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| Fishin' in the vernacular |
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| Lake Tuggerah, our view from the Silvery Nomad |
Roy, as an author, says he loves listening to the understated nature of Aussie dialogue.
We’re sitting at the water's edge of our campsite, overlooking the blue dazzle of Tuggerah Lake. An old digger in a blue sunhat struggles down to the small beach below us. He looks plump, soft and flushed from the sun, like a retired office worker determined to enjoy his retirement. He chooses a gap between a line of beached boats, fiddles around with his fishing rod and finally casts his line.
He’s standing right in the spot where an incoming boat is heading, another old guy at the helm, burbling up to its mooring spot, a wash of water at its bow. The old guy in the boat doesn’t call out a warning to him. “Careful, I’m about to run right over you.”
Instead, he merely calls:
“Or right, mate?”
“You comin' here?”
“Yeah.”
The fisherman takes the hint and shifts a short distance.
The old chap races up the beach, right over the spot where the first guy was standing and switches off.
“Anythin'?” the new arrival says to the fisherman in the silence that follows.
“Nah, just wettin' a line, mate. You?”
“Nah.” He gets out of the boat and swings a drum-sized plastic bucket, obviously full to the brim, up onto the concrete wharf. The effort makes him gasp. “Just went to get a bit-a-bait. Fish one day, get bait the next.”
“Right
“They’re not interested are they?” the gasping man says.
“Nah.”
“Fished four hours yesterday. It was that slow. Caught three flathead day before…”
He moors the boat and then totters, leaning heavily against the wharf. He's struggling for breath. Maybe he’s going to have a heart attack.
“You oright, Mate?” the other says.
“Yeah, Mate. Just takin' five…”
And so, in its understated way, it went…
