Tradies

I'm not really sure if we have a word for "tradies" in America. Typically we'd just use the specific name of the tradesman we were looking to hire, like plumber, electrician or carpenter. Sometimes we might refer to people in those professions as blue-collar workers, people who perform some type of manual labor. This would be the opposite of "white-collar" employees, who tend to spend most of their workday at a desk.

In Australia, the term "tradie" is used to refer to an Australian tradesman. It gets better than that though, as many of the tradies have a nickname. A carpenter is known as a "chippy", an electrician is a "sparky", and someone who does mason work is a "bricky". If you drive a truck, you will likely be referred to as a "truckie". Not really in the tradesman category but professions still deserving of nicknames are that of a firefighter (firey) and a paramedic (ambo). Quite a few boys on the footy team that I work for and that Erik plays for are tradies, so when asked their profession, they obviously respond with the slang terminology. Needless to say the first time that one of the boys told me he was a "chippy", I was a bit confused.

Another interesting tidbit about these professions is that the workers always wear high visibility (known as "hi-vis", of course) clothing. In the States we might see these on road crews along the highway or in a few other chosen jobs, but here they seem to be everywhere. Everyone from police officers to postal workers (see the picture in my post from last week!), from garbos (garbage/rubbish collectors) to parking inspectors are wearing hi-vis clothes. The one that is most surprising to me is the truck drivers. All truck drivers (not just the guys that drive the big semi trucks), even those that drive small delivery trucks that are probably more like minivans, are wearing hi-vis vests while driving. Not sure if those high visibility clothes are worn to avoid accidents or if they are meant to make the drivers visible when they get out of their trucks to make deliveries.

Sorry for the blurriness of the photo, but I quickly snapped this picture in food court of the mall (referred to as a shopping centre here...I get made fun of when I call it the "mall"). Nearly every single person down there is wearing either yellow or orange hi-vis clothing!

There is so much more Australian lingo that I hope to share with you at some point. The scary part is that I am now commonly using these Aussie words on a regular basis! :)