Going Native.

I know what's going through your mind. "Crikey," you are thinking "Is that James or Crocodile Dundee? I can't tell!". It seems that I've finally 'gone native' and embraced Aussie manhood. You can see in the picture me wearing my Jarvis Walker One-Size-Fits-All-Except-You fishing hat, a Socceroos T-Shirt (isn't the gold and green much more exciting than the white and red of England's eternal underachievers?) and my Aussie shorts. The shorts are called 'Ruggers' and the advertising blurb tells me that they are for 'Real Aussie Blokes'. The label inside tells me that they are made in India. Not pictured are my steel-toe-capped work boots. The Jarvis Walker hat was purchased because it has a wide brim and I thought it would offer protection from the sun. It does a pretty good job in that respect, though - as hinted above - it's a little too small for my swollen Pommy head. The down side of the brim is that it interferes with your peripheral vision and can result in the kind of accident that happened to me yesterday where I didn't see something above me and headbutted a children's climbing frame. It really hurt. So much for being a real Aussie bloke.

What did you do today? We went into town, bought a car, got some great milkshakes and chocolate chip hot cross buns from the mall and in the afternoon went swimming. I know you probably want to hear about the car but you'll have to wait. I've got to tell you about the hot cross buns. They're normal hot cross buns but some enterprising individual decided to remove the raisins (always the most disappointing part of the whole HCB experience as far as I'm concerned) and replace them with chocolate chips. Yes, that's right. Chocolate chips. I hope that whoever had that little brainwave got a promotion because he/she fully deserved it. They are delicious. I felt that I had to chronicle it in my blog because I didn't want them to disappear into history unnoticed. On the contrary, I hope that, in a thousand years time, when eminent historians are gathered to decide on humanity's greatest five achievements somebody somewhere will stand up and say "My esteemed colleague makes a fine case for including the 1969 Moon Landing, but on the other hand - chocolate chips. In a hot cross bun. Those guys rocked!"


Ah yes - the car. We've finally got a car. Everyone has been really kind in letting us borrow their cars over the past few weeks, but now we feel that we have a bit more freedom. It's a '96 VS maroon Holden Commodore. We opted for a sedan rather than a station wagon (translation for those reading in English - we didn't get an estate). Most people in Ozland seem to drive a Holden or a Ford - those are the only two types of cars made Down Under. There a fair few Japanese cars (usually Nissan, Mitsubishi or Mazda) on the road, but that's about it. A few rebels might drive a Korean car, but they are generally very few and shunned by most of society. Holden is probably the biggest supplier of cars in the country, and the Commodore is a common model. It's an automatic, has working air conditioning and Ruth managed to knock $500 off the price so it's just perfect.

I'm slowly learning the local lingo. It's fairly easy actually. Just take a word, shorten it to its first three or four letters, add an 'O' and you've got a 75% chance of using a legitimate phrase. For example - rego (car registration, our equivalent of road tax), servo (service station), yummo (err...yummy). People actually do use "Fair Dinkum" and say "No Worries" all the time which really does have a relaxing effect on the nation. My favourite Aussie phrase so far is the instruction to "Hang a yooie" which, translated, has the approximate English meaning of "My dear fellow, I believe that now would be a fine time to initiate a U-Turn at the next available opportunity". The other thing you need to know is that what we call 'Flip Flops' are known as 'Thongs' here. This information came to me too late to save the innocent shop assistant who I threw through a window after he asked me if I wanted to try on his thongs.

And on that note I shall talk a little about Cornerstone, as I think there might be a few people still in the dark about what we're doing here. Perhaps the best way to highlight what Cornerstone is about is to quote its vision statement - Our vision is to expand and enrich the kingdom of God through committed communities, winning, training and mobilising genuine disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ to live radical Christian lifestyles. There are several Cornerstone communities in New South Wales, but we're currently based at Dubbo which is where the national offices are as well as where the 'grad students' are trained. The 'grad students' are people like me, doing the third year of the three year course and being trained in 'Christian Leadership'. It's really a preparation for continuing service with Cornerstone in a staff capacity. The communities across the country have the same aims - namely to live as a genuine Christian community, to reach out to the local community and to equip people to go on to live a Christian lifestyle wherever they end up. So that's what Ruth and I are doing out here, living in a community, studying, working and seeing what God thinks the next step should be for us. I'll try and unpack this some more the next time I write.

Oh, and for those of you who are interested, Eddie has shrunk but is still alive and kicking.