The pattern of such borrowings followed the pattern of settlement in Australia so that words like boomerang and dingo were acquired from the Port Jackson region, billabong and coolamon as the Europeans ventured inland, lubra from the colony in Tasmania, barramundi and dilly from the colony at Brisbane and finally jarrah and marron from the colony at Perth. Others flourish only in Australia, like cunjevoi and currawong . Very many of them are American, like couch potato and infotainment . Australian English is remarkably uniform across the whole country, but there are also clear patterns of regional usage of words. These words usually refer to everyday things such as food, household items, children's activities, birds, fish, plants, the weather, and so on.
Transition zones occur where words from adjoining regions are used.
The regions cover the more densely populated parts of the country where a survey of regional usage was conducted among people who had lived in their home towns all their lives, though there is slightly less reliable evidence that the regions are more extensive than the abovementioned four. The very sparsely populated parts of the country were not surveyed. These dialect regions do not coincide with the States. Only a few items which depend on government authorities for their names have regional distributions that coincide with State boundaries, such as names for telegraph poles, or for relief teachers.