G'day John,

I was indeed living in the next township northwest of Corryong ... in 1967 ... the SMA (Snowy Mountains Authority) camp at Jindabyne. However I didn't hang around the Corryong Motel (I drove through every working day, heading to Albury-Wodonga to do site business ... and spend most Saturday evenings doing a bit of photographic work at Albert Mildren's darkroom - then off to the Nariel Creek Band's 50/50 Dance at the Memorial Hall) ... and I never came across this nugget.

I would have to say that it looks much more like "stage parody" German than any real German (or Dutch) patois. The appearance of some many German-speaking migrants at the 1949 start of the Snowy Mts Scheme certainly challenged Australians still settling back into civilian life after WW II ... but most of the genuine alarm had subsided by the 1960s ... and most of the newer labourers on the SMA projects seemed to be Croatians or Czechs (good fun for young and old after payday drinking sprees!).

We should also remember that the Nariel Creek Band I mentioned above was, then, led by Kon(rad) Klippel III - direct descendant of the Konrad Klippel who took up land in the area in 1857 ... and who was in demand for dance music from his Flutina (ancestral form of melodeon) ... until the night he drowned - crossing a river on the way to an outlying dance. (The Flutina survived ... and is still in the family!)

The general good humour (and downright sexiness of the last lines) suggests a far longer acquaintance than just the past two decades ... and I would address inquiries to the Klippels, or their close relatives the Simpsons, who still run the Band ... and the rightly famed Nariel Creek Folk Festival ... though I have to think of who is too much of a good Lutheran to answer this one!

Regards,

Bob