You are driving down a quiet eucalyptus scented road, the bitumen has seen better days and the potholes are deep enough to fish in. As your holiday rental car rounds a corner, you see a beaten up white Holden utility trailing a cloud of dust coming toward you.

As you and the other driver pass, you notice he raises one finger from the wheel and nods slightly under his battered Akubra hat. No, it wasn’t a rude gesture, that’s the bush driver’s wave. It’s something we do out here, a friendly wave reduced to lifting just one finger off the steering wheel. Try it next time you are stopped by one of the hundreds of ‘stop-slow’ sign holders stationed at our never-ending roadworks. As you finally take off into the fumes of fresh hot tar with gravel crunching under the tires, or the settling red dust of graders at work, raise your right index finger off the wheel and nod at the bloke holding the sign now saying ‘slow.’ Betcha he smiles slightly, and nods back, maybe lifting one finger off the pole of the sign or the shovel handle.

Australian etiquette is generally like the bush wave, there’s nothing flash or ostentatious about it. Blokes (men) don’t hug much, women don’t make gushing air kisses. Instead blokes shake hands, often with about two feet of air between them, leaning into each other’s space only slightly. Women might hug and often give a proper kiss on the cheek. Then we all settle in by discussing the weather for a while. We talk about weather a lot because our climate here has infinite ways of making life unpleasant. Right now I’m watching parts of my garden die because our usual spring storms have failed to arrive and its gone straight to gusty dry winds, dust storms and hot hot days. People around here are discussing rain like punters discuss horses, it’s all odds and hopefulness.

It is polite in Australia to start almost any conversation like this:

“G’Day, howya goin?”

“Good, Mate, Good, could use a bit of (whatever the weather has not been lately) but.”

“Yeah, been dry/cold/wet/windy/hot alright. They reckon we’ll get some next week/month/year”.

If you are visiting, you’ll never go wrong expressing a wish you could have brought some rain/sun/warmth/cold with you.

Australians don’t use ‘maam’ or ‘sir’ much, except in the higher end of the hospitality trade and personal services. Mostly, in everyday interactions, we don’t use Mr. or Mrs. or any other title much. It’s a fairly first-name based society, where even our Prime Minister is known colloquially as “Kev”, or even “Uncle Kev” since he gave out the stimulus money.

So if you are visiting, you’ll do just fine to introduce yourself by first name and call whomever you are speaking to by theirs. One of the beliefs Australian culture has about itself is ‘we are all mates’, and mates call each other by first names or nicknames, or even just ‘mate’.

Nicknames are a fine Australian tradition, and most people have at least one. There must be thousands of folks called things like “Chook”, “Bluey”, “Smithy”, “Wazza”, “Dazza” and “Bazza”. Don’t be surprised if someone decides to give you a nickname, it’s generally a token of affection and belonging.

Australians like to ‘pull your leg’, that is, tell a tall story or two. You might get warned to watch out for ‘Drop Bears’ or told the local river has a ‘five o’clock wave’. When an Aussie ‘pulls your leg’, try and laugh along.

A great Australian tradition is the ‘shout’, which is nothing to do with volume. To ‘shout’ someone is to treat them. Sometimes the ‘shout’ is an outright gift, like “I’ll shout movie tickets for everyone” or “I’ll shout dinner”. In the context of drinking however, the ‘shout’ is a way of taking turns to go to the bar for a round of drinks for whomever is at the table. It is not polite to ask to be bought top shelf if everyone else is drinking rounds of beer. It is not polite to bow out before your turn at ‘shouting’ has come. Generally, if someone shouts you, even as an outright gift, it is polite to return something, like buy the choc-tops at the movies or buy the wine for the dinner. And by the way, we only tip here if we really feel it was warranted, like the taxi got us to our destination quickly or the food and service really was terrific.

Etiquette Down Under has been shaped by immigrants brought in chains or packed off in boats by landlords clearing country in Scotland, Ireland and other parts of Europe. Most of these new Australians had no reason to respect or love authority, and this moulded our national psyche. Then the strange, often rugged and inclement conditions of the environment further scoured away any gloss of Olde World niceties while also making it essential we be able to bond together without reservation in times of fire, flood or drought.

Manners in Australia really boils down to a few simple principles: play fair, give a hand where you can, treat others as you’d treat a ‘mate’, don’t provoke a fight, don’t look down on others, and never forget to pack your sense of humour when planning an Australian adventure.

(Author raises one finger from the keyboard, nods, and heads on down the cyber-road in a cloud of red dust, Cattle dog on the back of the ute barking.)

Glossary:

Bloke: a male person.

Bush: Anywhere not obviously urban or suburban; any patch of remnant vegetation in an urban or suburban setting.

Chook: Chicken, also a popular nickname that has no relationship to level of personal courage.

Drop Bear: A mythical beast something like a carnivorous version of the koala which reputedly likes to drop screaming out of trees on top of passers by.

Holden: Australia’s General Motors product that evolved for Australian needs and conditions - bad roads, suicidal kangaroos and copious dust.

Mate: used either in describing or speaking to a friend, acquaintance, or someone who’s name you don’t know or recall (if discussing a third, absent party who’s name can’t be recalled it might be ‘old mate’) or simply to politely address the person in front of you (as in, “excuse me, mate, can I please get past you?”).

Ute: light truck or pick up, under 1.5 tonnes or so, ubiquitous in bush areas.