That group of convicts that were in places like Hyde Park Barracks, their day was very very strictly controlled. They slept in hammocks like this, they were woken by the bell, and the day was governed by the bell and the clock. They were roused at about 5:00 a.m. in the morning, and then they'd all have to go down to be counted, there'd be a roll call, and then they'd go in and have their morning meal. Then they'd be reorganized into their work gangs and they'd leave Hyde Park Barracks in their work gangs with their daily task, and their task could be anything from construction work to gardening to a whole range of jobs.
G'day, guys, and welcome to Aussie English. My objective here is to teach you guys the English spoken Down Under. So, whether you want to speak like a fair dinkum Aussie or you just want to understand what the flippin' hell we're on about when we're having a yarn, you've come to the right place. So, sit back, grab a cuppa, and enjoy Aussie English.
G'day, guys, welcome to this episode of Aussie English. Hope you going well. Hope you're having a great week.
So, that intro scene there at the start, guys, that was a video from Scottish Association of Teachers of history SATH on YouTube. So, I will put a link into the transcript so that you can watch the entire video, but it was called 'Convict Life in Australia' and I found it incredibly interesting and this will tie in to the Aussie fact at the end of today's episode where we're going to talk about what it was like as a convict coming to Australia, working in Australia, and then ultimately becoming free in Australia.
Before that, guys, welcome to the Aussie English podcast. It's your first time listening, guys, thank you so much for joining me. I really really appreciate it. I hope you enjoy the podcast. I hope you get a lot out of it.
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All that aside, guys, today, I have an Aussie joke for you. So, the joke is:.
What did the fish say before he hit the wall?
Right? You know, there's a wall in front of him. He impacts the wall. He hits the wall. But what did he say before he hit that wall?
'Oh, dam!'.
Do you get it? 'Oh dam'.
You might have to see how the spelling is here, but the word 'dam' is spelled D-A-M. And 'a dam' in English can be two different things.
So, on my grandfather's farm there is 'a dam', which is sort of a water hole, right. It's kind of a very small tiny lake where livestock can go and drink water when there is no rain, right, or when there's no water on the surface elsewhere in different paddocks.
But 'a dam' can also be those large walls that are constructed to hold the water back along streams or rivers, right? To control the flow of water. D-A-M. That's 'a dam'.
So, what did the fish say before he hit the wall? 'Dam', right. 'Oh dam', because he's hitting the wall.
But the pun here is with the word 'damn', D-A-M-N, which means to condemn someone to something, right, well, usually, to hell. 'I damn you to hell'. But we use that as a way of sort of expressing irritation, shock, surprise. It's one of those words, you know, that's kind of a more polite way of saying the F word or the S word, right, you know, F-U-C-K or S-H-I-T. Anyway, guys.
Today expression is 'to put your head above the parapet', 'to put your head above the parapet'. Now, you might hear this, too, as 'to stick your head above the parapet' or 'to raise your head above the parapet'. The verb can often change there when it's a movement, right. You can use different synonyms for that verb. That's less important. But the basic part of it is moving, putting, sticking, raising your head above a parapet.
Now, this is from Elena who suggested this one. Amongst all the other guys in the Aussie English Classroom, Elena suggested this one. We all voted on it. Good job, Elena. She dominated although I think it was a pretty close call with Fatimah, I think Fatimah, and maybe Tatyana had two other expressions, but Elena won. She came out ahead.
So, I'll go through to find the words in the expression first, guys, and we'll go through the definition, origin, some examples of how I would use it, a pronunciation exercise, and then we'll go through the Aussie English fact for the day and we'll finish up.
So, let's go through and define the words in the expression 'to put your head above the parapet'.
So, 'to put something'. 'To put something' means to move something or place something in a particular position, right. If I pull my phone out of my pocket here, I have it in my hand and I put it on the table, I place it onto the table, I move it onto the table. See. You can hear it on the table. I have put it there.
'A head'. 'A head' is the upper part of a human body, right. It's where my brain is housed. It is the thing in which my skull, you know, is. It's where my eyes are, my mouth is, my nose... all of these things are on my head, right, and my head is on my shoulders. That's your head.
'Above something'. If you're 'above something', you are in an extended space over that thing and you're not touching it, right. So, at the moment, my phone, I put my phone on the table. You can hear it touching the table, right. But if I lift the phone up and it's in the air, it's now above the table. It's not touching the table. It's extended above the table. Put it back on the table.
And lastly, 'a parapet'. Now, this was a word that even I had to kind of look up and be like, "What exactly is a parapet again?". 'A parapet' is a low protective wall along the edge of a roof bridge or balcony.
Now, guys, if you've been watching Game of Thrones recently, or maybe you've visited a castle recently, you will see parapets all over the place. And these are those sort of little things along the edges of walls that people can look over but then duck behind for protection, right. They're the edge there to kind of prevent you from falling over the wall.
So, the definition of the expression 'to put your head above the parapet'. What do you think this means, guys?
If you put your head above the parapet, it is that you are braving the risk of receiving unfavorable reactions from others, you know, by stating or defending opinions that may be considered controversial. That's the sort of technical definition. It's usually that you are taking a risk, you are being courageous enough to do a risk, where you might receive, you know, flak from other people. They might get angry at you. Okay?
So, if you put your head above the parapet, the idea here, I think, origin wise would be that you're in a castle or you're behind one of these parapet walls and maybe their castle is under siege, right. You know, there are soldiers on the other side or there's catapults and they're throwing projectiles like spears or rocks at you, or shooting arrows at you, and you're hiding behind this parapet, whereas if you lift your head above the parapet, you know, to see what the enemy is doing, you're obviously taking a risk in times of war or siege, because you're putting your life at risk. You might get killed. You might get hit. Right?
So, that's the sort of literal definition I would imagine. The metaphorical one is you braving a risk of receiving unfavorable reactions from people, right, by doing or saying something.
So, let's go through three examples of how I would use the expression 'to put your head above the parapet' in day to day life.
So, example number one. Imagine in Australia, for example, we have two large political parties. We have the Liberals who are the conservative party promoting more economic liberalism, free market, small government. And then, we have the Labour Party which promotes the democratic socialization of industry, production, distribution, and exchange. You know, so they usually want to lower taxes and socialize a lot of things in Australia.
So, often these groups are sort of at loggerheads with each other, they're sort of fighting each other, and they won't give, they won't move an inch on their respective positions.
So, say, the granting of mining rights to a big business is being proposed by the Liberals and Labor does not want a bar of it. They do not want this at all. Okay. So, they have to vote on it, this big mine being proposed that could, you know, pollute part of Australia. So, it's going to vote in the House of Representatives and all elected politicians have to vote on whether or not this mine goes forth.
So, Labor may largely vote against it and Liberals for it, but maybe a few liberals will vote against their own party's position in favour of the mine, and in doing so, put their heads above the parapet, right? They're risking their jobs, they're risking their careers, by voting against what their party wants. And their party might punish them for this later. But they think it's the right thing to do. They want to protect the environment, so they stick their heads above the parapet and try to get the mine banned.
Example number two. Imagine you've gone surfing, you know, with your mates, and everyone's brought their girlfriends, their partners, their wives with, them to the beach as well.
All the blokes have picked up their surfboards, they've chucked their wet suits on, and they've dived into the water, paddle out, and started catching waves for the day.
Whereas, the girls, they go for a swim or a stroll or they're reading, you know, books or chatting on the beach while sunbaking. After a few hours, the girls kind of get fed up with being at the beach and they want all the boys to come back in, but the surf's too good, the guys are having too much fun that they don't want to leave, they don't want to swim in.
So, if the girls keep shouting and gesturing to the guys, you know, "Come in! Let's go! We've had enough!", but you guys are still catching waves, one of you might sort of cave in and say, "Look, I guess, I'll go in. I'll paddle in, I'll put my head above the parapet, and see what they want." Right? "I'll take that risk of going in and getting yelled at and getting told off by these girls were fed up. I'll raise my head above the parapet, and then I'll report back to you guys.".
Example number three. So, again, I wanted to tie this back into castles and I was thinking Game of Thrones, right. I watched the most recent episode of the new season two days ago...? No, yesterday! Yesterday, I saw it. No spoilers. Don't worry, guys.
So, imagine you are Jon Snow currently at Winterfell and you are putting together all of the defenses for a battle that's coming. You get up on the wall and you want to make sure that the stage is set, that everything's in place for this huge battle, because you know you're going to have to fight tooth and claw to win, to protect everyone.
So, you might be standing up there on the wall with the parapets in front of you, right, protecting you, and you might pop your head above the parapet to see what's going on, to see what the enemy's doing, to see what all of your soldiers are doing, all the knights are doing, and to make sure everything's going to plan, right?
So, quite literally, in order to see what's going on, you have to take that risk, you have to put your head above the parapet to get a good view of everything, to raise your head above the parapet.
So, hopefully now guys you understand the expression 'to put your head above the parapet'. Remember, you could use other verbs that just mean move upwards, right? Things like 'stick your head above the parapet', 'to raise your head above the parapet'.
It means to brave the risk of receiving unfavorable reactions from others. This is that sort of figurative meaning. Or to do or say something that you think is important even though it may have bad results. Okay? These are the sort of figurative uses.
So, let's go through a little listen and repeat exercise where I will say the expression 'to put your head above the parapet' word by word. We'll kind of a word pyramid. Build it out each time.
Work on your pronunciation, guys. If you want to get an Australian accent, obviously, really pay attention to my pronunciation. But if you're just working on an English accent in general, whatever that accent is, focus maybe more on my intonation, my rhythm. Okay? Work on that aspect of it. Let's go.
To
To put
To put your
To put your head
To put your head above
To put your head above the
To put your head above the parapet x 5
Man, there's some cool stuff going on there that I can't help but try and explain to you guys. And remember, if you want to learn more about Australian pronunciation and the Australian accent sign up to the Aussie English Classroom and complete the Australian Pronunciation Course, where you will be taught all of these tricks and tips for speaking with a perfect Australian accent.
But here, today, guys, in this phrase 'to put your head above the parapet', there's some really cool kind of connected speech and assimilation going on there with the sounds.
So, the first one there is 'put your'. What do you notice happening when I say 'put' and 'your' together? Put your. Put your.
You're not going to hear a T sound, you're going to hear a CH sound, and this happens when you have a T and a Yeh sound next to one another. 'Put your'. 'Put your'. 'Put your'.
The other thing is that the D at the end of 'head', because it's followed by a vowel in the word 'above', it turns into a T-flap. So, instead of hearing the words as 'head above' you're going to hear a more fluid 'head above', right. The T-flap there, where the tongue just taps the top of the mouth. 'Head above'. 'Head above'. okay?
And the last thing is that the T at the end of 'parapet', 'parapet', doesn't get released, because there's no vowel after it, right. There's no vowel after it. 'Parapet'. So, the tongue stops in the position where that T is made and it doesn't release. 'Parapet'. 'Parapet'. Instead of 'parapet'.
So, I'll say that one more time so you guys can hear it.
To put your head above the parapet.
Good work. Let's finish the exercise.
I put my head above the parapet.
You put your head above the parapet.
He put his head above the parapet.
She put her head above the parapet at.
We put our heads above the parapet at.
They put their heads above the parapet.
It put its head above the parapet.
Good job, guys. Good job. I hope you're getting the hang of those subtle aspects of pronunciation, because that's what's really going to set you apart from a lot of other English learners, right.
I find that with a lot of my students, quite often they have really good pronunciation, but they don't meld those words together, they don't blend the words, they don't assimilate a lot of those sounds, to make it sound a lot more fluid like we do in English, right. 'To put your head above the parapet'. You know, you got to get used to that fluidity. Anyway, guys.
Today, in the Aussie English fact, I want to talk about convicts in Australia. Now, how did I get 'convicts' from the expression 'to put your head above the parapet'. So, I was thinking, "Okay, parapet, parapet. What does this mean? This is from either French or maybe Italian, from the word parapetto, which means chest high wall."
So, I was thinking, "Okay, walls, walls, walls in Australia. Convict stone walls!".
I remember going to Brisbane in Queensland and to Bundaberg, and there were these long stone walls around different farms and they had been built by convicts who were doing hard labour. So, I thought today I'll talk about convicts in Australia.
Between 1788 and 1868, around 162,000 convicts were transported from Britain to different penal colonies in Australia. The majority of these convicts were transported for petty crimes often for the theft of trivial items such as a handkerchief or some feathers or some cheese. Imagine getting seven years hard labour that.
Most convicts were men even, though, one in seven were women, and there were also children as young as nine, and the elderly as old as 82, who were sentenced to transportation to Australia.
The trip Down Under.
In the early days of transportation, conditions on board the convict ships were horrendously poor and many died during the four to six month journey on the way Down Under. Many convicts were already disease ridden before they were brought aboard rat-infested ships in iron chains, led below deck, and locked away in filthy and cramped conditions with little to no fresh air or light for the entirety of their journey.
Many of these convicts died of diseases like typhoid and cholera in these abhorrent conditions onboard these ships. For those lucky enough to survive the trip alive, they were often severely weakened by scurvy, dysentery, and fever.
As the years rolled on, conditions began to slowly improve, and surprisingly few convicts died on the voyage towards the end of the 80-year convict transportation period.
Arrival in Australia.
On their arrival Down Under to a prison the size of a continent that most would never leave, convicts were brought ashore and marched to a location such as the Government Lumber Yard where they were stripped, washed, and inspected with officers taking their vital statistics for record. Things like age and height.
If a given convict had a skill, for instance, being a carpenter, a cobbler, a blacksmith, a stonemason, they could be retained and employed on government work programs. Otherwise, and most commonly, they were assigned to hard labour or given over as workers property owners, merchants, or farmers, many of whom happened to be ex-convicts themselves.
Daily life and doing hard labour.
Convicts assigned to hard labour, in places such as Hyde Park Barracks in Sydney, slept in hammocks that were tightly packed into small rooms. Each morning convicts were awoken by a bell that tolled at sunrise in the courtyard telling men that it was time to get out of bed and head downstairs for brekky, most often a form of porridge that might be your only meal for the day.
The second time the bell rang meant it was time to line up in the yard to be inspected by the superintendent who checked everyone was present and that they hadn't stolen anything. You know, these pesky convicts. And this all occurred before beginning a day's hard labour.
There was a vast amount of work that could be done in the rapidly growing penal colonies dotted across the Australian coastline, and convicts could find themselves making bricks, building walls, roads, or buildings, carving stones or smashing stones, cutting down trees and working with the timber, making buckets, water barrels, or cartwheels.
And if you were a female convict, you might find yourself working as a domestic servant for an officer in the colony. Or if you are less fortunate, you might find yourself in the Female Factory making rope, span, or carded wool, or maybe the less difficult work of laundry or needlework.
Punishment.
Needless to say, convict discipline was brutal. Where if you mucked up or misbehaved, you were likely to find yourself lashed to a flogging triangle, a wooden tripod that word hold you up when you were too weak to stand, and you were given a flogging with a cat of nine tails whip.
The minimum punishment was 25 lashes, which convicts affectionately nicknamed 'the tickler', right? 'Cause it only 'tickled'. I don't reckon. However, the more severe punishments could see you receiving as many as 300 lashes.
Another punishment was called 'the treadmill', which was a wooden hut under which a rotating cylinder of wooden planks was housed. As many as 16 men could be forced to climb upwards on this device similar to a giant wheel made of steps in order to turn to grinding stones that ground the flour to be made into porridge or bread the food that they might eat the next day.
From convict to free citizen.
Convicts were freed and given a certificate of freedom at the end of their sentences, which often ranged between seven and fourteen years in length. However, convicts were able to reduce their sentences if they worked hard and stayed out of trouble.
So, if you'd put in the hard yakka and you'd kept your nose clean, you might receive a ticket-of-leave or even a pardon generally after serving two thirds of your sentence.
Ticket-of-leave holders could work for themselves and even acquire property on the condition that they lived within a specified area and report regularly to a magistrate. Failure to do so or any misbehavior could see the ticket-of-leave confiscated.
And there were two types of pardons. A conditional pardon, which was granted by the Governor on the condition that you stayed within the colony, and an absolute pardon, that gave a convict unconditional freedom to travel wherever he or she desired in the world.
Returning to Britain.
For the majority of convicts, once they had been set free or earn their freedom Australia was now home and they would never return to Britain. Returning to Britain was prohibitively expensive for most. And after so many years cultivating and becoming accustomed to a new way of life in a foreign land, which had many more opportunities now than Britain, there was little incentive even for those with the means of returning to Britain.
So, there you go, guys. That was a bit of a long one, but I hope it has some interesting facts in there about what early life was like for convicts, especially those obviously doing hard labour.
So, anyway, guys, I hope you have an amazing week and I will chat to you next week. See you later.
G'day mate. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Aussie English Podcast. If you wish to support the podcast and help me keep bringing new content, you can do so via my Patreon Page. Remember, it's my mission here at Aussie English not only to help you understand Australian English, but to speak it like a native. If that's your goal make sure you enroll in the Aussie English Classroom, guys, where you'll get all the bonus content for today's episode designed to improve your English even faster. Have a ripper of a day and I'll see you in class.