite multicultural. I think I’ve been… I’ve experienced a lot of other cultures, and I think that I have a great, diverse group of friends because of where I’ve grown up from. I know that it’s very different from the inlands of Australia, where you kind of have like these very central, white populations that get close-knit and it can get very racist very easily. Whereas where I live is a little bit more liberal and a little bit more progressive maybe.

So it’s quite different from other countries that I’ve been to. I’ve been to a lot of Asian countries and things like that, but I think that’s just that it’s a very Western country. I would compare it a lot to England and the U.K. They’re very similar. I mean there’s a lot of similarities in that like this was… Australia was colonized from England. And so because of that, we have like strong English heritage, and then high-drinking cultures and things like that, so there was a lot of similarities. But generally, I do like where I’ve grown up. I do want to move to Sydney in the next couple of years, just because I want something a bit bigger. But I don’t think that’s necessarily a reflection of Wollongong. And I think that it’s been a good town and a good city to me.

Okay. So I studied in Sheffield with this girl Hillary, and so I’m just gonna talk about my experience and was it my first time abroad. So, it was definitely my first time living in another country, and actually my first time living outside of home. I really, really enjoyed the kind of freedom that came with it. Like I do have a good relationship with my parents, but it was really fun to kind of live with friends and live with people, and I guess experience the high’s and low’s that come with that.

So, it was not my first time overseas. I have traveled a fair bit. Like I’ve been to America a few times and Japan and a bunch of other countries. But I… I’ve… I did really enjoy Sheffield. I think that it was very, very similar to living in Australia. I think it did have, obviously, the biggest difference was the weather. So I live in quite a warm place. So it… I think the highest it got to this summer was forty-six degrees Celsius, which is insanely hot. But… And then moving to Sheffield where it snowed, not regularly, but it snowed a few times. So I’d only actually ever seen the snow once in my life before, and then moving overseas to England I was freezing all of the time. But I mean, I had such an amazing experience. I met a lot of people that I really, really loved and I am so lucky to call great friends. And I think that more than anything that experience taught me a lot about who I am and how I can cope by myself, and how I can kind of make connections with people and just kind of see who I really, really am.

Okay, the other question I have here is that, “Hillary told me the story of how you met your boyfriend.” So, I actually, when I was maybe sixteen or seventeen, I was shopping with my boyfriend at the time, who was this very controlling boy. We were very young. And we went into this bookshop with my friend, this girl. And there was this sales assistant, and he was really cute and really lovely and really funny. And I… We got out of the store and I was like to my friend Courtney I was like, “You should go for him. He’s really cute.” And my boyfriend at the time got so angry. He was like, “How could you call another guy cute?” And I was… I mean, obviously, that didn’t work out, that relationship. But at the time I was like, “You have nothing to worry about. Like I’m with you.”

And then fast-forward like two years later, I start university, and I see this cute guy and I go and sit down next to him because that’s what I wanted to do. And then we were talking and we became friends and it was really nice. And then halfway through one of our conversations I was like, “Oh, what do you do?” And he’s like, “I work at this bookshop.” And it turns out that he was this cute bookshop guy that we’d been calling the cute bookshop guy for like a year from that point. And then it turns out that we actually got together and it… So my ex at the time did actually have something to worry about. But I think it’s very funny that I did push him on my friend. I said, “Go for it.” But now they’re really good friends, which is nice.

Okay, so what are my favorite foods? Anything that is unique to Australia? So my favorite foods are quite generic. Like I really like pancakes, and I really like cheese. Which aren’t really Australian, because the Australian culture does not have many foods. We do claim that we have lamingtons, which are like a sponge cake covered in like a chocolate and then coconut. But I think we stole that from New Zealand, so I’m not really sure if we can actually claim that. The other thing that you might have heard of is a Bunnings sausage. Bunnings is like this… It was like a meme for a while, and I don’t know if it reached America, but Bunnings is like this hardware store and I actually used to work there. And every Saturday and Sunday they have a sausage sizzle. And so it’s essentially where you cook sausages, and then you get like a plain piece of white bread. And then you put the sausage in it, and then you either have onions or then tomato sauce on top. And like it’s like a cultural thing. If we have a barbecue, you’ll have like a sausage sizzle or a snag. And I quite enjoy those.

The other thing that I like that you guys probably will absolutely hate is Vegemite. I know that I gave some to Hillary, and she actually quite liked it, I think, because it had a lot of salt in it. But I think she’s the only person not from Australia that I’ve ever met that’s liked it. It’s like, we’d have it on toast and… or on bread. Or like one of our bakeries makes these scrolls. And they’re cheesymite scrolls, so there’s like Vegemite and cheese in like a scroll, and it’s delicious. And I think I had that every day for lunch from primary school, which is like kinder to year six. Sorry, that’s probably my unique kind of food experience.

New South Wales Female Conversation

Conversation

So, I was born and raised in rural New South Wales. New South Wales is the largest state in Australia. Population-wise. Definitely not land area-wise. And it’s on the East Coast, and the capital city is Sydney, which lots of people have heard about. But I’ve also lived in other states. In Victoria and the ACT and WA. And the places I’ve lived in New South Wales in regional areas, I was born in Wagga Wagga, which is an aboriginal word, meaning place of many crows. It’s in the south of the state. And I have also lived in Nowra, which is on the South Coast near a really beautiful place called Jervis Bay. So I’ve also lived in two little villages in the Snowy Mountains. Tumut, which is now quite a large timber town. And Tumbarumba, which is an aboriginal word meaning hollow-sounding ground. And also lived in Nowra, which is on the South Coast, south of Sydney, near a really beautiful place called Jervis Bay. And also at a place called Muswellbrook, which is in the Hunter Valley, and now is almost completely surrounded by open-cut coal mines. Even though just down the road, there are lots of very expensive horse studs. And a bit further down the Hunter Valley towards the coast there are vineyards.

Also spent a bit of time in some little regional towns like Kiama, which is on the South Coast, south of Sydney. It’s on the train line from Sydney, so it’s relatively easy to get to. Sale in Gippsland, in Victoria, which is also on the train line. And Merriwa, in New South Wales, which is in Liverpool Ranges. And Dorrigo, which is in the northern part of New South Wales. It’s inland from Coffs Harbour. And it’s up on the escarpment, and there’s World Heritage listed rainforest on the edge of the escarpment, so it’s really beautiful part of the world. Lots of people go to Bellingen, which is a bit further towards the coast.

And also have lived in Newcastle. In Newcastle, which is two hours north of Sydney. It’s on the train line from Sydney, and the train trip’s actually quite a nice journey. If you like train trips, you go across the Hawkesbury River, and through some eucalypt forest. So, Newcastle’s a lovely town. It’s Australia’s largest port because of all the coal that comes from the coal mines up in the Hunter Valley and is exported through the port of Newcastle. But it does have lovely beaches. And particularly north of the harbor, there’s beaches all the way up to Nelson Bay, which is… and which is part of Port Stephens and is a sort of a holiday destination. So, it’s a lovely part of the world to visit. And yeah, if you… if people… if you like beaches, but you don’t want to go to beaches that are super crowded, like Sydney, it’s a nice place to go and they have great coffee.

Blue Mountains Male Reading

Reading

The Rainbow Passage

When the sunlight strikes raindrops in the air, they act as a prism and form a rainbow. The rainbow is a division of white light into many beautiful colors. These take the shape of a long round arch, with its path high above, and its two ends apparently beyond the horizon. There is, according to legend, a boiling pot of gold at one end. People look, but no one ever finds it. When a man looks for something beyond his reach, his friends say he is looking for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

Blue Mountains Male Conversation

Conversation

Okay, well, I’m Australian, and I moved into Dublin in January. Since landing here, I’ve been able to become a manager at Hale Vaping, which is one of the biggest vaping stores here in Ireland. In Australia, I lived basically in Sydney, in an area called the Blue Mountains, which is a very big tourist attraction. There, I was working for Apple for about six years. So.

In the Blue Mountains where I lived, you’d want to go visit the Three Sisters. And the obvious ones being the Sydney Harbor Bridge and the Opera House. That’s in New South Wales. That’s one of the states. But there’s plenty of other states to visit, like the Northern Territory, where you can see Ayers Rock, that’s huge. You’ve got the Katherine Gorge, which is also in the Northern Territory. This is the first time I’ve been overseas. I love it. Absolutely love it. Yeah, so me and my wife moved here and we’ve immigrated here, so you know, we’re quite pretty… we’re pretty chuffed.

Just in Dublin. We haven’t really ventured out too far. We’ve mostly done the city. We’ve been down to Bray. Down to Dunleary. ‘Bout it really. We… We’ve just basically head down, try and find work. You know, hit the ground running. Very well. That’s working, so it’s good.

Sydney Female Reading

Reading

The Rainbow Passage

When the sunlight strikes raindrops in the air, they act as a prism and form a rainbow. The rainbow is a division of white light into many beautiful colors. These take the shape of a long round arch, with its path high above, and its two ends apparently beyond the horizon. There is, according to legend, a boiling pot of gold at one end. People look, but no one ever finds it. When a man looks for something beyond his reach, his friends say he is looking for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

Sydney Female Conversation

Conversation

So, I'm originally from Sydney, Australia. I was born in the city. My family, I had my mum, my dad and my older sister, lived in the inner western suburbs of Sydney. We had a beautiful little house with a tennis court in the backyard, which is a very rare thing because we lived so close to the city. I don't know how there was space for a tennis court. But yeah, so we lived there for a few years. We had a little parrot called Amadeus, we had a rabbit called Blanca and we had a German shepherd, whose name was Carter. And so we lived there, the four of us, with our pets and it was a beautiful, beautiful, you know, three years.

And then in the early 2000s, my younger brother was born and my parents bought some land about forty minutes away from the city and built a house there. So we moved, the five of us moved with the German shepherd. No idea what happened to the rabbit or the parrot. No idea. So we moved and I started going to preschool here and then eventually primary school. I went to the local school here. And mind you, the suburb that we moved to was very tiny. It still is. It's about the length, my road is the length of the suburb. Very small. So it just had a school, no shops, nothing. So I went there to that school for four years and I was always very much into performing. I joined the school choir, I was part of the dance group and, oh at the time there wasn't a drama club, but I did drama classes outside of school, as well as dance, and I was part of the Australian Girls Choir.

I was never very good at sports. I tried a lot of them too. The main one, like most Australian children do swimming. They start swimming lessons from the age of like before you even turn one. You'll see a lot of babies in the water with floaties and learning how to swim when they've just learned to walk. Just because we're so surrounded by water and in the summer everybody has a pool, you know, just it's part of our culture. So I did swimming, I did tennis, I did t-ball and nuke ‘em ball, netball, karate, gymnastics. I did, did I say tennis? I did, um, what else? Oh, you know, probably a few more, but I was not coordinated. Oh, lacrosse, field hockey, indoor soccer. Yeah, look, I just wasn't very good at them. Not very coordinated, not very fast, not super flexible. Yeah, so that didn't really work out.

That's why I went towards performing and being a little bit more on the creative side. So yeah, I went to, back to what I was saying before, I went to primary school in my local area for four years, then my family moved to the US. We were very fortunate enough to have the opportunity to move to New Jersey for three years. So we lived there and it was an incredible experience. I loved being immersed in the culture and making friends and really just being able to experience something so different to what I knew and what I'd grown up with. And yeah, it was really cool to have that chance to learn a lot about a country that wasn't Australia. So yeah, I went to school there until sixth grade and I fell in love with musical theater while I was there. We lived about an hour and a half away from New York. So on the weekends we'd go on trips and we'd go see shows and we'd go explore the city. It was incredible. We did this every weekend. My dad would take us to a different place. So we'd go to Washington DC or we'd go to Philadelphia or explore small towns along the Delaware River. It was an adventure. And maybe if we'd lived there, I mean, we never did that really when we were living in Australia.

So it was having that opportunity to be overseas that we really took advantage of it and we didn't take it for granted. We really made sure that we saw as much as we could in the time that we were there. So yeah, I got really involved in musical theater while I was there and I'd do musical theater summer camps and just got very involved. I did singing lessons and I was part of the vocal ensemble there as well. And I started learning to play the flute. Again, I was not great at the flute.

So yeah, that was a great experience. And in the end, at the end of 2008, we moved back to Australia and I started attending high school here in a couple suburbs away from where I live. And that was really great. I did the school musicals there. You know, high school is high school. The experience was just fine. It was fine. I kept on doing musicals. I'd do a couple a year and just it kept me going. By the time I graduated high school, I went to university. I started off wanting to do journalism and eventually ended up transferring to social political science and international studies. And I was passionate about that. I loved it. It was so great. The discussions that we had in class were just incredible. It was everything I'd ever dreamed of. And then I actually auditioned on a whim for a college in the U.S. and got a scholarship. So at the beginning or middle of 2016, I moved back to the U.S. I moved to New York City by myself, which was a, you know, this challenge to move away from my family to the other side of the world by myself. But I studied musical theatre there and I learned a lot. I really, really grew up, but I fell in love with the city and it really started to feel like home. And I wasn't really quite familiar with it from when I lived there as a kid. But this was a completely different experience, really, being a teenager in the city. So yeah, so I was there for a few years and since then I've been back and forth between Sydney and New York. I'm doing acting and doing theatre.

I am home in Australia now and I am incredibly grateful for it. The weather is beautiful. I mean, it is winter, but we're very fortunate in Sydney that no matter what time of the year it is, it is always okay to go to the beach. It's always beautiful. It rains a little bit sometimes in the winter, but you never really need a puffer jacket. Usually you just need a light jacket in the mornings and yeah, it's very nice, very lucky. And the food here is great. I'm sure the food is great everywhere, but there's no place like home, you know. So very, very grateful to be back here with my family for a little bit.