When UK residents arrive in Australia, everything including language seems so reassuringly familiar that you automatically assume that the vocabulary is the same. But it isn't. After embarrassing yourself a few times, you realise that many words have very different meanings, e.g. thongs. In Australian English, "thongs" are cheap plastic sandals, and stringy underpants are called G-strings.
Other words have multiple meanings, so that you have to use context to guess which meaning is intended. For example, a "cocky" can mean a farmer, a redneck, a cockroach, or a cockatoo.
Some words even mean the opposite to their Northern Hemisphere meanings. For example, you'd think "Justice Smith fronted the panel of judges" means that Smith was the Chief Judge. But in Australia it means he was the accused on trial.
This reverse logic actually makes sense in a country where the physical world is inverted (the water goes down the plug anti-clockwise, the seasons are reversed, Christmas Dinner happens in June, and the sun rises in the West).
The Google search engine, which can translate Latvian, Arabic and even Catalan, has no translator software for Australian, probably because it's too difficult.
