Exactly I think my oldest dd has a wonderful accent -no particular accent at all and no one can quite guess just where her accent is from! She's quite chuffed as many children in her school told her they love her accent and want to speak like her!

She is very very good at mimicking accents though - Irish, Scottish, French, Filipino etc - she got a lot of her teachers fooled in her previous school!

Watch "Crocodile Dundee"?

What the???!!

Why would you actually want to speak with an Australian accent? I mean, it's okay I guess as far as accents go but why would you actively wish to speak that way? There's nothing great or special about it. It's just an accent like any other.

I certainly have no interest in cultivating an Aussie accent and I can't help but think that anyone who does must be a little odd and possibly a little insecure too.

Are you really that desperate to fit in here?

I find the Australian accent mainly consists of sounding slightly nasal, ending sentences on an 'up' (as if it were a question rather than a statement) and talking with a slow drawl with elongated vowel sound.

Sounding slightly confrontational/passive-aggressive helps too.

They also pronounce the letter 't' as a 'd'.

Hence 'letter' sounds more like 'ledder'.

I don't think wanting to pick up a bit of accent is a big deal.

I've never intentionally tried to sound like an Aussie but there were times when it was easier to try and say certain things more Aussie so that I would be understand.

Since I'm english already it's not much of a stretch to be understand but I can imagine it would be more important if english was your second language. Plus it would make listening to it harder too as that's one more difference to contend with.

Whenever I went to Subway and was ordering I would say "cheddar" more like the Aussies on purpose just to avoid the confusion and having to repeat myself over and over. If I said cheddar the Canadian way (hard 'r') then I would always be asked several times to makes sure it was actually cheddar cheese that I wanted. So I didn't want to sound Aussie, but it made my life a little easier by just adopting the accent for a moment.

So I don't think anyone should fault the original poster for trying to make her life a bit easier. In the long run I don't think I would suggest intentionally adopting an accent because it really does just start to happen naturally. However picking up some words and in general learning the accent might make it easier to understand other people and be understood yourself.