DragonKing: Isn't it confusing! You get the same with text printouts in certain newsgroups but worse because a text board has an added strangeness.
There's no official direction of play so when I was first taught to play on a real board we used to play as different colours and have the home tables on different sides, just to get used to playing it any which way. Since playing on the Net I've become very fond of playing it just the way it is here (and at most other sites). Anyway ..
.. there's a button on the right end of the GnuBg toolbar called Direction. Give it a poke and see if you like what it does. ;-)