Our language part 2

Kel Richards again "Most Aussies don't speak OBV all the time. Those who do wear blue singlets, drive utes and listen to Slim Dusty. But for all of us, that reservoir is there to draw on. When Kim Beazley announced his challenge to Simon Crean, he told the media conference he was being "fair dinkum" - he dipped into his OBV reservoir.



I have just paraphrased some of the best-known Bible stories into OBV. The result, The Aussie Bible (well, bits of it), will be published by the Bible Society in August. The Archbishop of Sydney, Peter Jensen, and the Deputy Prime Minister, John Anderson, have written introductions for it. Dr Jensen said he expected it to be just a novelty, but was surprised to find that he was moved by reading those familiar stories in "our words".


This language, he concluded, is the language of the heart for many Australians. This is a man who is an Oxford PhD, and who has spent most of his life as an educator and educational administrator - but still he can find Old Bush Vernacular to be "the language of the heart".


Recently, the Australian Society of Authors voted Tim Winton's Cloudstreet this country's best book. A reading demonstrates how Winton uses Australian language to move the reader. The anguished, blunt or comic utterances of the residents of No. 1 Cloud Street are what I call OBV.


The Cloudstreet example suggests a possible future for Aussie English: the OBV substrata might cease to be a living tradition, and become a literary tradition (learnt in school from Banjo Paterson and Henry Lawson). That's possible - but I don't believe it will happen.


What keeps OBV alive is the not-uncommon feeling (among even the most coastal Australians) that our national identity is preserved in the bush. The heart of Australia lies in the heart of the continent. I can't see time changing that."

I'll drink to that!