Are you standing like a bandicoot or mad as a cut snake?

For two weeks, Ginny Fenstermaker, the former director of Bluffton-based Family Centered Services, will shadow youth workers in New Zealand and Australia as part of an international exchange program. 

Group members are scheduled to arrive in New Zealand March 10. From March 10-15, the group will stay in hosts’ homes and visit sites in Auckland and Christchurch.

The group will then go to Australia March 16, participating in similar stays and visits in Melbourne and Sydney until March 22. The group is slated to return to the United States March 23.

The program has several purposes for the trip, including grasping a better understanding of the two countries’ cultures, and through that, perhaps Fenstermaker will pick up some of the countries ... odd ... colloquialisms, such as

• "Flat out like a lizard drinking" (working very hard on a task).
• "Standing like a bandicoot on a burnt ridge" (feeling lonely and vulnerable).
• Dazed and confused, someone will wander 'like a stunned mullet.'
• In a furious rage, they will be "mad as a cut snake."
• In a state of undeniable lifelessness they will be "dead as a maggot."
• "All prick and ribs like a drover's dog" means lean but eager.
• "Dead horse" is Australian rhyming slang for "tomato sauce," so Fenstermaker might hear "Pass the dead horse."
• "You fair dinkum?" means "Are you sincere?"
• "I'm stuffed" has at least three different meanings: "I'm tired," "I'm in trouble" or "I'm full."

Learn more about Fenstermaker's trip to the land Down Under in the Wednesday, Feb. 12, News-Banner, and learn more about Australia's language by clicking here or here.