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Episode 16: Berrima

Transcript

We'll look at the word historic and the expressions live in, live on and 'up to scratch'.

Berrima's a great spot, it's got a lot of local history, a lot of old history. I've been coming here since I was a kid it's just a great area I remember coming down and looking at all the old shops with my parents and so forth.

I think the uniqueness really is about the buildings. Many of the retail shops that are in this stretch of road here are a part of the original 1830 buildings, the Crown Inn, the surveyor general down the bottom of town and most of the retail outlets are in buildings that are 1830s and onwards so it is unique in that... and it's still allegedly we think the oldest colonial village still in Australia intact so that's what makes it unique.

The courthouse was a judicial enterprise for about a hundred years and then in late 1901 it stopped being used for judicial purposes. And then the courthouse became a dance hall and a school of arts and all other things like that. Today it's obviously a working museum and an information centre.

The jail was completed one year after the courthouse. It was a maximum security prison and basically when you went there in the 1830s it was the end of the line for many men.

The end of the line is the last place or the point where things can no longer continue. He said it was a maximum security prison. Prison is another word for jail and maximum security means that the jail was for people who committed serious crimes. Many men were not released and ended their lives in the jail. Listen again:

The jail was completed one year after the courthouse. It was a maximum security prison and basically when you went there in the 1830s it was the end of the line for many men.

The jail is an old building- what's the word used to describe such buildings?

There's galleries that are in historic buildings. Restaurants, also in historic buildings that make the town a great place for tourists to come.

They're called historic buildings. This means that they are old and show us what the past looked like.

What else are the buildings used for?

I'm Jill Denny. I've always lived in Berrima. I live in this cottage that was built in the 1850s. It's got shingles under the iron and hand made nails and it's just the cosiest, dearest little cottage you could live in.

They are lived in. You live in buildings like the old cottage. You also live in towns. Listen:

Berrima's a great place to live in.

So you live in houses and towns and even countries - She lives in Australia - but you can live on streets - Jill Denny lives on an old street.

Now listen for the expression 'up to scratch'

This is our local. We have a lot of fun down here with raffles. We sponsor the local fire brigade and keep everything up to scratch and all look out for one another and have a bit of a laugh here and there. Yeah.

This is our local - that means it's the local hotel where they socialise. They keep everything 'up to scratch' - this means they keep things working properly. Listen again:

We sponsor the local fire brigade and keep everything up to scratch and all look out for one another and have a bit of a laugh here and there. Yeah.

So historic is the word used to describe old buildings and towns and you live in a house or town, but can say that you live on a street.

We'll finish with the word preserving, which means keeping things like they were in the past:

In Berrima it works because we're conscious of preserving what we really had, cos this is what makes people come to visit us. We don't have to manufacture this thing it's already here.

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