Tourists are often confused by Australian slang after landing in the country for their first visit.
So one helpful writer has created a cheat sheet to help new arrivals avoid any embarrassing misunderstandings with the locals.
The sheet, found in an Australian travel book, lists a dozen common words with the corresponding slang next to them with the heading ‘speak like a local!’
A helpful guide found in a travel book purports to tell tourists the meanings of a dozen common Australian slang
Visitors would have heard many tales about Australia’s many venomous creatures, but they probably didn’t know a snake was known as a ‘crikey mikey’
The list starts off innocuously enough with the well-known ‘mate’ used to mean friend, but gets progressively stranger from there.
According to the guide, tourists are called ‘freshies’, shoes are ‘chubbers’, and every tourist’s favourite Australian animal, the kangaroo, is a ‘bouncy mouse’.
Weirder ‘translations’ included ‘dogereedo’ for a puppy, ‘koala log’ for a cigarette, ‘mother onion’ for the Moon, and something awesome is ‘dangarang’.
The tourist would likely have arrived on a ‘sky gator’ and if it was winter pulled on a ‘sleeve urwin’, a play on late wildlife entertainer Steve Irwin meaning a sweater.
According to the guide, tourists are called ‘freshies’, shoes are ‘chubbers’, and every tourist’s favourite Australian animal, the kangaroo, is a ‘bouncy mouse’
Weirder ‘translations’ included ‘dogereedo’ for a puppy, ‘koala log’ for a cigarette, ‘mother onion’ for the Moon, and something awesome is ‘dangarang’
Visitors would have heard many tales about Australia’s many venomous creatures, but they probably didn’t know a snake was known as a ‘crikey mikey’.
But before they start using these slang terms in conversation with Australians, they should probably stop – or ‘didgeri-don’t’ – and realise it’s a cleaver prank.
As many Australians who came across the sign after it was posted online pointed out, no one actually uses any of those terms, with the exception of ‘mate’.
The joke was created in the longstanding tradition of convincing tourists to believe odd things about Australia, just like the legendary deadly dropbears.
The tourist would likely have arrived on a ‘sky gator’ and if it was winter pulled on a ‘sleeve urwin’, a play on late wildlife entertainer Steve Irwin meaning a sweater
It was drawn up by notorious prankster Obvious Plant who slipped in into the travel book to bamboozle Americans headed to Australia.
Australians laughed at the joke online and hoped tourists would be fooled into using them for the amusement of locals.
‘I’m tired of these motherf**kin Crikey Mikeys on this motherf**kin Sky Gator,’ one Redditor commented, referencing a famous line from the film Snakes on a Plane.