Australian English can be average and ordinary

It was an Irish friend named Sean who first directed my attention to one of the peculiarities of the Australian English language.

He pointed out how nonsensical it is when you ask someone who is sick how they are and they reply that they're feeling "a bit average".

In theory feeling average should be okay but in Australia it means less than average.

I was thinking about Sean's observation today while reading about the unfortunate experience of Bradley Chisholm, who was detained awaiting trial only to have the Police withdraw charges against him.

In particular I like the quote shown here where a relation of Mr Chisholm described the experience as "pretty ordinary".

I'd guess this is a similar understatement to describing illness as "average" and that the experience was in fact less than ordinary and not at all pretty.