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G'day "Mate"
WUBIN About 15 years ago, i was working in a roadhouse in Wubin in Western Australia, this town is quite small, but its in the outback. After work my mates and i decided to go to the Pub for a beer, when we got there we sat outside watching nothing in particular. :)
Off into the distance i noticed a man walking into town, he was dressed in raggety clothes, this man was a full blooded Aboriginie, he came up to where we were sitting, said nothing but offered to trade with some items he had.
Well after a while we found out this chap spent most of his life going walkabout, he had no family and no friends, and he was very down. So we adopted him, i asked him his name and he told me some unpronouncable thing, so we decided to give him an Aussie name, we thought of a few bueaties, but finally decided to call him "Mate". In Australia, we say G'day Mate, where you might say Hello.
Now this chap hadn't spoken to anyone for a few months, so he got a real shock when we toddled off down the street, and everyone said "G'day mate" to us, he thought they were saying hello to him.
When we got to the roadhouse, he had the biggest smile on his face, because he thought that this was the friendliest town he had visited.
Mate stayed with us for about 3 days, he wanted to move north to meet with another Aboriginie group, then he wanted to walk towards Darwin. I met mate once more about 8 months later, some of his stories he told me of his travels in the last eight months were quite amazing, as he said, in every town he went to, everyone knew his name, and would welcome him, with "G'day Mate".
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