Melbourne 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.

Melbourne Male Conversation

Conversation

Well basically, yeah, it's just a big adventure I suppose. Maybe why it’s… had to fly to London but my main aim is Ireland, so thought I may as well spend a bit of time in England and thoroughly enjoyed it, so... I've got contacts in Ireland, and it's a place I’ve always been interested in, and yeah, just I suppose, you know, ancestry, that sort of thing. So it'll be good to check that out, and yeah, it's just a place that really, really does interest me and you know, always wanted to go there and just experience the life there, and that sort of thing. So yeah, I suppose that's why, ahead of England which most Australians you know, tend to head to. You know, I suppose it's a little bit different. Most Australians work in London and stay there and stick together whereas I thought, you know, mix around and do something a little bit different. So that's probably the main reason. Yeah.

Male: So you were born and raised in …

Yes in Melbourne and spent a bit of time in a place called Albury-Wodonga on the Victorian-New South Wales border and, but pretty much in Melbourne, born and bred. So yes, yeah, a Victorian through and through.

Male: Are your parents from there too?

They're actually from the south – more what's called the Western District of Victoria and that's actually sort of a very – what would you call it like it's where a lot of the Irish came in to a place called Port Ferry, which used to be known as Belfast actually. So it's sort of a very Irish part of Victoria, and my dad worked in the National Australia Bank. So he actually – he used to move around quite a bit. That's why – but before I was born, you know, he was in, you know, about five different towns and, you know, he went to a place called Mornington which is just out of Melbourne and I was born, then to Aubry and back to Melbourne. So that's been my experiences. You know, to have a, like, an actual visa, you need to have a grandparent or as I’ve only got great-grandparents so unfortunately. I’m on a one-year working visa, which limits you a little bit. Yeah. So, yeah, we’ll see how it goes. No worries.

Melbourne 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.

Melbourne Female Conversation

Conversation

Male: How long have you been traveling?

Twenty-first of March I left home. So, a month a half. Yeah.

Male: Are you off from school?

Yeah, I'm taking the semester off uni. I'm doing computer science.

Male: How much longer do you have?

Well the course is supposed to take a year, so there's – but I've already spent a year on it, so there's still at least another semester. I might not do as many subjects and take another year to do it. I haven't decided yet because some of the subjects, they’ve – they're not running in second semester, the subjects that I want to do. So I’ll have to do them in first semester and pre-requisites and stuff. So yeah. Monday I’m going to Edinburgh.

Male: And you're spending how long there?

I think it’s two and a half weeks or something I've booked. I know I spend a week in the Netherlands and I get back on the fifth of June. So yeah. I just know I'm going on Monday but I'm not sure what day I'm flying to the Netherlands, but I'm sure I'll look it up when I get there.

Male: Where are you from originally?

I've always lived in Melbourne. I was born in Melbourne. Right – There used to be a hospital right in the middle of the city. I've lived in Richmond, Kew, and Carlton. Yeah, my – yeah, just always lived in the city. So yeah...

Melbourne 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.

Melbourne Male Conversation

Conversation

Well, I was born in Brisbane, and I was raised there for about maybe the first seven years of my life, I guess. Dad's a teacher, right? So he moves around-- he moved around a lot in the early years because he would be getting jobs in different places. So. I've lived in Queensland in Australia; I've been in Western Australia for a little bit; been in South Australia for a little bit. I'm in Victoria now. And so, yeah, I've had a pretty broad sampling of all of the states in Australia, not just travel-- not just travel-wise, but living-wise as well.

Probably the longest that I've ever stayed anywhere would be living here in Victoria. I've lived in two different places in Victoria, pretty far from each other. I've been in Victoria for the majority of my life, about ten years now, I think. Getting close to that.

I don't know. I guess it's probably the best out of all of them as well that I've found. Queensland was way too hot for me. W.A. is all right, but it can get a little hot as well. South Australia, bit of the same. But Victoria is this good balance of the people that I know here, and good weather, and living relatively close to the city and all that sort of stuff. So, it's been pretty good living here. And I guess I’d want to stay here for the foreseeable future, but I would be willing to head off somewhere else given the fact that I'm-- You know, I've moved around a lot. I'm kind of used to it, I guess.

What else I can say about myself in terms of where I was born and raised and all that sort of stuff... I guess near plans for the future. Currently, I'm studying at university. I want to be an English teacher, mainly to people who--you know--don't have English as their first language. So I'm planning to, yeah, start doing a teaching degree in the next year or two, once I finish my first degree, which is an Arts degree. And for that I will have to probably move closer to the city. I'm relatively close now but it's still a little bit far. It's still about an hour's commute by train from where I live, which isn't too bad. Because I know a lot of people who live geographically closer, but I--you know--I take a lot longer to get to uni- than I do just because they got so many connections with buses and trams, and stuff like that. So, it's not too bad, but, you know, I kind of just want to get moving again. You know? Move out at some point with a couple of friends, maybe, just see what it's like living there on my own when I'm studying. I think it would be a good experience, and hopefully I'll be doing that at the end of next year.

Melbourne 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.

Melbourne Male Conversation

Conversation

I'm an animator so I work in animation, mainly for advertising. So I get paid to do ads and then I do a lot of short films and video clips as well. But the money isn't as good in passion projects, so whenever I can I will do short films and animation, but mainly it's a lot of ads. Hand drawn animation, Disney sort of cell stuff.

Male: Is that something you've always wanted to do, animation?

Yeah, I studied it in uni, well I studied sort of multimedia design and that was sort of part of it. And yeah, I've always been drawing for as long as I can remember. I think initially I always wanted to draw comics, but then because I'm a masochist I decided that doing animation would be more fun if not all like time consuming. So I studied it all through university and yeah, I kind of got lucky once I got out. Or, you know, I was good. Either way, I got lucky when I got out and so I've just been working ever since. But Melbourne's a really good place. There's not necessary a lot of animation work there, but it's a good place in a sense that there are a lot of really passionate, creative people, so it's a good place to meet people who are doing the same thing. And also a lot of people who are just doing it because they want to. So if you're up for people, you can always find someone to do your, help, well, to collaborate on some dinky, no-pay, short film in Melbourne.

Well, it's-- Well, it's pencil-paper animation, but nowadays I just draw it straight into the computer with a tablet. So it's the same, it's basically-- It does make it easier, but it also makes it cheaper because the problem with--especially like cell animation, you have to buy all the art supplies and everything. And even though you've gone out and spent a thousand dollars on a computer and a tablet, at the end of the day, it's sort of cheaper and easier without having to worry about all the art supplies. Yeah, so I just, I sit down and draw for days and days and days. I do this kind of animation competition that we run in Melbourne, which is a-- it's every month there's a theme and then animators from around the globe will all submit short animations to our website, and then we'll have a screening in Melbourne. And we had one in L.A. just recently as well, and there are kind of other places around the world, people will kind of screen it. And the whole idea with that is that it just has to be a small looping animation, which means that you can get away with doing five seconds of animation or fifteen seconds of animation because I will spend, you know, a week doing three second of animation and/or you know, I will spend something like I'll spend three weeks and I'll do fifteen seconds. Because it's just so time consuming. But at the same time the longer you spend on something, the more satisfying it is.

Male: So what is it like, twenty, twenty-some frames a second?

Yeah, twenty-five is usually-- You can animate on twelve, like on two, so that's twelve frames a second. But I prefer to do things right regardless. But there-- And there are ways, especially when you're doing it on computers where you can have-- And it's sort of the way that like all the old sort of Japanese and Korean animations were done where it's mostly just a static one image and then they're animating the mouth or just an arm. So you are just-- You're animating an arm for twenty-five frames a second, but really the rest of it is just one big drawing. So there are ways to kind of get around it. But also part of learning animation and doing it for so long is working out how to do that sort of thing but still make it look great or even to hide it or what can you get away with, and effective short cuts without coming down on the quality.

Male: Do you have any favorite, like classic movies that you like, you always go to or--

Yeah. Well, I think the people who really sort of inspired me growing up was John K., who did like Ren and Stimpy; and Dan Horowitz who was just this sort of like a punk rock animator. And I think the reason why they sort of did it was more the—like, while their style is really fantastic, like animation-wise, it was also the humor. So it would engage me as a teenager. And so that would kind of engage me and then I would be attentive to all the animation they do. But also people like those guys, they were a bit, like, punk about what they were doing so it was just kind of them. And they sort of, like, they really showed you that it was possible for one person to do it, and you didn’t have to be a part of like a Disney Studios or Studio Ghibli or something; you could just kind of do it by yourself in your basement or like with two or three people. And so that-- that's a very important lesson to learn. And especially when you're a student and when you're starting out. And working in a giant studio like Disney, while it's a possible goal, it just seems so far away, and to be able to have these sort of small milestones as you're own as you're progressing through your career and learning your craft, it's nice to have kind of attainable goals of, "Yeah, I could just do this by myself in my basement."

Male: Yeah. Yeah, cool. Have you always lived in Melbourne then?

I have. Yeah. I was-- Well, I was born in-- Well, I was raised in the Danion Rangers, which is about-- it's about an hour and a half out of Melbourne in the hills. And sort of-- And then as my life progressed, I sort of moved closer and closer toward the city. Sort of went from the hills to the suburbs, and now I'm-- Well, I was in the city and then I moved out again. But I'm still very close, I'm sort of in the surrounding areas. And I've visited a lot of other cities. Well, there's probably a few that I would move to, but Melbourne's a great city to live in just because it is so creative and cultural and everyone is supporting the arts. And it's the sort of supportive environment that I need to be in.

Male: How would you-- How is it different than, say, Sydney, then?

Okay. Well, Sydney is where the money is. So you move to Sydney if-- Yeah. 'Cause it's sort of-- It's where all the head offices are and it’s where all the main offices are, so if you want to progress your career chances are you'll move to Sydney if you want to be a manager or someone. So Sydney is more about money and career, and so it does reflect in the city as well, that everyone is obsessed--I suppose--with-- yeah, with being everything's new. And there's also this massive pressure in Sydney to also look really good, but in that like fit, tanned, expensive clothes sort of way. Whereas, Melbourne there's the pressure of looking good in the, I guess, the weird, trendy sort of way.

So, I guess that's the main big difference between the two cities. So I personally wouldn't move to Syd-- Which I'm probably undercutting them a lit bit. They do have a lot of people, a lot of creative people there and a lot of stuff coming out, but it’s just the, I think it's just the overarching culture is one of career, whereas in Melbourne it's generally just people who just want to draw, and screw around.

Melbourne 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.

Melbourne Male Conversation

Conversation

I was born in Melbourne, Australia and I've been raised here my whole life, I'm currently eighteen years old and I have a passion for languages. I can currently speak German, and I've also been learning Chinese since two thousand eleven. I also have a keen interest toward sport, especially Australian rules football and I find soccer pretty cool. I do support buy-in and think Robin is the best player in the world and overall, I'm Australian and proud to be so.

Geelong Victoria 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.

Geelong Victoria Male Conversation

Conversation

I was born in Melbourne, the capital city of Victoria. When I was very young, I moved to Werribee, Hoppers Crossing, which is a suburban area half an hour away from inner Melbourne. Since then I've lived in inner city Melbourne, Geelong, out in the countryside, which is we called the bush, about forty-five minutes by car away from Geelong despite having spent about a decade of my life living out on the farm I never really developed the country Australian sort of accent because I still went to school in central Geelong, in the city. So most of my friends are from there and I never really even got to know many of the people in the small town called Meredith that I lived in because I only ever really just drove through the city--oh sorry--through the town to get to the city. So, yeah, just commuting back and forth to the farm and I didn't really meet that many people out there. So, yeah. I'd say I have a pretty city or urban accent, I guess. It's difficult for me to hear the differences between the regional accents in Australia because they're-- they're only really subtle.

The differences? The only really noticeable one that I-- that I've experienced is up north sort of in Queensland, northern territory, north and western Australia. They have like-- they speak more like country Australian accents even though, like, even sort of well-educated people in those areas, which is not the, like, it's nothing to do with their, like, education or anything up there. I think it's just-- I think that's just the way that everybody talks up there, I guess. So, yeah. And they use-- they also use a lot of slang even, like, even we don't, here in Victoria, even we don't understand a lot of the slang that they use. Just-- It's kind of weird, some of it. But yeah, they use a lot more slang over there and they have sort of-- they sound less educated even though they're not, in general. And, yeah, and obviously, there’s a big difference between what we call bogans, which is sort of equivalent of a redneck in Australia, sort of the lower class, less educated people. They have a very distinct accent that you can hear, which is basically just-- slurred words, a bit more, and that sort of stuff.

Hawthorn 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.

Hawthorn Male Conversation

Conversation

I was born in Hawthorne, a suburb of Melbourne in Australia. I've lived here all my life. I've travelled a little bit around Australia but never lived anywhere else apart from here in Melbourne. So, Hawthorne is a, you know, a fairly inner city suburb in the east of Melbourne. It's-- Yeah, it's a pretty nice, well-off area. And it's, Melbourne in general, is a very livable city. So, I went to school here. I graduated-- I went to uni here as well, at RMIT. I have travelled around a little bit, around Australia. I've been to New South Wales to visit Sydney. I’ve been up to Queensland when I was a kid, and Northern Territory, right in the north of Australia to visit Kakadu National Park and some relatives who live in Darwin. I've also been to Western Australia, Perth, Freemantle. Yeah, I think outside of Melbourne-- I think maybe the accents generally tend to be a bit more broad and rounder than what you find in Melbourne. But yeah, particularly in Queensland, Northern Territory, they’re sort of the Australian Texas. I think that's a decent comparison. Yeah, they sort of have a bit of a separate way of life and accent from the rest of the eastern states.

Yeah, I've traveled overseas quite a few times and it-- when I'm backpacking around people comment on how broad my accent is. Maybe that’s because they've never met an Aussie before but I never really thought of my accent as being broad. I thought of it maybe being a bit more of a clipped, light, general urban kind of accent. But I know I do tend to slur my words a little bit.

What else? Well, that's that. Yeah. I like learning languages. I've learned French since I was about ten or so, and I learned Japanese and Spanish. Yeah, I like imitating accents. Here in Melbourne we have a lot of different, you know, different immigrants from all over the world, particularly we've got a large Greek and Italian community, as well as after the Vietnam War, you know, there was a huge wave of Vietnamese immigrants. So yeah, I like having access to all the food and stuff they bring to the city. Yeah, it's a great city to live in., Apparently, Melbourne is the largest Greek community outside Athens in the world, which is pretty surprising. But yeah, we have the most Greeks of any city in the world other than Athens.

Yeah, recently there's been a new influx of European immigrants here, particularly French, Spanish, Italian, Greek again, of course. And that's been really interesting. I think it's mainly because of the economic crisis there at the moment. But yeah, so we have a pretty diverse community here. But it's a melting pot and nothing, more or less everyone gets on.

Melbourne 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.

Melbourne Female Conversation

Conversation

I am from Australia. I was born and raised in Melbourne. I have three children and I am a make-up artist. And my favorite things to do in life are have adventures like go on roller coasters and have lots of fun. And I'm also a massive music fan and I'm learning Japanese so that I can understand my favorite brand, Arashi, so I can understand their lyrics because they sing in Japanese.

Melbourne 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.

Melbourne Female Conversation

Conversation

I live in Melbourne. I was born and raised here. Melbourne’s the capitol of Victoria, which is a state in the southern-most part of mainland Australia. I've lived here pretty much my whole life, except for a couple of years I lived in Brisbane, Queensland when I was a baby. But my family is back in Melbourne now; and we've lived here for years and years. My mum's not Australian, she's actually English. So she immigrated over here when she was a child and they lived originally in Perth, which is the capitol of Western Australia, that's a state that takes up pretty much the whole western part of the country.

Where I live in Victoria it's generally a cold-- one of the coldest states. Our weather can be quite random. Some days it can be thirty degrees, some days it can be seventeen degrees. And today, though, it’s really warm. We're having a nice, warm day. It’s about thirty-seven degrees.

Today, I went and saw the cricket with my boyfriend. His brother's team won, which was really exciting. Another state, the state that's probably colder than Victoria is Tasmania, which is an island off of the Victorian coast. They're known for having really, really cold weather. But I’ve never ever been there before. The states I've been to have been Western Australia, Queensland, New South Wales, the Northern Territory, and Victoria, obviously.

Melbourne 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.

Melbourne Male Conversation

Conversation

I travel maybe once a year to other countries, And I've been to various places such as Malaysia quite often because my mum’s Malaysian, but my father's Australian. Where else have I been? Malaysia. I went to Beijing earlier this year. Indonesia quite often as well. Thailand. And I went to America in two thousand and ten, and I don't think I picked up any of the accent there but I could definitely tell that it's quite different to the Australian accent.

For me, I think that my accent personally is quite a general Australian accent. It's not a Crocodile Dundee accent or anything like that or-- And I feel that most people in Melbourne would have a similar accent to me, but it depends from person to person as well as region to region. And I think that people from Central Australia and parts of that region would have a much more thicker, sort of Australian drawl or something like that. More twangy and stuff. I think, yeah, most people in Melbourne have the same accent as me, which is the typical general Australian accent.

My hometown, Melbourne, is quite a-- I think it's quite a nice city. And it was voted the most livable city for, I think, a number of years. I think it's two thousand and thirteen or something. I can't quite remember. But I think it's quite a clean city and all the people here are very nice and approachable. And it's actually quite a multicultural city. So, yeah. There's a lot of people from India, China, and all around. And there's often quite different suburbs, which are where all these cultures come together. And especially for me, there's a suburb just north of me, which is not far away, where there's a nice Asian community, and I often go there to practice my Mandarin Chinese.

I actually speak a number of languages. For me, I speak French, Spanish, Mandarin Chinese, German, and Latin at school. As well as English and-- of course. Yeah, so then I can-- And I feel that in Melbourne itself you can practice quite a number of these languages. Even though the only language that I feel is a bit scarce is German surprisingly. I've met very few German people. But that's when I use online websites, like italki and Skype4 to practice with these people.

I hope that this-- that you can use this to help people gain an Australian accent. If you're wondering-- if you want to sort of write where my accent is at, I think it'd just be a neutral general Australian accent if that's what you want to put down for me.

Melbourne 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.

Melbourne Female Conversation

Conversation

I was born in Canberra and grew up in Melbourne. Lived there for most of my life. Well, actually not, that’s not true. I lived there for twenty-six years when I then moved to Israel, where I’ve been living in Jerusalem for the last twenty-six years. I have… Wow. Well, Melbourne, life there was fun. It was actually quite provincial in some ways. Very small town, even though Melbourne is now, you know, a city of well over three million or six million people. Moving to Jerusalem was a very different place. I moved here at the time of the peace process. So, there was a lot of optimism in the city.

I’m really excited. Tomorrow I’m going to an event by a group of people call… who call themselves Koolulam. Koolulam means everyone together. And what they do is they get… they invite, you know, whoever wants to turn up basically. A lot of people. They teach them a song within an hour. They usually break the song down into different parts. So you have the men who are bass… who are the bass. You have altos and you have sopranos. And they teach the song in three parts, then bring everyone together after an hour, and everyone sings the song together either with a live band or with a backing track. And they record it, they film it, they then later on edit it. And these, you know, shows go out to the world. And they… First of all, it’s the most incredible experience to be part of a group of, you know, hundreds if not thousands…

Melbourne 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.

Melbourne Male Conversation

Conversation

Righty-O. I come from Australia. This is an Australian accent, and we’re going to go and make the most use of it. Now since it’s for accent training, what I tend to find about Australian dialect is when we speak, we don’t tend to move our mouth as much. Say like with a British accent, you really enunciate all of the words. You move your lips, you move your mouth, you move your jaw to go and make the full movement. To really go and enunciate the sounds. That doesn’t happen so much with Australian. It… it’s almost like my jaw stays perfectly still the whole time almost. And it’s the same thing with my lips. And that was a bit interesting, because when I was a little bit younger, I went and lived over in England for a fair while, and over the course of a few months, I started going and developing an English accent. Unfortunately, I can’t go and replicate it anymore, because I forgot how to do the bugger. But it doesn’t really go and affect my dialect at all. That was a long time ago, and I plan to go back one day. And that’ll be very interesting when it all happens. But for the meantime, with all of this accent thing, I tend to find that I talk a lot faster than an average person would. I’m naturally a fast-talking person. For an average Australian, it’s almost slow and they tend to drag out all of the words. Sort of like this sort of talking here, and it carries a heavy usage of the word ‘mate’ and ‘eh.’ You end every sentence with, “Yeah, g’day, mate.” And, “How you goin’, eh?” And, “There, yeah, no, that’s just too good, all of that stuff.” So, there’s a lot of wasted words that convey no real meaning in it. It’s sort of like um’s and ah’s, except yeah, yeah. Saying yeah’s and nah’s and eh’s and mates and all of that sort of fun stuff. So, with a little bit of luck this goes and helps you with all of your teaching purposes and I’m happy to help with all of that.

Donnybrook 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.

Donnybrook Male Conversation

Conversation

As you can probably tell, I’ve got a pretty strong Australian accent. I was born and raised in a small town in South Australia, which is in the middle of Australia. And I’ve moved about during my working life from South Australia to Victoria, which is on the East Coast, and then across to Western Australia, which is on the West Coast. Where I was born and raised, it was on the Eyre Peninsula. It was quite a good childhood. And I had a lot of things to do outside. And I was a child of the seventies, so we spent much of the time at the beach. When I started to… I moved to Adelaide to finish up my schooling in the late eighties. And then moved in to work, where I moved across to Melbourne for one year, and then across to Perth, which I’ve now spent about thirty years in Perth.

There’s some similar accents between each of the different states in Australia. But there’s some words that we do pronounce quite differently. People in the eastern states will pronounce castle or pool in a different way. We’ll say pool. They’d say pool. And they’d say… We’d say castle. And they’d say castle. So, you do get those differences. Other one would be beer. The way that west Australians pronounce beer, it’s probably different to the way that the rest of Australia pronounce beer. And it’s a subtle difference, but then you can always tell from where people are.

Only thing striking when you talk about accents or place names that’s around Australia, because it’s quite different. I can think of when I first moved to Western Australia, there were many different places which were hard to pronounce, because they had a lot of aboriginal names. Places like Condingup or Nannup. Anything with… ending with a U-P. U-P is a meeting place in the aboriginal language. And this words found throughout Western Australian towns and areas. Another fun… You can always tell if you can see someone eastern states, is when they talk about Albany. A-L-B-A-N-Y. It’s pronounced Albany in the eastern states, but we pronounce it Albany in Western Australia, which is quite interesting.

I’ve moved around quite a lot. Done loads of time overseas, and also have had a lot of friends over in different states. It just means criss-cross the country quite often. So that’s a bit about me.

Dandenong 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.

Dandenong Male Conversation

Conversation

I grew up in and around Melbourne, Australia. This has sort of been my place, you know, where I've grown up and I did university for a few years. But last year I moved to New York City and I started doing some work at the Atlantic Acting School's conservatory program. And it has honestly been one of the best experiences, probably the best choice I've ever made in my life to go there and do that. The United States just in general has so much access to the world, especially New York City. And I'm very, very lucky to have had the opportunity to go there and continue to be there.

So in terms of my location, because I'm actually in my hometown, my house where I grew up in. So I'm from Dandenong, Australia, which is a very, very small town in Australia, about forty minutes out of the city of Melbourne. My father was a politician. He's sort of on the board of a few businesses now. And my mum, she is a teacher at Chisholm. So she teaches a few different subjects in criminology and social justice and all these sorts of things.

And before I started doing acting stuff, well, I've always sort of done acting stuff on the side. But for me as an actor, I started doing business way, way in the past before I moved to New York City. And I decided that, you know, acting is more of the something that I'm interested in. And I love the arts. So I decided to take the opportunity to head over there. And I tell you some of the craziest stories and people that I've met just from moving overseas is it's literally insane. Like I can't even describe some of the experiences to you, but I'm going to try. There's a group of people that I met when I first arrived to New York, and it was just like an Airbnb. Like it was really, really basic. And I had two hosts, Colombian hosts, the names Ines and Santiago. And I still talk to them almost every single day. And they let me stay with them at the Airbnb. And as I first arrived in New York, I was really struggling with finding an apartment. And they loved me so much. And they had never met an Australian in their life. And they just absolutely loved making fun of me 24-7, just because of how I sound. And they decided that they were going to let me stay in their apartment for another six weeks for super-duper reduced rent. And even though they had other guests coming in to stay their rooms, the room that the son, Santiago, lived in, they basically vacated that room so that I could stay in there instead. And I'm talking this is a tiny, tiny apartment in Queens, like super-duper tiny. And I love them for that. And they've asked me to go on a holiday with them. So I'm very excited about that.

But just to sort of talk a little bit more about Australia and what Australia is like. And I find that a lot of people from Australia, specifically, and people from the United States think that they're similar. And yes, they are both Western countries. You know, they're similar in sort of their ideologies and all that stuff. But the big difference is culture. And I didn't realize this until I started traveling quite frequently between the two. Australia is just so... It's a little bit behind in its culture, a little bit. We don't really have, like, you know, communities of people together where it's kind of like a melting pot like the US, but everyone's spread out. In Australia, it really is everyone's kind of mixed together, generally speaking. There are little pockets here and there. But I find that Australia is a lot more multicultural. And it's a lot of the cultures that America doesn't have as many of. You'll find a lot of people from the Middle East. You'll find a lot of people from various parts of Africa, the Philippines, all different sort of areas, which I feel like is a lot of the nationalities that the United States doesn't have, which I find that's one of the unique differences.

Now, one thing that I want to make very clear, and I feel like people need to know this fact, is that Burger King, right? For the rest of the world, virtually every single country, it is called Burger King. You know, they've got the Whoppers, you know, all of their famous food, right? In Australia, it is called Hungry Jack's. Now, the reason for this is because when Hungry Jack’s – when Burger King came to Australia in 1971, they were originally called Burger King. But then there was another business that came along that had the same name, Burger King, and they fought over the rights for it, and they lost. So they had to call themselves something else instead. Oh, it was bizarre. So they're now called Hungry Jack's. And that's how it's been for quite a while. And I just find that very, very funny because people come here and they have no idea what it is.

So one thing I would probably say if you're interested in coming to Australia, where would be the recommendations that I would tell you to go? I would say go to Sydney, go to Melbourne, go to the Gold Coast, and then visit the Alice Springs, Uluru sort of area. Now, Melbourne has very good culture in terms of coffee with the best food. We have tons of theater, tons of entertainment. It's a really, really great place to be. Sydney is obviously the most well-known part of Australia. You've got the, you know, the harbor, you've got the Opera House, you've got the Sydney Harbor Bridge. There's tons of theater there as well, but it's just, it's more of a touristy area. And if you want to see, you know, really nice shops and really nice, you know, facilities and restaurants and things to do, Sydney's the place to be. Now, the Gold Coast is like the Florida of Australia. That's what I like to call it. They have fantastic weather. They've got all the theme parks. We've got something called Movie World, Warner Brothers Movie World. We have Wet and Wild, quite a few other places. And they've got great bars and great beaches. And it's just a really nice place to hang out. But the absolute gem of Australia, the absolute gem is to go to Alice Springs. The reason to why is because it's the heart of the country. And then you'll see something called Ayers Rock, or Uluru, which is its Aboriginal name. It's a huge, for most, for those of you that don't know what it is, it's like a huge rock in the middle of the country. And it's like this flat desert. And when you go there and you see it, you're like, how did this huge, enormous rock, this big stature be situated in the middle of a flat desert? It is unbelievable. And then when you go up to it, and you start walking around it, you can see Aboriginal paintings that have been on there for thousands of years. And it literally blows me away, like literally blows me away. So that's what I would honestly recommend.

So at the moment, I am sort of in a bit of a strange pickle. I'm not gonna lie, because obviously I'm in Australia right now. And I normally live in New York. But we're in the middle of the coronavirus at the moment. And this pandemic has sort of taken over the world a little bit, as I'm sure many of us are feeling right now. And I'm trying to figure out when I'm going back to New York. That might not be for a little while. But anyway, thanks for sitting down and listening to me speak. And I hope you enjoy the rest of your day. Thank you so much, guys. And peace out.

Melbourne Male reading Aussie phrases

Conversation

Hey, how are you?

How you been?

Morning.

I'm cool.

Good to meet you.

I see what you mean.

Hey mate.

Hi.

Hi there.

How's it going?

How's everything?

I haven't seen you in years.

No, mate. I'm cool.

Can't complain.

Could be better.

Not too bad.

Not so good.

I've seen better days.

I don't have time to scratch myself.

I don't have time to think.

There aren't enough hours in the day.

Nice meeting you.

I'm happy to meet you.

Are you doing okay, mate?

Oh, look at the time.

I'm gonna have to run.

Sorry, but I have to leave now.

Cheers, mate.

Been up to no good.

It's perfect.

The guy's as mad as a cut snake.

Abso-bloody-lutely.

He's as pissed as a parrot.

Don't mind me.

Catch you later.

See you real soon.

See you, mate.

That's for damn sure.

Absolutely.

You’re right.

That's true.

Well said.

This is perfect.

Not a chance.

Nope.

Nah.

No.

What the hell you talking about?

Listen here.

Hear me out.

You're out of luck.

Only in your dreams.

Not if I can help it.

I don't care for it.

That's out of the question.

I hate it.

I don't get it.

If you think that, you've got another thing coming.

You missed the boat.

You're way off.

You've got it all wrong.

Do you get it?

Gotcha.

I can’t agree with you more.

You took the words right out of my mouth.

Oh, yeah. Definitely.

Oh, yeah. For sure.

Right you are.

By all means.

That's for sure,

See you tomorrow.

See you in a little while.

Good running into you.

I'll call you when I get home.

Call me when you get there.

Let's keep in touch.

I'll drink to that.

Ready to go?

Are you finished?

Are you about finished?

How you getting on?

Not great.

You're a bloody bastard.

She's not listening.

She's in love and away with the pixies.

She's in love and away with the fairies.

She'll be apples.

Oh, belt up. You're getting me mad.

Bloody oath it is.

Just add some water and Bob's your uncle.

Come over to my place and we'll crack a tinnie.

Come over to my place, mate, and we'll crack a tinnie.

Jack is a dinky-di Aussie, right?

Peter is doing his block because he's wife's pranged the car.

Don't get your knickers in a knot. She'll be right, mate.

Fair crack of the whip. I only just started.

Peter is fair dinkum; you can trust him.

Fair go, mate. I know how to do it.

Fair suck of the sav.

Fair suck of the sauce bottle, mate.

How about shutting up and listening?

He wants to go camping fifty K’s south of woop-woop.

That was a great meal. I'm full as a goog.

Good day, mate. (G’day)

Yep, we were convicts.

Yep, we do have cool accents.

Yep, Yanks do give us the shits.

Yep, we are beer guzzling machines.

Yep, we do say “mate” a lot.

Yep, we have perfect beaches.

Take the piss out of Australia. We don't care. People aren't lining up to get out of our country.

Good day, cobber. What have you been up to?

Go and have a cuppa and I'll be there soon.

Mate, you have to wait. I've got to go to the dunny.

I've got to go to the loo.

Listen, can you hear next door having a blue with her old man?

Sorry, I'm late. I had a quickie with the Mrs.

He was in a fight. He got a goog on his head.

Don't take any notice of him.

He got tickets on himself.

Holy dooly, that was hot.

I can't go to school 'cause I've got the wog.

If you don't leave me alone, I'll smash you.

It was a tough day at work. I'm knackered.

No matter if it rains or not, it's a goer tomorrow.

She got pissed off at the way he was mucking around.

Australians have been stereotyped as a lazy kangaroo riding annoying group with crappy accents. Not true. We don't care if people take the piss out of us. People are lining up to come in. That must mean something. Australians are an awesome bunch, except for that dude Tony Abbott. We should get rid of him.

Do you want another coldie?

Do you want another tinny, mate?

Nick off, you're bothering me.

Rack off, you're pissing me off.

Piss off.

No drama, mate. It'll work out fine.

How you going, mate?

If you do that you're on your Pat Malone.

Pig's bum, you're not smarter than me.

Stop playing silly buggers and finish your homework.

Pull your head in. You don't know what you’re talking about.

Come on over and we'll get a few snags on the barbie.

Let's throw a snag on the barbie.

Rack off, you idiot.

Piss off, you idiot.

Where you been, you old ratbag?

Ridgie didge! It’s true. It really is gold.

No worries, mate. She'll be apples.

Aw, shut your gob or I'll hit you.

When she said no, he looked like a stunned mullet.

They took an early mark from work and headed to the pub.

I'm taking a sickie and going fishing.

I'm going to sleep now and this arvo we'll go to the club.

Turn it up, you're making it worse.

Keep quiet, you big galah.

You dirty grub. Go change your clothes.

Bill, it's your shout.

You little beauty. You won the lottery.

That's beaut, mate.

Far out, mate.

What the heck?

To be perfectly bloody honest.

You tell them.

Bloody hell.

What the bloody hell is wrong with you?

Shut your gob.

Don’t give me the shits.

He cracked the shits.

Up yours.

Shove it.

What do you think, it's bush week or something?

Give us a sec.

What do you reckon?

Would you like a cuppa?

How about you come over for a cuppa?

He's going to the servo to fill up.

I'll need to chuck a slash.

I'm chucking it in the bin.

What are you doing here? Are you wagging school?

He went to the footy.

What a bloody bogen.

Don't beat around the bush.

In South Australia they say: dance, chance, trance, stance, glance, castle, graph, demand. In Victoria, they say: dance, chance, trance, stance, glance, castle, graph, demand. Both pronunciations are used in the rest of Australia with different degrees of regularity.

Victorians like to eat celery; Australians like to eat celery.

Victorians are paid a salary; Australians are paid a salary.

Victorians fly in helicopters; Australians fly in helicopters.

Victorians love to visit the Alps; Australians love to visit the Alps.

Victorians watch tele; Australians watch tele.

West Australians say fear, fear; Australians say fear, fear.