Australia 45

Listen to Australia 45, a 20-year-old woman from Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.  

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 20

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 19/12/2003

PLACE OF BIRTH: Newcastle, New South Wales

GENDER: female

ETHNICITY: Australian/Caucasian

OCCUPATION: musician

EDUCATION: higher school certificate (HSC)

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

The subject has never lived outside Australia. She grew up in Newcastle and moved to Sydney for study about two years before this recording was made.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH: none

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

RECORDED BY: Jessica Twaddell

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 16/01/2024

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF SCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

ORTHOGRAPHIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH:

Um, OK, so I grew up in Newcastle, which is a town about an hour and a half north of Sydney, two hours if you’ve got some traffic. Um, and it’s not very large; technically, it’s the second-largest town in New South Wales, but that’s really not saying much. Um, Australia’s very spread out in terms of cities; it’s very rural, very suburban. Um, so Newcastle: It’s a city, but really we like to call it a big country town; everyone knows everyone by, y’know, at most two degrees of separation. Um, for example my optometrist is my second cousin, um, and that’s about the standard for the entire city. Um, but it’s a really nice place to live, a really nice place to grow up; it’s not too big, it’s not kind of polluted, it’s not got too many people, it’s pretty, it’s nice to look at, and it’s got some pretty good, y’know, facilities for families. There’s parks everywhere and, and, y’know, playgrounds, um, right on the banks of Lake Macquarie, which is actually the largest, uh, saltwater lake in the Southern Hemisphere, so we’ve got a lot of very micro claims to fame in Newcastle. Um, but, yeah, it’s just a big, old country town.

Um, and I moved to Sydney two years ago, um, to study my bachelor’s degree of music at uni, um, but I wouldn’t want to live in Sydney for the rest of my life. I would definitely [unintelligible] wouldn’t want to raise kids there. It’s just too big and too much; um, it’s great for, y’know, when you’re 20, and just wandering around, messing about, doing random stuff, traveling around the city all the time, but for kids, it’s really expensive to live in; the real-estate prices are awful, um, but for one person, when they’re young, in their 20s, I’d say it’s pretty good.

TRANSCRIBED BY: Jessica Twaddell

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 16/01/2024

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

SCHOLARLY COMMENTARY: N/A

COMMENTARY BY: N/A

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

The archive provides:

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• Text of the speakers’ biographical details.

• Scholarly commentary and analysis in some cases.

• In most cases, an orthographic transcription of the speakers’ unscripted speech.  In a small number of cases, you will also find a narrow phonetic transcription of the sample (see Phonetic Transcriptions for a complete list).  The recordings average four minutes in length and feature both the reading of one of two standard passages, and some unscripted speech. The two passages are Comma Gets a Cure (currently our standard passage) and The Rainbow Passage (used in our earliest recordings).

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