Australia 38

Listen to Australia 38, a 54-year-old man from rural Western Australia, specifically the area around Mount Magnet, and also Perth and the northern part of the state. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.  

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 54

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 31/01/1969

PLACE OF BIRTH: South Perth, Western Australia

GENDER: male

ETHNICITY: White/Australian with European ancestry

OCCUPATION: pastoralist

EDUCATION: He graduated high school and took an apprenticeship as an electrician.

AREAS OF RESIDENCE OUTSIDE REPRESENTATIVE REGION FOR LONGER THAN SIX MONTHS:

The subject went to boarding school in Perth in the early 1980s and spent some of his early twenties driving trucks in the northern half of Western Australia.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH: none

The text used in our recordings of scripted speech can be found by clicking here.

RECORDED BY: Rhea Dowden

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 05/06/2023

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF SCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): N/A

ORTHOGRAPHIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH:

Family history: Well, we were originally from England. My mother’s side was predominantly Romanian or Hungarian, but, uh, from that eastern European region. And growing up, well, I grew up on a sheep station — is now a cattle station, but was a sheep station then; and I had an awesome upbringing, um, a lot of freedom to do what I wanted to do, to go where I wanted to go. I had a little motorbike I used to skid around on, and go out in the bush and build cubbies, and, um, I had a pretty good, uh, childhood, and upbringing. I was schooled via School of the Air, which is a specific school for children who live remotely in the outback. I lost my mother when I was 11 years old in a pretty horrific car accident, which also took the right arm of my father, and, um, that was some pretty tough times, but other than that, my childhood and growing up was pretty happy as a kid, and, um, yeah, that’s about all. …

Uh, local place names: A lot of, uh, really local, local stuff have Aboriginal names. Like, a lot of the stations around like Yoweragabbie, is, um, “a place near water.” Some of the, the towns, um, like, even Mount Magnet, is — takes its name from a, um, a hill right behind town. It’s now called Warramboo Hill, but it’s actually, um, it’s a magnetite hill, so iron ore but magnetite, and if you fly over it in an airplane, the compass in the airplane, um, swings to Mount Magnet, ’cause it’s a magnetic hill. And also, in the old clockwork-mechanism watches, if you went up the mount with a old-style watch on, it’d stop working, ’cause the magnetic pull was that strong, but, um, there’s lots of interesting names in our part of the world.

I mean, there’s things like, um, in a moment of surprise, one might say “balayi!” Or I guess a lot of them relate back to, um, some bastardization of Indigenous phrases or speech.

TRANSCRIBED BY: Rhea Dowden

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 06/06/2023

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): N/A

SCHOLARLY COMMENTARY:

When the subject says “a old-style watch” instead of “an old style watch,” this mistake is due to him initially planning to say “a watch” and then changing his mind after having said “a.” Using “a” instead of “an” is not a normal part of his speech.

The subject mentions, when asked about local idioms or expressions, that “in a moment of surprise one might say “balayi!”” This word is not one that would be written down, as it is a loanword from the Wajarri language, whose territory’s southern border lay close to the station where the subject grew up. The spelling I have used in the transcription is that used by Wajarri speakers today for the original word. It is pronounced slightly differently by those English speakers who have adopted it compared to Wajarri speakers: Wajarri speakers pronounce it with three syllables (“ba-la-yi”) whereas the English speakers pronounce it with two (“ba-lay”).

COMMENTARY BY: Rhea Dowden

DATE OF COMMENTARY (DD/MM/YYYY): 06/06/2023

The archive provides:

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