Description: Chris works in Yulara resort in the Northern Territory (Australia). He is a tour guide at Uluru. He talks about his life in Yulara, his daily routines, the people he meets and the people who are the traditional owners of Uluru.

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Where I am based

Chris: Well, hello Germany. My name is Chris and I live in Yulara, which is right next to Uluru, right in Central Australia. You've probably heard of Uluru. You may have heard of it called Ayers Rock. But out here, the aboriginal people call it Uluru and this is the resort town that we live in. This is where all the staff live and all the people come to stay when they visit. There's nowhere else to stay. It is right smack bang in the middle of nowhere and it's getting hot. /
[ video ] [ exercises for this topic ] Word count: 91 Duration: 0m30

What I do

Chris: So, I thought I might tell you a little bit about myself and what it's like living here in Central Australia, a very difficult climate to live in, what it's like to live in Yulara and working for an aboriginal company, which is quite rare. So, I'm a tour guide, with a company called Anangu Tours, which is an aboriginal tour company which teaches tourists about how life used to be out here before Europeans came along, before clothes, cars, rifles, all those sorts of things. And I'm their bus driver and hopefully one day to be one of their interpreters - so I'm learning the language out here, which is called Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara, two aboriginal dialects from this area.
[ video ] [ exercises for this topic ] Word count: 121 Duration: 0m43

How I got my current job

Chris: I've been here nine months and I came out here with one of the big coach companies, just working doing normal tours. I didn't like living in the resort - it's a bit of a fishbowl, lots of young kids partying all the time and you have to get up to do sunrises every morning, take people out to see the sunrise on the rock. So, I moved out of town into the staff caravan park, bought this dodgy, shitty, old caravan for a thousand bucks and moved into that. Because of that I got to meet a lot of Anangu tours staff and a lot of the aboriginal people. And then they had a job going and because they knew me and liked me they said I'd be good at that job. So, they offered me a job. So I've been with them now just over six months and it's absolutely fantastic. I get to learn about my own country and the original people that were here, which is fascinating. Lots and lots to learn.
[ video ] [ exercises for this topic ] Word count: 176 Duration: 0m56

What I used to do

Chris: So, just to give you a bit more information about me. Before I came out here and before I became a tour guide, I grew up in a country town. And growing up in country towns, you play football and end up working on farms. So I started out as a stock man, big hats, big boots, tight jeans, working with cattle and sheep. Spent a fair bit of time just doing that. Did a bit of modelling for amateur stuff to promote wool, trying to sell wool around the world. The area I'm from grows some of the best fine wool in the world. So that was good fun. A friend of mine who owns a farm, who's also doing a bit of bus driving, said 'Hey, you'd like this. It's good fun, you get to meet lots of people, lots of girls.' He said 'Why don't you give it a go?' So, I used to drive Sydney to Cairns. It's about three thousand kilometres and a lot of fun. But I've always wanted to visit the Northern Territory - they call it frontier country out here - so, I just thought I'd come on out about nine months ago, being single it's easy. You just pack up and come here. So that's fantastic.
[ video ] [ exercises for this topic ] Word count: 215 Duration: 1m11

The company I work for

Chris: To tell you a little bit about Anangu Tours and what I do as a professional tour guide: long days, you don't work hard, like I used to with cattle, but you have to be up for sunrise to take people out to see the sunrise on the rock - Uluru changes colour in the mornings and at sunset. You basically pick up at the hotels, introduce yourself to these people, all from around the world. A lot of time, they can't speak English. We have a lot of Germans actually, and that's always a lot of fun. The differences in cultures and what you say and what they mean can be quite interesting. Then we head out and do sunrise. It's only about a twenty-minute drive. It's about twenty kilometres out to the rock. During summer, a lot of the time you spend trying to educate people about the heat. It could be very dangerous out here, forty-five degrees. It can be forty degrees by nine o'clock in the morning. And that can kill people unfortunately. Then we go out for breakfast and the staff try get everyone fed and happy and get them thinking in the right way about what they are going to learn. They learn about the dreamtime, which out here is called Tjukurpa, about creation, the aboriginal people, their belief systems, how to survive in this country. And then I hand them over to their aboriginal guide and we have an interpreter who translates from Pitjantjatjara into English. When we have Germans on who can't speak English, it goes from Pitjantjatjara to English to German, which is very interesting and lots of fun.
[ video ] [ exercises for this topic ] Word count: 278 Duration: 1m36

What makes us special

Chris: The company basically has been set up by the aboriginal people to teach overseas people about the culture here, to try and help the culture to survive and for it not to die out, that's the main reason. It also provides income and jobs for the local people and hopefully some motivation. There's lots of heartache and lots of sad stories with aboriginal people in Australia. And this is a happy story, a good story, something to be promoted. Anangu, I've mentioned it a few times, but Anangu simply translates to 'we people' and the aboriginal people out here gave themselves that name of 'we people' or Anangu - because there are two language dialects out here, Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara, and it's just easier to say Anangu than those two names. I think I've mentioned what's so special about it. Just working for them is amazing. These people are happy, honest, friendly. They never get cranky. They're happy to share their culture with people who want to listen and learn. If you sit down like we are, just on the ground, usually it's nice and red dirt rather than green grass, sit around the fire just listen and talk, and they open up and share with you. And the more time you spend out here, the more time you spend with them, they teach you more and they teach you more and it's amazing. They understand this country incredibly. They can see things that we can't see. They have a feel for the country, they can read the ground every morning - the animal tracks on it. It's fascinating. So working for Anangu Tours is fantastic, it's really good.
[ video ] [ exercises for this topic ] Word count: 279 Duration: 1m37

My daily routines

Chris: A bit more about my working day. I got half way through that. So I do sunrise. And our tour is about six, seven hours in the morning. I come back into Yulara, usually have a shower and a rest for a couple of hours, maybe a sleep, before starting again at two o'clock in the afternoon. Same again: pick up people, take them out to the rock, to the cultural centre, have another cup of coffee and hand them over to their aboriginal guide for a couple of hours. They go into a water hole and get shown bush foods and then I take people to sunset. I'm usually getting home anywhere from six o'clock to eight o'clock at night depending on the times during the year. Obviously winter is earlier, summer is later. It's just coming into summer, so it's getting later and later, big long days. But the good thing is I do four days on and three days off. So you can rest up in those three days. That's pretty much my day. It's not hard. The in-between-times I do a lot of reading, studying the language to try and become an interpreter. Finding it very difficult. I speak Australian English and trying to pronounce the words and the sounds in Pitjantjatjara is not easy. Listening for the words is very hard. So, that's good. /
[ video ] [ exercises for this topic ] Word count: 229 Duration: 1m27

Our clients

Sabine: What kinds of tourists do you get here?
Chris: All sorts. Everything. Young, old, different nationalities, English speakers, non-English speakers. It's just incredible. It's just amazing.
Sabine: Do you think it has changed over time, I mean the amount of tourists who come over here has probably changed over time but ... .
Chris: Absolutely. From twenty years ago ... like we have 400,000 tourists a year now. And they are trying to get the airport international, which means the Asian market would be even bigger - lots of Japanese and Chinese people come, which is great. They're good tourists. They got lots of money to spend. Their dollar is strong or their currency is strong against ours, so ... . So it can be very spastic here at times, it's people everywhere. At sunrise and sunset, there's two areas to watch the rock change colour, if at those times you go down to some of the water holes, you have the whole place to yourself. So if you want to romance a girl, that's what you do when you come out to Central Australia. And it's very good.
[ video ] [ exercises for this topic ] Word count: 181 Duration: 1m03

List of speakers

Acknowledgements, availability and copyright

Acknowledgements: The project has been supported by the University of Tuebingen. The video interviews have been carried out and recorded by Sabine Braun, Stefanie Hahn, Petra Hoffstaedter and Kurt Kohn. The speakers have agreed to the use of the materials for non-commercial research and education purposes.

Availability of the ELISA corpus: The ELISA corpus is made available by the Department of Applied English Linguistics at the University of Tuebingen. It is freely available at this website for study, teaching and research purposes, and copies of the transcripts may be distributed, as long as this statement of availability appears in the text. However, if any portion of this material is to be used in educational presentations and publications, permission must be obtained in advance. Commercial use of any form is excluded. For further information about permissions, please contact Dr. Sabine Braun at s.braun(at)surrey.ac.uk.

Copyright of the ELISA corpus: Department of Applied English Linguistics, University of Tuebingen.