This story is about an island off Tasmania's east coast called Maria Island.
We'll look at a couple of useful spelling rules and explain what 'what have you' means.
So we've just arrived on Maria Island after a short boat ride from Triabunna.
We're just about to grab the packs and head off to camp and then we've got walking this
afternoon.
So here we go.
Quite light actually.
Not too bad.
These are my supplies for the next few days.
Supplies for the next few days.
Notice the spelling on the words 'supplies' and 'days'.
When a word ends with a consonant and a 'y',
such as supply or city,
the rule is that when you add 's' for a plural
you change the 'y' to 'i' and add 'es':
supply - supplies city - cities
But if the word ends with a vowel and a 'y',
such as day or toy, you simply add 's'
day - days toy - toys
So how do you spell the plural of opportunity?
One of the great things about Maria Island I found is, being a sort of amateur photographer,
is all of the great photo opportunities.
Opportunity ends with a consonant 't'- and a 'y',
so in spelling the plural you change the 'y' to an 'i' and add 'es':
opportunities.
Now how many wombats did she see?
Our first stop was Return Point where we saw a heap of wombats.
She saw 'a heap' of wombats.
This means she saw a lot or many.
She could also have said heaps instead of a heap.
We saw a heap of wombats means the same as we saw heaps of wombats.
Now listen for another plural:
So we're all ready to go for our walk through the forest today and along the beaches and
looking forward to seeing some more nature today.
beaches
There's another rule about adding 's' for plurals and singular verbs.
If the word ends with 'ch' such as beach,
then it's spelled 'es' - beaches.
The same rule applies to words that end with 's', 'sh', 'x', and 'z'.
They're also pronounced 'es' instead of 's'.
bus - buses wish - wishes
fox - foxes waltz - waltzes
And what can you see while walking on the beaches?
This is the painted cliffs and you can see that it's iron leaching has caused all these
different patterns and designs and just the erosion with the seas and the wind water and
what have you has made them into the beautiful site that they are today.
You can see the painted cliffs.
He talks about what has caused the cliffs to look like this and ends the list with the
expression 'what have you'.
It means 'and things like that'.
Listen again:
And just the erosion with the seas and the wind water and what have you has made them
into the beautiful site that they are today.
So we've seen that a heap is a lot,
that words ending with a consonant and 'y'
have their plurals end with 'i-e-s'
and those ending with 'sh', s, x, z and ch
take the 'es' ending
Words that end with a vowel and a 'y'
take the ordinary 's' ending.
We'll finish with the phrasal verb 'reflecting on', which means to think about something:
Sitting and reflecting a bit on the last 3 days and what an amazing adventure it's been,
I think one of the highlights for me has been the amazing animals that you see as well and
you can actually get reasonably close.
I'm very glad that I got to have this experience and it's definitely something that I'll remember
forever.