Queensland 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.

Queensland Male Conversation

Conversation

I was born in Melbourne, which is on the far Southern coast of Australia, but we only lived there for about three months or so. We then moved right up into the far north to a city called Townsville and it's adjacent to the Great Barrier Reef. It's kind of a dry, hot climate. You get some rain in the summer but it's not tropical, not quite tropical. We were there for, I guess, two years, and two years is pretty much the longest I lived in any one place until I was thirteen or so. After Townsville, we went to a little town called Puckapunyal, which is – it's an army town. There's nothing else there really. It's where they trained all the recruits going to Vietnam in Puckapunyal and the Army has, like, a transport and trade school there. After that – where did we go after that? Oh no, we went to another army town called Canungra which is …

Canungra, yeah and if you know where Brisbane is, it's kind of Southwest of Brisbane. It's in land a little bit up in the mountains and that's kind of a tropical rainforest and that's the Jungle Training Centre, or Land Warfare School. So it's where the soldiers learn how to fight in a jungle terrain. Basically just about everything he'd done to that point was just – was learning everything.

We then moved from Canungra, we moved straight to the UK to Lon- to a place called Shrivenham, which is near Oxford. Lived there for a year, and again that was more training for my dad, and then, we then moved to Canberra, and Canberra is the capital. It's the headquarters of the Defense Forces and we were there for two years. And moved again to – what was after that? Queenscliff which is – it's near Melbourne. It's on the coast, a very beautiful place, small town and it's where the army has their staff college. After Queenscliff, back up to Townsville for two years and there, dad was actually – he was the CO of the transport unit there as part of the third brigade and that's the part of the army that's kind of the ready force that …

Male: Marines, if you will…

Yeah, and I mean at the moment there are some of them in Iraq and some of them in the East Timor. We were lucky in that all the time dad was in the Army, Australia wasn't involved in any conflict. So he was a C.O. there. We then moved – where were we going after Townsville? We went back to Canberra and in fact that takes me up to the age of twelve I guess, and we stayed in Canberra then. My dad was at the headquarters of the Defense Forces from then until he retired. He was a Lieutenant Colonel when he retired.

Male: Is it same as a British system? Is it …

Yeah, yeah. So yeah, exactly the same. In fact the ranks, the officer ranks are exactly the same as what they are here. So yeah, I mean he'd been in there for thirty-some years and he was sick of it, you know. He basically, when he retired, I had started working and I work in the oil industry and I was making more money than he did, you know, just out of school and you know, I mean that wasn't really the motivation for him but he knew that there was something better. So…

Male: Did you go to school in Canberra?

Yeah, yeah, I did. I started – did my high school there and then I went to uni – to university there and that was a four-year program and after that, we moved to – I met Tasha in that time, and we got married just after I graduated and then we moved to Perth which is right over on the other side of the country. It’s, I don’t know, it must be four thousand kilometers from Sydney. It's a long way. I know that much, and we were there for five years before coming here, almost four years ago now. So we kind of moved all over, and, you know, we're doing the same thing to our kids that my parents did to me, moving every year – not every two years or one year like I did but pretty regularly. Yeah. It's not such a big deal for them. They're very accepting at that school of new kids coming in because it happens all the time, and in fact in the industry, it's very common for people to move around. So people are very accepting of people shifting from one city or one country to another.

Queensland Group Conversation

Conversation

Female: We're here for eight weeks. Born and raised in Australia.

Male4: Can you be more specific?

Female: Sunshine Coast, Queensland, about an hour north of Brisbane. Yeah, we head off tomorrow. We're picking up RVs in San Francisco, doing Yellowstone, Yosemite; flying to Mexico for a week; doing an Alaskan inside passage cruise for a week; and then off to Hawaii.

Male4: Wow, this is quite a trip.

Female: Big trip. There's twelve of us and it's for a friend's fiftieth birthday.

Male4: That is fabulous. Who's idea was this?

Female: Hers. You know what I want for my birthday.

Male: It was a good eighteen months in the planning though, wasn’t it? We put a bit of effort into it.

Male4: Sorry? Eighteen months of planning?

Male: Yeah. Yeah and it was all on the internet, wasn't it? We didn't go through travel agencies or anything. Yeah, all done on the internet. It's good.

Male4: I know. It is all so easy these days.

Male: Ad lib. We're just ad libbing it as we go. Well, I was born in Sydney. Kings Crossing, Sydney, until I was about eighteen and then moved up to the Sunshine Coast and been there ever since. Lived – We've been there twenty-three, twenty-five years. Thirty? Thirty years? Yeah. So.

Male4: So what took you up there originally?

Male: Oh, I don’t know. Just to get away from the riff raff of Sydney I suppose. Yeah. I was eighteen when I left there, so I didn’t have much. Just finished school went straight up to Sunshine Coast. I liked it that much, I decided to stay there and that was it. Met my wife up there and yeah, we settled in and haven't looked back. Yeah.

Male4: That's fabulous. Now, I've never been to Sydney. But it's just a massive city, yes?

Male: Oh, it is. Yeah, it is. But I haven't been back to Sydney for about oh, thirty-odd years. Yeah.

Male4: Really. Oh, so you haven't even been back?

Male: No, no, no. I moved – I haven't been back since I moved up to Sunshine Coast. No. So I would imagine it'd be a lot worse now than when I was growing up there. Yeah.

Male4: Is this your first time coming into the States?

Male: We've been-- We did Canada for four weeks. So we've been through Canada and we had a car in Canada; to drive around Canada for about four weeks, we did about five thousand Ks. Oh, we ended up really – where’d we go? We had friends that we knew in Calgary. So we've-- But we did all through that Rocky Mountains there all Banff and Jasper and all that, and then we spent about a week in Calgary with some friends. Then we went to Vancouver and-- Yeah, it was great. Yeah. Four weeks wasn't enough though, over there. It's just amazing.

Male4: We did it last summer. My wife and I.

Male: Oh, I could've spent four weeks just in that Rocky Mountain area. Ah, unbelievable. In Jasper and oh, it’s a beautiful place; magic. But-- I've got to go. Well, I suppose Yosemite and all that national parks out here would be very similar, wouldn't they?

Female: So we haven't seen much of the States. Seattle, we went to; Montana. Yeah.

Male4: So did you go to Glacier National Park up in Montana?

Female: Yes, yes.

Male4: Well, I suppose you weren't able to go all the way across.

Female: We were in Calgary, so we came down, crossed into the States. Went across-- Is it Going to the Sun Road?

Male4: You were able to get across it?

Female: Yeah.

Male4: We were there last year in July. And we couldn't get across – because there was still snow there.

Female: We went-- Really? We were July, 'case we went to the Calgary Stampede. So just after that separately-- Second week in--

Male4: Wait a minute. Last year?

Female: No. This was like ten years ago.

Male4: Oh.

Male: It was great, it was great.

Female: Okay-- See-- See the dude in the red shirt?

Male: See the dude in the red shirt?

Female: You're laughing.

Male4: San Antonio?

Male2: Don't take any of their rubbish, mate. Don't take any of their rubbish off them. They're Aussies.

Male4: How'd you get a San Antonio shirt? I live in Houston, Texas.

Male2: Actually, my kids brought it home for me last time they were over here.

Male4: Ah, there you go.

Male2: Yeah, yeah.

Male: Our buddy's doing research.

Male2: Alright.

Male4: Yeah. And they were nice enough-- they were crazy enough, I guess, to stop. Yeah.

Male2: Yeah, we sort are that, aren't we?

Male4: You're Aussies.

Male2: Aussies. Yeah. A little bit. Have you been over or not?

Male4: I've never been to Australia.

Male2: Should come over.

Male4: I have tons of Australian friends because they travel all the time.

Male2: Yes.

Male4: So I see them everywhere.

Male2: Yeah.

Male4: But I still haven't been yet.

Male2: Yeah. No, look--

Male: He hasn't been there but he's got an accent.

Male2: You're a nasty Aussie – see, Aussies, they're nasty.

Male4: Where are you from specifically?

Male2: We're from Queensland, Coolum Beach. Yeah, on the Sunshine Coast, if you know where that is. Queensland.

Male: Yeah, yeah. Absolutely.

Male2: Lovely place. Beautiful beaches.

Male4: So this feels crazy chilly to you here.

Male2: It does. We all had jumpers on this morning.

Male4: So who's birthday is it coming up?

Male2: It’s hers and his. Now, they just had their fiftieth.

Male4: Both of you?

Male2: Oh no, yeah, yeah. I'm sorry. Eisin and Louisa.

Male4: Ah, happy birthday.

Female2: Thank you.

Male2: If you want a good speaking person, that's there. This man's doing research.

Male: He's doing research--

Female2: Research for?

Male2: He speaks with forked tongue.

Male3: So what are you doing? You're teaching actors how to get accents?

Male2: You got Mel Gibson here. He's got a good Australian accent. No, they just--

Male4: Not anymore. It's almost gone now.

Male3: That’s true. We sent Matthew-- who did we see?

Female: Matthew Newton.

Male3: Matthew Newton over.

Female3: Aye, we say aye in Queensland. You pick a Queenslander, they all go aye.

Female2: Oye, oye. They're oye, oye.

Male: Hey, bloke, what are you doing?

Female2: Yeah, we'll see you later, aye?

Female3: That sounds New Zealand.

Male4: You need to go to Canada, don't you?

Female3: Do we?

Male4: So you can use it. Because they say eh.

Female3: Oh, yeah. Let's have a cuppa. Yeah.

Male4: That one I don't know.

Female3: Whack on the jog. Put the kettle on the boil. Let's have a cuppa. A cuppa tea. Yeah, simple. No worries.

Male3: Enjoy the rest of your day.

Male4: Yeah, thank you. You, too.

Male3: No worries.

Male4: Enjoy the rest of your eight weeks.

Male3: Oh, we will. We're having a great time.

Brisbane 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.

Brisbane Male Conversation

Conversation

I was born in Adelaide, South Australia. I lived in Adelaide for about a year before moving to Brisbane. I've lived in Brisbane for most of my life with short stints in Townsville, Sydney, and Country Victoria.

I would say I have an Australian accent, which is pretty generic to what you would hear most days living in an Australian city. The accent that you will hear in the Australian Bush is much more occa and even to myself can sound quite weird. Moreover, "How are you, mate?" To this day, Brisbane would have to be one of my favorite cities in the world, with the Gold and Sunshine Coast only an hour away from the city in either direction. We honestly have it all. People who live in Brisbane will normally refer to it as a big country town. The culture in Brisbane is starting to get better with small themed bars dotted in and around the city. We're even starting to see a bigger craft beer scene, which is good. Not too sure about all the hipsters though. Some highlights to do in and around Brisbane include South Bank, a ride on the City Cat, and also going to the four theme parks located on the Gold Coast.

I am an avid scuba diver and try to go diving whenever I get a chance. Last weekend, my mate and me went diving on the Yongala Wreck, which is rated as one of the ten best dives in the world. It is located off the coast of North Queensland, near the Great Barrier Reef, and is a one hundred-meter long shipwreck that sunk in nineteen eleven. It was an exciting dive as we got to see a sea turtle, large grouper fish and also a shark.

Another thing I like living in Queensland is the weather as it is normally hot and sunny, which makes for a great day at the beach. As the Aussie tourism ad says: Where the bloody hell are ya?

Queensland 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.

Queensland Male Conversation

Conversation

Yup, so I grew up in Mooloolaba, which is on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland, Australia. It’s like a small… Well, when I was a kid, it was a small like fishing town slash surfing and there was a sugar cane mill. And, you know, since then it’s developed heavily. And now it’s sort of like a lot more people living there. Whenever I go back to visit it’s really different. I think that’s got something to do with Steve Irwin. When he got famous, suddenly, all these international tourists came and all this money came with it.

Anyway, I, actually, I’m not born in Australia. I was born in Canada. My mom is Canadian, and my dad is English. And we immigrated to Australia when I was three years old. So, I think I probably had a Canadian accent for maybe a year or two, and then once we were in the school system, going to kindergarten and stuff, I quickly developed an Aussie accent. I might… It’s funny for me… Out of my… I’ve got two sisters. My younger sister and I sound very similar, but our older sister sounds a bit more posh when she speaks. I don’t know if that’s something that she tried to do herself or if she just hung out with different people. But I think I have quite a broad accent. And probably because like two of my best mates are from North Queensland, and they, in my mind, and I think the rest of Australia’s mind, have a very slow, broad accent. But yeah.

The… I think… If I talk about culture, I… on the Sunshine Coast I’m… I guess I’m from like a surfing culture. So, I don’t know if that in some way affects my accent. But it’s a place full of bros. And I left the Sunny Coast when I was seventeen and went and worked on a farm for a bit. And then traveled overseas for about three years. And came back, lived in Brisbane for a couple of years and then moved to Melbourne. So, I lived in Melbourne for about eight years. And, yeah, I definitely took a bit of shtick from people down there about how Aussie I sounded. People in Melbourne have a bit more of a like posh Australian accent. Yeah.

Brisbane 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.

Brisbane Female Conversation

Conversation

I was born in Brisbane, Australia, in December of nineteen ninety-five. And I grew up on a little island called Bribie Island, about an hour and a half north drive of Brisbane, which was nice. I lived there with my mom, dad, and my two sisters. So, my sisters… My older sister is about sixteen months older than me, and my younger sister is about eighteen months younger than me. So, we’re all within three years age gap of each other, which was fun growing up. We always had people to play with and we were friends with each other basically our whole childhood and still are now. So yeah, I lived on the island there. I went to primary school on the island as well. And then for high school, I went to a private high school that was about forty-five-minutes’ drive south of the island. And we would drive back and forth from school every day, which was a bit of a commute, but the school was worth it. It was a really good high school. They had lots of things for us to do and really pushed us academically as well, so you know, it was worth it.

And then after high school, I lived partly between Bribie Island and also Brisbane. My university campus was in Brisbane. My grandparents lived quite close, so I spent my time between my grandparents’ house and then driving back home to the island when I had the time to basically. So that was alright. It saved me paying rent, which meant I could focus more on my studies because my degree was quite intense. I had to be there five days a week, and then I would work both days on the weekend. So it was quite intense.

But once I got my degree and a full-time job, which was the start of twenty eighteen, I moved out of home completely and got an apartment in Brisbane, which was really nice. And I lived there with my older sister. It was a two-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment. In a really leafy, nice area but still quite close to the city. So it was really convenient, super nice. We had palm trees out the front of our apartment building. It was like living in a rainforest. So yeah.

And then in September of twenty eighteen, I moved to Copenhagen, because my boyfriend is Danish and he is here basically. So, we met here on exchange in twenty sixteen. And we did long distance for almost exactly two years, and we would go anywhere between four months and eight months between seeing each other before I moved here last year. So, it’s been great. I love Copenhagen. I love traveling. So, it’s been a really fun experience being on the other side of the world of my hometown and of my country. It’s basically the exact opposite side of the planet. So that’s pretty cool that I get this experience. And I’m really enjoying it so far.

Australia 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.

Australia Male Conversation

Conversation

I was born in… I was actually born in New Zealand. And my parents are Dutch migrants to New Zealand, but I moved to… we moved to Australia when I was about three years old, so I grew up in Australia. And growing up, English was the only language that I knew. I spoke. Now I speak a bit of French. But I never learned my parents’ native tongue actually, even though they were speaking it around the home, but we didn’t pick it up. Myself, my brother, or my sister either. So yeah, so grew up in… on the outskirts of Brisbane. And I guess I didn’t really notice it growing up, but now I realize, you know, I don’t have an Australian accent that’s as strong as other Australians. Think probably, you know, being that my parents are migrants and they’ve got Dutch, you know, they’ve got an accent. Not a Dutch accent exactly. Not an Australian accent. It’s something in between.

You know, I find that quite interesting when, you know, it’s not just say Dutch migrants but other migrants, when they kind of migrate to another country and they are, you know, they’re fluent but they don’t have the same, you know, they don’t have an Australian accent necessarily or… But they also don’t sound like people, you know, if you meet them traveling. If I meet Dutch people traveling or if I meet my relatives, they don’t sound like them either. Some sort of mix in between. They use kind of expressions and phrases and slangs that are Australian, but they’ve got an accent. So, I kind of actually really like this. You see this with like… Even in second… And even with first generation, you know, there’s… or second generation. You know, with children of migrants. The Vietnamese community in Australia, for instance, have a particular way. And even if they’re born in Australia, they might sound a little bit different. Lebanese as well, and yeah, I find that all really fascinating.

I think, you know, the biggest difference in the Australian accent is kind of, you know, city versus country. I don’t think so much regions, but more like if you grew up in a city versus if you grew up in the country. And also, I think, like maybe for how long your family has been in Australia.

Brisbane Male Conversation

Conversation

So, when I came back to Canberra, packed up everything else, and took off to Brissy, as everyone calls it. It’s Brisbane, Queensland. It’s the capital of Queensland. I lived in some share houses. Some people that I’d met in the U.K. ended up coming and living with me there in the U.K., sorry, in Brisbane, before I happened to meet my future wife. So, we got married, bought a house. We did some major renovations. Lived… She lived in… Well, we lived in Brisbane there together for about twelve years before we decided to move to Denmark.

I arrived in Denmark, where I continued to work as a teacher. I’d actually been working as a teacher for about twenty years. So also, I had done that in, yeah, in Canberra, Brisbane, U.K., and now in Denmark. I’ve always actually worked in the Catholic sector. In Australia, about forty percent of the schoolchildren go to Catholic schools, just little suburban schools. So, it was quite easy to get a job here in Denmark, because there’s only a couple of Catholic schools and no Catholics. So that worked out really well for me.

I’ve been really happy living in Denmark. Kids are happy, family’s going well. I’d say the only thing that I miss about Australia in during winter, I really look forward to a meat pie. Can’t really get that here. There’s one place in Copenhagen that sells meat… proper meat pies. So, I’ve had to learn how to make them myself. It’s just that cold sort of weather I’ve always just missed that.

I import my Vegemite. Vegemite’s very important. Some Vegemite on toast. On fresh bread it’s fantastic, but you can’t buy that here. And the other thing I miss is understanding the sports. In Australia, I was a rugby fan, so I miss the footy a bit. Here in Denmark, it’s football. I’ve never really grown up with soccer, so I don’t quite understand it too much, so I can’t have that conversation, you know, that bloaky conversation about what’s going on in the Premier League. And handball is a completely new sport to me.