2 Texans Down Under

After nearly three years here in Australia, I am less often pulled up short by evidently English words and phrases that I don’t understand.

Not so long ago, I wouldn’t have known what to think if I’d heard an Aussie say she was planning to buy some avos in the arvo.  Now I immediately cotton onto her meaning, which is that she’s going to purchase avacados in the afternoon.

“Cotton onto,” by the way, is Texan for grasp or understand the meaning of something.  Aussies often abbreviate words.  I guess we Texans go for colorful, both in word choice and accent.

It’s not just us, though.  Years ago, a friend of mine with a foot-thick Alabama accent caused some New Englanders to laugh loudly when he commented, after meeting someone from Louisiana, “She sure does talk funny, don’t she?” 

So, it’s all in the ears of the hearer, and I know there are Aussies (just as there are Texans) who think they have no accent, although Kiwis would disagree.

Most of us probably think we speak and write as everyone would if they just knew how.

But I reckon I haven’t heard everything yet, in Aussie phrasing.  This morning while reading a short column in the weekend “Review” published by The Australian, I hit a moment of confusion.  

A mother, Jenny Thorsborne, was telling about life with her son, who had just left the nest he’d been sharing with mom.  Woops.  Excuse me.  He’s Australian, so it’s “he’d been sharing with mum”.  (Note: I expect to get approval from my Aussie spelling and grammar checker for putting the period at the end of that sentence outside the closing quotation marks, which is not how I learned to do it.)

Anyway, reflecting on times of sharing she’d had with her son, Jenny Thorsborne wrote about trips they’d taken together “when I could gather enough of the readies to venture to different places.”

I never heard of anyone gathering readies.  From the context, the meaning does seem clear.  They traveled when she had enough money.  Correct?  Or are there other “readies” necessary to travel.  Does enough free time also have to be gathered, accumulated?

I haven’t been able to find a reference to “the readies” in my dictionaries or on line.  Can anyone help me?  Are you an Australian (or a person from somewhere else) who grew up using this term?  Any notion of its roots?

I need a definitive answer before I take another trip.  It could be that I’ve been traveling all my life without gathering enough readies. 

Come to think of it, if this term refers just to money, I know that I have.