What I Learned In Australia

Our Australia trip was amazing. Communicating was easy since everyone spoke English, well maybe not in Chinatown, but there are still some differences between America and Australia. Here’s a quick list of things I learned while being in Australia for three weeks.

People and The Country

• The country is spread across three time zones. From west to east, the times are actually 0:00, 1:30, and 2. I’ve never heard of an hour and half time zone before.
• The state of Queensland does not do Daylight Saving Time while the other states in the same timezone do.
• The country has 22 million people and about 20% of them are in Sydney.
• Major sports are rugby, cricket, Australian football, and soccer. Which one is referred to as “footie” is still TBD.
• Wifi is not as easy to find as it is here. You cannot assume that a coffee shop has Wifi for you to use. In Sydney, the country’s largest city, only Starbucks had Wifi at $3 per hour.
• There are lots of cute nicknames for things. “Aussies” call Tasmania “Tassie,” football is “footie,” and breakfast is “brekky” or “breakie.” The spelling changes sometimes, too.
• After you think the cute nicknames are just talk, you find out that it’s a little more official and maybe it’s not cute anymore, it’s normal talk. Official forms say “expiry” date and highway signs warn you of a “speedo” check.
• The phrase “no worries” is used here in place of “you’re welcome” or “no problem.”
• All strollers are called prams.
• Toilets have two buttons: one for water, the other for more water. Trouble is, we can’t tell which is which.
• Grocery store hours are pretty weak, with most closing around 6 p.m., or even 5 p.m. on a Saturday.
• Crosswalk technology for pedestrians involves noises from space invaders.
• You are allowed to reject junk mail but placing a sign on your mailbox that simply says, “No Junk Mail.” Read about it here.

Money

• There are no 1 dollar bills. Instead they use 1 and 2 dollar coins. They also don’t use pennies but even with this, you end up with a lot of change in your pocket.
• Everything costs more. Twenty-ounce Cokes are $3.50 at a convenience store, a typical bottled beer is $7, a cosmo will run you about $16, electronics are almost triple in price, and a Redbox rental is $2.95 per night.
• Opening a tab is a process; show ID, fill out a small form, hand over your card, wait for a new card to be issued to you. This card represents your tab and you can show it whenever ordering.
• Produce is pretty normal but location can hurt on certain things. Bananas are $10 per kg but you can get five kiwis for $2.

Food

• Pie shops and bakeries are everywhere and there are pies for all meals. However, use caution when eating some of the meat pies, as stomachaches have been known to follow.
• Eating Kangaroo is not a big deal. It’s a lean, tough meat.
• Ketchup is called tomato sauce.
• Pancakes and waffles are served with a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top.
• Candies are made with cane sugar instead of corn syrup. This affects the taste of sodas, especially Coke, as well.
• Capsicum refers to a pepper.
• Not surprisingly, chips are actually French fries. (After all, this was a British colony.) They eat a lot of them here.
• Bagels do not exist in this country.
• Mexican restaurants are hard to find and I’m told that they are terrible. Example, they use jasmine rice in their burritos.

Animals

• Kangaroos are pretty common in certain parts and they walk into the road, just like deer.
• Male koalas make a weird burpy, grunting noise that is much louder than you would expect. They look cute but once a male starts making this noise, you think it might charge at you. Their claws are sharp by the way.
• Tasmanian devils are pretty much tiny hyenas but the size of a cat. If you get a glimpse of ones teeth then it’s time to walk away.
• Emus look like an ostrich.
• The duck-billed platypus is very interesting when swimming along. It looks like its limping through the water and sort of fake with its bill and flippers.