Australia Day is just around the corner, and with our love of all things wordy, we’d like to celebrate the colourful Australian vernacular.

We’ve picked up a few overseas visitors to Just Humour Us of late, and we’d like to welcome you to our little corner of the internet. We’d also like to take a moment to let you know that Australians generally do not talk the way they do in the movies. We don’t say “crikey” or “cobber” for starters. We also don’t say bonzer, blimey, bottler, me old china, drongo or grouse either.  A bit of a shame really, as drongo in particular is a great word and we’d like to petition for it to come back into daily usage. We know plenty of drongos.

We do say G’day, although often times we just say hi or hello, just in case you aren’t actually having a good day. We Aussies don’t like to rub people’s noses in it, unless you’re an English cricketer.

While there are many examples of typical Australian phrases and sayings, we here at WhelanFlynn particularly like those that make use of the famous. It probably all began with “in like Flynn” – which is sadly not a reference to Meredith, but rather the Tasmanian womaniser and actor Errol. If you use the term today, you basically mean that someone is bound to be successful; much like Errol was with the ladies.

Another favourite is the popular phrase “to do the Harold (or Harry) Holt”. Harold Holt was briefly Prime Minister of Australia in the late sixties. His sojourn as PM was brief, because he went swimming one day and never came back – presumably he drowned. So to do the Harold Holt is to leave suddenly from a social occasion. You could also say “I’m off like a bride’s nightie” or “I’m off like a bucket of prawns in the sun.”

By the way – there is a swimming pool named after Harold Holt in Melbourne. Never say Australians don’t do irony:

More famous folk immortalised in slang include: game show pioneer Reg Grundy (your Reg Grundies are your undies), entertainer Barry Crocker (to have a Barry, or a Barry Crocker, is to have a “shocker” or make a shocking mistake) and Phar Lap (the famous racehorse had a heart larger than normal-sized, so to be told you have a heart like Phar Lap is a compliment indeed).

What’s your favourite Australian saying?