Last Saturday was ANZAC Day, Australia’s most hallowed occasion. Citizens gather for dawn services, parades, and speeches honoring those fallen in conflicts from the Boer War to Afghanistan.

This holiday is taken far more seriously than our Memorial Day. Every village I drove through had closed its center and was holding ceremonies.

Here, a vicar intones a paean full of stock phrases: “...shall not have died in vain...” After a half hour of this, he wound up proceedings by leading singing: five verses of Abide with Me.

Crocodile Dundee is Hollywood’s image of an outback character, but he looks way too polished compared with the real thing. Here a hirsute Aussie father in a bush hat looks after his baby boy playing in a fountain.

His appearance is not typical, but it is iconic. And he demonstrates that agreeable Australian quality of deep caring for family and friends. Rough exterior, gentle heart.

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Australians talk funny. They flatten vowels. Half the time I can’t understand what they’re saying. The common salutation mate is often pronounced mite. The cappuccino-like beverage called a flat white sounds like flet wyte. A man explained to me that during Transportation, the great majority of immigrants were English prisoners from the lower classes. Thus Australian speech derives more from Cockney than Oxbridge.

(The man also explained the history and rules of cricket to me. I can only characterize them as opaque.)

Expressions such as good on you, mate (g’danyer mite) are beginning to trickle off my lips. When last month I arrived at immigration control, I said to the inspector, “G’day mate.”

She said, “What?”

“I just had to say it. G’day mate, I mean.”

She replied, “You don’t say it very well.”

Australians are fully aware their expressions tickle other English speakers. Post cards and posters explain the meanings of fair dinkum and shiela. A friend described an indolent acquaintance as a dole blodger (one who is too lazy to work for his living, instead receiving welfare payments). What a wonderful expression.

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One of these two gentlemen is Theo; the other, his employee. Theo doesn’t prune or trim trees—he lops them. He’s a treelopper.

Not living in the tropics, I initially was flummoxed by the need for coconut removal. Why can’t you just pick them up and throw them in the compost? I later realized that the coconuts lying on the ground aren’t the problem.

Australia has more creatures that can kill you than any other country: sharks, jellyfish, spiders, and snakes—the most venomous snakes in the world. So of course, there is need for a service to remove them.

Frogs can kill you, too. The infamous cane toad somehow came here from South America and flourishes today because it poisons anything that tries to eat it. Just touching one can make you sick. Australians hate cane toads. They run over them on the roads and stomp those they encounter on walkabouts.

I’m beginning to think no one sings Australia’s informal anthem Waltzing Mathilda anymore. Over the last month, I haven’t heard it sung once. But then, I don’t hang around in outback bars.

I wonder why people would revere a song about a man who drowns himself in a pond rather than face capture for stealing a sheep, but there you go. Some things Australian are inexplicable.

While spending the night in the home of a friend, our hostess served dinner on place mats depicting a swagman camped by a billabong underneath a coolibah tree, watching his billy boil. So the story isn’t completely forgotten. Her place mats date from another time. I doubt many young people know the words to the song, much less understand them.

But there’s something catchy about Waltzing Mathilda. Having seen her place mats, I can’t get the tune out of my mind. I apologize if this happens to you, too.