Quoting Trent W. Buck (trentbuck@gmail.com):
Short version: Australian English has no direct analogue of the US/CA idiom "dumpster fire". We'd understand "train wreck", "clusterfuck", & "complete cock-up".
Due to US TV, movies, &c, "trashcan" & "dumpster" are understood, but we'd be more likely to say "rubbish bin" & "skip".
Something very odd: I've found that 'skip' (in that sense of the word) is entirely missing from American idiom (but again, something I grew up with in my active vocabulary, possibly on account of Oz influence in Hong Kong). I got quizzical looks when I tried to use it in conversation, in the USA. I've made some headway at getting more locals to use 'roundabout' instead of the lame expression 'traffic circle' that seems to have arisen in bureaucracy. There are many roundabouts in the San Francisco Bay Area (as many other places), even though you will encounter locals who'll swear up and down that they've never seen one and wouldn't be able to navigate it safely. It usually turns out that there's one they regularly deal with but have thought of it as just some nameless regular road feature, whereas a _roundabout_ must be some dangerous foreign invention they've thankfully never encountered and are desperately afraid of in absentia. Something like Trump and immigrants, mayhap. ;-> The work of getting to the bottom idiom differences continues. My wife Deirdre (Irish/Swedish-American) found my continual use of the word 'trousers' eccentric. She eventually explained that, to her, 'trousers' should properly refer only to the bottom half of a set of men's formal or semi-formal clothing. She said the normal-to-her idiom was 'pants'. I rejoined that, to me, 'pants' refers properly only to knickers. And of course, she replied that surely nobody says 'knickers' outside old Benny Hill skits. 'Pavement', 'sidewalk', and 'macadam' are also probable points of confusion. And I make a point of saying 'zebra crossing' (with a zed) rather than 'marked crosswalk', just to be perverse.