The essence of the yarn is 1860s Australia, early 1860 that we decided we're going to we're going to send a group up through the guts of Australia to the Gulf of Carpentaria and come back. They put them under the command of Robert O'Hara Burke, who is a policeman who gets lost, has no sense of direction whatsoever, gets lost on a sunny day five miles from home, doesn't know the difference between North and South. Heads to the Gulf of Carpentaria and they get to Cooper's Creek. They leave behind five men four men go to the Gulf and come back and the climax of the story would make a brown dog weep.
I love the whole yarn and for me the most interesting part is the interaction between white fella Australia and black fella Australia, and for the black fellas, the indigenous people of Cooper's Creek, it was like seeing white men starve for them between isles four and five of Woolworths. For the black fellows there was more food than they knew what to do with. They just couldn't understand it. For the white fellows just out of their depth, didn't know which way to turn and died a slow and miserable death, with the exception of one of their party.
G'day 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! What's going on? How is your week going? I hope you guys have been well, I hope you've been tearing it up, you know, studying hard, working hard, playing hard, everything like that. The intro scene there guys, I'm pumped because I'm really looking forward to talking about the Aussie fact today, right? It's all about Burke and Wills.
So, the intro scene there was an author Peter Fitzsimons talking about his book 'Burke and Wills the Triumph and Tragedy of Australia's Most Famous Explorers' and it is on the Booktopia YouTube channel. I will put a link in the transcript if you want to check out the rest of that video, but definitely check out Peter FitzSimons book, this one, Burke and Wills, but also his other books, he's got loads and loads and loads of books on different events in Australia. So if you want to learn a lot about Australian culture and history, Peter Fitzsimons is one of those authors definitely worth a look.
So, guys how's it going? It is five weeks and a half down now with Noah in the house and things are up and down, up and down, all over the place, all over the shop. They seem to get easier, than all of a sudden they get harder. It's been a real roller coaster ride but I'm enjoying it at least, but I think I'm getting a bit more sleep than Kel is, but it's been good. You know, and getting used to it, hoping things are going to get better and looking forward to the day when Noah starts interacting more, right? He's making eye contact at the moment, but he's not smiling, he's not laughing.
So, I think that'll be a real sort of boost in our morale, Kel and my morale when that finally happens, but yeah hasn't yet. Fingers crossed it happens in the next week or so. Anyway, guys.
Welcome to the Aussie English podcast. This is the number one podcast for anyone and everyone wanting to learn Australian English or just advanced their English in general. This is an advanced English podcast, nothing dumbed down, loads of slang, loads of expressions and yeah, you know, just keep listening, keep working hard and your English is going to improve.
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So, today's Aussie joke guys. Although, it's not specifically related to Australia but I thought what can I do that is kind of related to today's episode? And as you'll see in the end, you'll have to wait to find out, but as you'll see at the end the episode talks about camels in the desert, ok? So, I thought I'd find a camel joke. So, here's the joke:
What do you call a camel without a hump?
So, the hump is the thing on the camel's back or the two things, you know, you've got two-humped camels, you've got one-humped camels.
What do you call a camel without a hump? You call him 'Hump-free'. 'Hump-free'. Did you get it?
So, the name Humphrey is spelt H U M P H E R Y, but if you are hump-free as in you have no humps you are free of humps, that is spelt H U M P - F R E E, Hump-free, ok? But they're pronounced the same. That's the joke.
What do you call a camel without a hump? 'Hump-free'.
Alright, so today's expression is 'to walk a mile in someone's shoes'. This one comes from Emad who suggested this in the Aussie English classroom. All the students voted and everyone seemed to love this one, it came out way ahead of everyone else's way ahead of the pack.
So, as usual, let's go through and define the different words in the expression 'walk a mile in someone's shoes', 'to walk a mile in someone's shoes', will explain the definition of the expression, will go through its origin, some examples some pronunciation exercises and then we'll talk about the Aussie fact and finish up.
So, 'to walk'. I'm sure you guys know what the verb 'to walk' means, right? To move at a regular pace by lifting and setting down each foot, one after the other, in turn and never having both feet off the ground at once. If both feet come off the ground, that is running and that's why you sometimes see people competing in the Olympics in power walking, they get disqualified because both feet leave the ground and they're no longer walking, they're running, ok? 'To walk'.
'A mile'. A mile is a unit of linear measurement equal to seventeen hundred and sixty yards or approximately sixteen hundred metres or one point six kilometres and it is from the imperial system, this is used a lot more in places like the United States of America. However, in Australia we no longer use that system, we use kilometres.
'Shoes'. I'm sure you'll know what shoes are, guys. You've probably got a pair of them on right now, they are a covering for your foot, typically made from fabrics or leather and they have a sturdy sole on the bottom of the shoes, so that you don't hurt your foot when you walk, right? They're protection for your feet.
'Someone else'. We use the word 'else' there after 'someone' to mean another person, right? A different person from whoever the person is we're talking about, right? There's me and then there's someone else, there's you and then there's someone else, another person.
And the last one 'in someone else's shoes', this is like to be wearing the shoes of someone else, right? Because you put your foot in a shoe., so if you yourself are in someone else's shoes, you're inside of those shoes, your feet are inside of those shoes, so you are wearing those shoes, ok?
So, I wonder if you understand the expression 'to walk a mile in someone's shoes', what do you reckon it means? What do you reckon? If you walk a mile in someone's shoes, you experience what they experience, at least figuratively, right? Literally, obviously, you would just be putting on their shoes and going for a walk, for a mile, one point six kilometres, but in terms of the expression, the idiom, and what it means figuratively you will usually use this when telling someone to consider someone else's feelings or experiences or challenges or thought process before judging that person, ok?
So, usually the full idiom would be something like 'before you judge a man, walk a mile in his shoes', right? So, before you make a judgement about this person, understand what it's like for him, what his life is like, what his experiences are like.
So expression origin wise, although it gets often credited as being a native American aphorism, an expression, where you would replace the word 'shoes' with 'moccasins', these are the shoes that Native Americans would wear, the expression almost definitely doesn't come from Native Americans and first came from a Mary T Lathrop poem from the year 1895, called Judge Softly, whose title was later changed to Walk a Mile in His Moccasins.
So, there are many variations on the idioms, such as 'walk a mile in his her or my shoes' as well as 'put yourself in someone else's shoes', right? Put yourself in my shoes. Put yourself in his shoes. Walk a mile in my shoes or walk a mile in his shoes. You'll hear those two kind of variations.
So, as usual, let's go through a few examples of how I would use this expression 'to walk a mile in someone's shoes' or maybe 'put yourself in someone's shoes'. So, the first story here is a personal story, this is a true story. When I was at primary school here, I went to a primary school in Ocean Grove here called Surfside Primary, and there was a kid there called Joel, who was the school's biggest bully, at least from my view, you know, at least how I saw things back then.
Every play time during recess or lunch he'd pick on other kids, he would be nasty to kids, he'd push kids he'd steal things from them, though it always seemed to be in the company of his group of friends because he was a rather scrawny kid and couldn't hurt a fly himself. Now, I remember one day he was picking on me and a few of my friends in our class and I just finally snapped, I'd had enough and I remember pushing him and I pushed him so hard he actually hit one of my friends with his head, so he was standing in front of me and my friend was standing behind him and his head smashed my friend on the lip, which I felt really bad about afterwards, but I remember this bully totally snapped. He flipped out and wasn't happy about that at all, but the teacher took him aside and told him he needed to stop and think about his actions and how they affect other people, that he should pay attention to other people's feelings.
He should put himself in other people's shoes and he should think about how they feel, right? He should walk a mile in his victim's shoes and understand their experience before deciding to bully them. And on a side note, when I finished high school I read a news article and this same kid Joel ended up going to jail for murder. He ended up murdering a 17 year old boy in Geelong, who was coming home from buying some soft drink at a local servo. That was a true story, so I obviously dodged a bullet in primary school, luckily, I didn't have any altercations with him later on in life because it could have turned out a lot worse.
Example number two: so you're a fit person, a fit man, a fit bloke, a fit sheila. You know, you're someone who loves to work out, you love hitting the gym to train, you're incredibly active. You might like weight training, you might like martial arts like Muai Tai, Kickboxing, MMA, Jiu Jitsu.
You're always trying to encourage your friends to get involved because you're a gym junkie and you think being healthy and in shape is a great lifestyle. Now, one of your friends finally takes you up on an offer to come to the gym with you one day. However, they're incredibly overweight and they find working out with you incredibly gruelling, incredibly arduous, incredibly tiresome and you tell them to toughen up, you know, harden up, mate, you can do this, keep going, but they tell you 'maybe you should walk a mile in my shoes before telling me that', 'I'm not as fit as you', 'I'm just starting, I'm just a beginner, so give me a break, put yourself in my shoes and understand things from my perspective'.
Example number three and another true story. So, I often have social events here with a number of friends and family, who are obviously Australian, if they're family, at least apart from Kel, she's obviously not Australian, she's Brazilian, she'll be Australian eventually, and I also have a lot of Brazilian friends who quite often come to these parties, so quite often I forget that many of my Brazilian friends don't speak English as well as I do and I forget that many of my Australian friends and family don't speak Portuguese as well as I do.
So, sometimes it's easy for me to take things for granted and think everyone's having a good time, everyone's communicating, when I look at it through my eyes and I can understand everyone. So, when I try and make sure everyone's mingling and having a good time and getting along I have to put myself in everyone else's shoes, I have to walk a mile in their shoes and understand how they feel and make sure they're communicating alright and having a good time. I can't take things for granted, I can't just assume everyone's like me, I need to take a step back, think for a moment, put myself in their shoes, walk a mile in their shoes and then be patient and understanding with them and make sure they have a good time.
So, there you go, guys. That is how to use the expression 'to walk a mile in someone's shoes'. It is to experience what someone else has experienced, usually used as a way of telling someone not to make a quick judgement about someone else without understanding their experiences, right? Walk a mile in his shoes before judging him and you may also hear that expression 'to put yourself in someone else's shoes'.
So, as usual let's go through a little listen and repeat exercise, guys. This is your chance to practice your pronunciation. As I always say, you can copy my accent if you're trying to get an Aussie accent, Australian accent. If you're not, if you're working on a British accent or an American accent or whatever else, just use the words after me, just say them aloud in your normal accent, ok? Let's go!
Walk
Walk a
Walk a mile
Walk a mile in
Walk a mile in my
Walk a mile in my shoes x 5
Good job! Now I'm going to use the expression 'to put yourself in someone's shoes', ok? So, I'm going to put this into a question, but listen and repeat after me and conjugate through these sentences.
Why don't I put myself in her shoes?
Why don't you put yourself in her shoes?
Why doesn't he put himself in her shoes?
Why doesn't she put herself in her shoes?
Why don't we put ourselves in her shoes?
Why don't they put themselves in her shoes?
Why doesn't it put itself in her shoes?
Good job, guys! Good job! There's a few letters there disappearing in the connected speech and there's actually one occasion where the letters aren't disappearing. So, some of the interesting things happening include saying why don't I, right? There's no T there, 'why doesn't he', 'why doesn't she', ''why don't we, 'why don't they', the T disappears because there's a consonant after that T and so to make it easier to say we get rid of it, except in the case of 'why don't you'.
So, instead of saying 'why don't you', they're kind of joined together and you get this ... sound, 'why don't ya', 'why don't you', ok?
The interesting thing here too is that the H will disappear at the front of words like himself or herself because they're not emphasised. So, 'why doesn't he put himself', 'why doesn't she put herself', the H disappears, but in the case of 'her shoes' because I'm emphasising the word 'her shoes' the H stays there because it's an emphasised syllable, right?
So, have a listen to this. So, hear in this sentence how the H disappears for he and himself, but for her it stays there. 'Why doesn't he put himself in her shoes?'. 'Why doesn't he put himself in her shoes?', right? So, that's why that's happening. I'm emphasizing her, so the H stays there, I'm not emphasizing he and himself, so the H can disappear.
Alright, so let's get into the Aussie English fact, it's a bit of a long one, it's worth it, though, it's worth it. So, today guys I want to talk about the Burke and Wills expedition. This is a really interesting piece of Australian history, it's a little bit tragic, but it's a really interesting story.
So, in 1860 much of the Australian continent was still unexplored and untamed wilderness. The government of South Australia offered a prize that year for the first expedition to cross the Australian continent from south to north.
Robert O'Hara Burke, an Irishman and police officer, jumped at this opportunity and was placed in charge of an expedition which left Royal Park in Melbourne on the 20th of August in 1860 and he was hoping to be the first to traverse the Australian mainland.
Burke's expedition team comprised 18 people, 25 camels, 22 horses and some wagons and was the first expedition to ever use camels as a means of transport, the idea being that they would more easily travel through sandy desert terrain that the team would cross than the horses with them.
Burke packed two years' worth of food supplies as well as 80 pairs of shoes, beds, hats and buckets as well as some firewood. After eight weeks the expedition reached Menindee in the central western part of New South Wales, where it's believed that Burke received the news that John McDougall Stewart was going to attempt to cross the continent from south to north as well.
Feeling the pressure to move faster, Burke cut down the size of his team and left some of the men at Menindee hoping to move faster northwards and have them catch up with him later. About another eight weeks later the team arrived at Cooper's Creek, in the north east part of South Australia, where Burke established a base camp.
Burke's plan was to wait at Cooper's Creek until the others arrived, but after five weeks rolled by the remainder of Burke's team still hadn't arrived. Unknown to Burke, the men had been delayed at Menindee and on their journey to Cooper's Creek some men had got sick and died and the remaining men decided to stop at a place called Bulloo before making it to Cooper's Creek.
Burke became impatient, after five weeks of waiting around he decided if his expedition was going to win the race to the Gulf of Carpentaria and become the first white men to cross the Australian continent from south to north, they had to press on soon. For the second time, Burke chose to reduce the team size in the hopes of moving faster through the rugged terrain and decided to set out with William John Willis, John King and Charles Gray, with one horse, six camels and enough supplies to last them for three months.
He ordered the four remaining men to stay at Coopers Creek and wait three months for their return. Burke and his party marched for eight long weeks through some of the most foreboding terrain in Australia, but eventually arrived at the Gulf of Carpentaria. Despite reaching the Gulf, they actually never laid eyes on the sea due to the deep mud and thick mangrove swamps blocking their path and preventing them from moving further.
With no time to savour the expedition's victory due to there being very low rations, Burke and his team began the return journey to Cooper's Creek immediately. By this point, the men were severely malnourished and suffering from diseases like scurvy and dysentery. With the dwindling supplies, Burke was forced to order that one of the camels and later on even his own horse would be killed and eaten by the men, who were all placed on starvation rations at that time.
One night while literally dying from hunger, Charles Gray stole flour from the Commons store. The theft was soon discovered by Burke who ordered grey to be thrashed for his crime and soon after Gray succumbed to starvation and illness and died. The three remaining exhausted men spent an entire day digging a hole and burying Gray's body a decision which would later prove fateful.
On the team's return to Cooper's Creek, Burke Wills and King found that the men who had been waiting for them for almost five months had left literally just the same morning. Had they not wasted a day burying Gray, they'd have met up with the team and continued on together. Some food had been left buried in a box near a tree, into which was carved a sign saying 'Dig'. This would later be famously known as 'The Dig Tree'.
A letter inside the box indicated that William Brahe and the other men had just left that very same morning only nine hours before the return of Burke Wills and King, assuming the worst had happened to them and that the party must have died. Wills wrote in his diary 'our disappointment at finding the depot deserted may easily be imagined, Returning in an exhausted state after four months of the severest travelling and privation, with our legs so paralyzed, so that each found it a most tyring task to walk just a few yards'.
Ravaged by hunger and sickness, Burke Wills and King were too weak to follow Brahe on foot. Wills buried his notebooks along with a note telling where the group was headed, but in the team's second fateful decision, no one thought to make a sign at the Dig Tree to show anyone who might return there, that they had also successfully made it there alive. This mistake proved deadly. Two men returned two days later from the team who had left earlier in order to see if Burke and his group had returned.
Because Will's and the others had made no sign and had abandoned camp in search of food and water, these men left again assuming that Burke and his team never arrived.
Burke Wills and King had set off down the creek hoping to catch some fish while making their way to Mount Hopeless. The team encountered the local Yandruwandha aboriginal people, who helped the explorers and gave them food. However, Burke didn't trust them and often chased them away and fired his rifle at them. If they had been less hostile towards the local Indigenous people, they may have learnt how to safely prepare and cook the foods that they were given, specifically the Nardoo seeds.
Within the Nardoo seeds is a toxin called 'thiaminase' that causes a deadly disease called beri-beri. All they would have needed to have done was cook the porridge made from nardoo seeds and the heat would have made the food safe. However, the men ate the porridge raw. This was the final nail in the coffin and sealed the fates of both Burke and Wills.
By now all three men were at the ends of their tethers and barely hanging on to life and on the 1st of July 1861 Burke died from what was probably a combination of starvation, scurvy and beri-beri and a few days later was joined by Will's.
King buried Wills, but left Burke's body where it lay and joined the Yandruwandha people who took care of him long enough for him to be found a few months later on September the 15th of 1861 by other explorers. The leader of the party that rescued King was instructed to bring back the bones of Burke and Wills, so that a public funeral could be held. It was one of the biggest funerals ever seen in Melbourne at the time.
Large sums of money were given to the families of Burke and Wills and a pension was given to King. The Aboriginal people who cared for him were also paid as a reward.
Never the same, King suffered from ill-health from the expedition's hardships and died only ten years later.
So, there you go, guys. That's the tragic story of Burke and Wills. Burke was a bit of a muppet, a bit of an idiot, a bit of a very arrogant and foolhardy man, but it makes for a very good story.
Again, guys, I suggest that you check out Peter FitzSimons' book, 'Burke and Wills: The Triumph and Tragedy of Australia's Most Famous Explorers', It's a good read. He writes it as if it is a novel that is taking place in the present. I really loved it.
Anyway, thanks for joining me. I really appreciate it guys and I'll chat to you soon. Peace out!
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 enrol 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!