The all-pervasive local greeting of "how are you going?" was one of the first puzzles that Liberian-born Seku Drame had to solve when he first arrived on Australian shores.
"I couldn't understand why so many Australians were interested in my means of transportation," he said.
"I would reply: 'I am going by bus'. And everyone would laugh. So I found out what they meant soon enough."
Mr Drame, 34, was one of 16 people from 10 different countries who took their Australia Day citizenship pledges from Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on the shores of Lake Burley Griffin, only one but the most prominent of the 320 similar ceremonies performed across the country on Friday.
Born in Liberia but raised in Guinea, as a teenager Mr Drame saw the Phillip Noyce movie Rabbit Proof Fence and was entranced by this "mysterious place" on the other side of the world.
"I then got on the internet and started finding out more and more about Australia and how incredible it was and I decided that's where I want to live," he said.
He made the trek on his own, couldn't speak English when he arrived - hence the mix-up with the local vernacular - but was always a quick study. He first entered school at the equivalent of Year 10, and crammed for his Higher School Certificate
Years of intensive study followed, and taking whatever jobs he could to support himself including gardening, dishwashing, and pushing trollies at Woolies supermarkets.
"All I ever wanted to do was learn and make it to university," he said.
"I've always had the view that if you want to do something badly enough, you find a way to do it."
He completed a physics degree while studying in Newcastle and moved to Canberra two years ago so he could study commerce at the University of Canberra and engineering at the ANU.
Mr Drame doesn't consider himself a high achiever, just someone who was curious about everything and loved to read about all manner of subjects.
"I was so lucky to have so many incredible teachers along the way; I owe so much to them," he said.
Mongolian-born software developer Munkhbilguun Khishigbayar decided around a year ago that Canberrans should be given the opportunity to sample the genuine dishes of his country - and that's when his chosen career in Australia suddenly took a very abrupt turn.
Mr Krishigbayar, his partner Nomin Battur and their two children Anir, 5, and Aminaa, 9, all took the citizenship oath with the Prime Minister on Friday, a little perplexed as Federation Guard band belted out old standards such as Road to Gundagai and Click Go The Shears, and the 21-gun salute boomed out across the lake.
Moving to Canberra from Ulan Bator nine years ago to study, the restaurant transition only began for the family around 18 months ago when they opened Nadaam, in Corinna St, Phillip.
"There have been a lot of popular, commercial interpretations of Mongolian food like the barbecue, which is Taiwanese in origin and then went across to America, and, of course Mongolian beef, which is a Chinese interpretation," he said.
"So felt there was an opportunity to do something with Mongolian food in Canberra that no-one else was doing - the dumplings that we have during traditional celebrations at home, the soups, the home-made noodles and of course, the milk tea."
They became permanent residents in 2021. Australian citizenship had always been planned but they had had such a busy past year, this was the first opportunity.
Around Australia on Friday, around 15,000 people look the pledge and received a certificate like the Khishigbayar family and in doing so, as the Prime Minister declared "will be writing the next chapter in our nation's history".
