I was planning to post a blog about crabs and oysters today and had made some progress towards getting it straight when Donald’s post advising Mr. Mackie about acquiring some proficiency in Strine reminded me of a happening from many years ago, it has something to do with oysters albeit indirectly and may have a significant bearing on Mr. Mackie’s endeavour.
Many years ago when my old dad was still alive, he and my mother came to visit us in Maryland, he and I decided that we would take a couple of days on our own and sail down the Bay visiting a few fishing places en route. A few days after setting out we were a hundred miles or so down the eastern shore and stopped for a night at the town of Tilghman on Tilghman Island. This quiet little place is the home port for ten or twelve skipjacks, wooden boats of forty or fifty feet in length employed in the oyster dredging business and one of the last fishing fleets powered solely by sail.
We sat on the town dock and talked (well my father did most of it) with a couple of skippers from the moored skipjacks, it was June and the oyster season was over for the year. The two skippers and my dad got on well after a strangely cautious start from the locals and were yarning away about boats and fishing, my father in his almost impenetrable Forest of Dean lingo and the skippers in their broad down east Maryland.
After an hour or so and during a pause in the conversation, I asked the two skippers the leading question “Where do you think we are from?” Their reply was real surprise, one of them pointed a tarry thumb at my father and said “He’s not from ‘round here, I reckon he’s from down near Tangier Island”. Tangier Island is about a hundred miles south of where we sat, and it’s in VIRGINIA, there has been at least two hundred years of open hostility between the Maryland and Virginia watermen each accusing the other of stealing their catch, their livelihood and often, their women, no wonder they got off to a slow start.
Still curious, I asked “What about me?” “That’s easy” he said, “You’re Australian”
So there you go Mr. Mackie, you need twenty years in the Forest, ten years in Canada and twenty years in Maryland and you will be able to convince any Tilghman Islander you are a direct descendant of Ned Kelly.
Boadicea's Chariot 
What a fabulous tale LW, I enjoyed reading this.
Hi LW, nice post. I lived for about 5 years in Atlanta, GA. I have to confess that non US voices were so rare that I began to become confused by any accent I heard. I am Anglo/Zimbabwean so I should have some idea of my own roots, but there came a point when I could not tell an Aussie accent from a South African accent. I blush to say that, but the variety of ‘sutherrn acksents’ had me totally confused that I did not have time to consider ‘forrin acksents’. Now of course it is obvious. One is as smooth as molasses and the other as course as steel wool!
So do you live in Maryland? My brother lives in Virginia, not too far from Winchester. I have been to VA on several occasions.
Nice piece LW, eika dardly bleevit 🙂
Sipu; Yes I live on the shores of Chesapeake Bay in Northern Maryland. I doubt the Tilghman Islander could tell an Aussie accent from a Martian one, he did however convince himself my dad was a Virginian.
Bravo: Sleece tiger do for Mr. Mackie.
Thanks Val, didn’t mean to leave you out.
Funny, I have been taken for South African in Louisiana and a New Englander in Mississippi.
Quite hysterical really when I have the most pronounced received English pronunciation ever! How they made that jump, God knows.
My accent hasn’t changed since 1976 when I first arrived.
LW I think its a matter of being in knuckle dragging territory! Such mistakes are more rarely made in urban or more civilised places. Up here in the NW, so many Canadians and Europeans, I don’t even sound that different from the locals.
CO: I have my dowts abowt you sounding like a Canajun, eh!
My knuckles were pretty well calloused after twenty years in the FOD, I had not been away two years in Canada before I was told back there “You talk just like a yank” and it’s been that way ever since.
Lovely post, LW. Oddly enough, I was talking only last week to a lady born and bred in Hampshire – the original English one, not the ‘New’ version, who lived in Canada for a year or so. With her slow “Ooh arr, my lover” accent all the Canadians assumed she was Australian, which is strange because to an English ear Hampshire doesn’t sound anything like Gold Coast.
OZ
I spent years, especially when I first arrived here, trying to explain to many Australians that “South America” WAS NOT a part of South Africa 😦
🙂