Blog from down under – A Whole lot Of Rosé

By David Calmonson

Over the last couple of years, I’ve been doing quite a bit of work for an Australian software vendor. Until this experience I had thought the only good thing to come out of Australia was the band AC/DC – which is, of course, very appropriate for someone who has been involved in the energy industry for eons. Actually, I’ve been involved, one way or another, with Eon for eons. I wonder if that’s where they got the name from? Or maybe it means something else in Germany?

Well anyway, it seems that having spent some time working with our Antipodean friends, they wanted to put a face to a name and I was very kindly invited to pop in and meet them all. It’s quite a long way, as most of you probably realise, from Manchester to Sydney. Not only distance-wise but also culturally. It would be great to see a play off between AC/DC and Oasis to put that to the test!

So I went over to Australia for 10 days. Obviously, I travelled with Etihad so they could afford another player for my beloved Man City from the airfare (with change, probably). Joking apart, it was a great flight although it was a bit weird starting off early on a Tuesday morning and arriving early evening on the Wednesday. Fortunately, I did get quite a bit of sleep, so I was ready for work on the Thursday morning. Much to my own surprise I didn’t really suffer from jet lag.

One of the first things I wanted to do when I arrived was to check if water really did go down the sink the opposite way around to over here. It did – the trip was already worthwhile! I don’t know why, but another phenomenon that I hadn’t appreciated was that the sun was at its height in the North, not the South. I found that quite weird.

When I came out of the airport at Sydney, I was quite disappointed at the lack of kangaroos hopping about and koalas hanging around the lampposts. I discovered that the word kangaroo comes from the aborigine phrase ‘I don’t understand’ as apparently when an Englishman asked an aborigine ‘what’s that’ (referring to a weird hopping creature) the aborigine replied ‘kangaroo’ – meaning ‘I don’t understand what you’re saying’ – hence the creature was named!

I think with the new source book from ComTech around the corner, it may be worth examining some Australian terms relating to our industry – probably rather loosely..

So let’s start with ‘a cold one’. To those in the generation industry, that’s probably going to mean a generator that’s going to take a while to ramp up – in Oz, it’s a beer (far more interesting!) as is a Tinny. In fact there seem to be quite a few different slang terms associated with the amber nectar.

A ‘Stubby’ is a bottle of beer; ‘Skul’ means to down a beer and ‘Coldie’ is another, probably slightly more familiar term – e.g. ‘Come over for a few coldies mate’ and a ‘Slab’ – is a  carton of beers.

So I guess it goes something like: –

‘Alright me ‘ol cobber, don’t be a drongo mate and come over to skul a slab or two this arvo before the barbie’

to which the response may be: –

‘’Fair dinkum mate, I’ll pull a sickie and bring a few frothies in the esky – no worries’’

‘Billabong’ – So this isn’t something produced by an energy retailer who has a side-line in supplying   filtration devices generally used for smoking cannabis, but it’s a pond in a dry riverbed

‘Billy’ – is not a term of endearment for an invoice, but a teapot.

‘Daks’  – to be fair, I misread this as ‘Draks’  – and even that’s a misspelling of a rather large Yorkshire power station – but anyway, it means trousers – e.g. ‘Tracky daks’ = sweatpants (tracksuit pants)

‘Deadset’ – I was sure this at least meant a mothballed plant – but no – it means ‘true’.

‘Going off’ – is not referring to an impending outage, but means busy / lots of people

‘Goon’ – is not the opposite of going off (with the space removed!) but is a cheap, boxed wine -invaluable for backpackers

‘Manchester’ -sorry but it has nothing to do with energy that I can make out, but I had to include it – it means Sheets / Linen etc. As someone who’s from the best city on the planet, finding a department within a shop called ‘Manchester’ seriously confused me! I expected some pictures of the Premiership Champions (and leaders), Liam and Noel toys, raincoats, umbrellas (sorry, brollies) and discount on (happy) Mondays.

‘Servo’ – is not an electromechanical device in which an electrical input determines the position of the armature of a motor…but a petrol station

‘Stoked’ – well I thought this could be to do with a coal fired boiler, or of course I had another idea which I wouldn’t dream of including in this blog…but it just means happy or pleased

‘Two Up’ – which wasn’t referring to the state of the second unit at a power station but is a gambling game played on Anzac day.

Well I’m home now. I had heaps of fun, loads of coldies, said G’day to all the Bruces and Sheilas and left wondering…why on earth I didn’t move over there 30 years ago!! It’s a great place and I was in no hurry to get back to the UK!!

 

See youse…..

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