STILL learning the lingo? No worries, mate, she’ll be apples. As anyone who’s been in Oz for even a day knows, that means that the local slang is easy to pick up.

 

There are some words and phrases, though, that do not translate quite as you might expect, and this guide is just a start.

Why did we settle here you ask? Well, if you didn’t ask, I’ll tell you anyway.

 

I knew that my 6 year old daughter Amber and I were so lucky to be living in Australia. (We had immigrated from S.A. 2 years previously). I was a textile designer in a studio in Melbourne and all was well, whilst the garden door of the studio opened onto Ambie’s school playground. How handy was that! But when the studio moved, suddenly we were traveling 3 hours each day. Eventually I said to Amb, “If we have to move - let’s really move and look for a different lifestyle. Pack up,” I said, “and we will head north. If I find a job and we hou van die plek, that’s where we’ll stay.”

As Queensland’s largest inland city Toowoomba offers all the benefits of urban living without the big-city ‘hustle and bustle’.

 

Nestled in the heights of the Great Dividing Range the city boasts a relaxed lifestyle with easy access to Brisbane, the Sunshine Coast and the Gold Coast. As the hub of the Darling Downs region Toowoomba provides a wide variety of services including professional, manufacturing, health and education.

Discussions with business owners often leave me wondering why we’re in business. So many of us seem to be running around like headless chooks, trying to achieve targets, goals etc; when in fact, the whole reason we went into business in the first place was for the choices that owning a business makes available to us.

 

This was what I was thinking on Monday as I was sailing Moreton Bay, with a group of dynamic, phenomenal women, all involved in something bigger than themselves. You see this is what business and life means to me, fully participating in your life, because you can! Having the ability and the know-how to make the choices that add value not only to your business but also to your life.