For those of you who knew our dirty little secret, I can proudly announce that it is now legal for both of us to have gainful employment in Australia!
We're legal!
For those of you that didn’t know, our work visa hadn’t come through before we needed to travel to Australia. We entered the country legally under a short-term business visa, with the stipulation that no Australian firm could pay us while we were here.
I’ve literally been working for peanuts these past few weeks.
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Australia is amazingly similar to the United States. So much so that every once in a while we have to remind ourselves that we live in a foreign country. That said, there are a few small things that have continuously tripped us up in our first month here. Things that, quite honestly, we didn’t expect to be different from the United States but are. Or better put, things that we take for granted in the United States but that we can’t take for granted here.
1. Stores close early. OK, it’s not as bad as Switzerland where it felt like every store in the country was only open from 10am-4pm, but stores just don’t have as long business hours (known as ‘trading hours’) here. Thankfully for us, who like to shop for food daily, the supermarkets are one of the few types of stores that are open until 8pm or 9pm every night. Besides supermarkets, there just aren’t that many service-oriented shops that stay open past 5pm or 6pm each night. It’s taken me a week to buy a phone, for example, because I can’t seem to make it home before the 5:30pm shop closing time. Want to buy a dress during the week but can’t get out of work before 5:30pm? You’re probably out of luck. Want to go to the mall after work? Sorry it closes at 5pm. Sometimes we’re left wondering : 1) when do Aussies shop and 2) how do these stores stay open?
Metric Veg at Victoria Market (Flickr: WordRidden)
2. Imperial to metric. It’s not that we can’t convert kilograms to pounds — though I don’t expect to ever be able to do it fluently and with accuracy in my head. This is more about the challenge of understanding how much things, usually produce, actually cost here. I am sure we’ll adjust with time and practice, but right now we have no idea what a reasonable cost is for spinach.
3. Limited already prepared food. Every urban supermarket and cafe in the United States will have its share of prepared foods. Whole Foods makes a huge percentage of their profit on pre-made salads, sandwiches, pizzas, etc. Our go-to quick meal in Adams Morgan was made-that-day sushi rolls at Harris Teeter or a grab and go sandwich from a nearby cafe. That ‘geesh I’m starving and too lazy to make anything myself’ convenience gets us in trouble here. The prepared foods section in the supermarkets (outside of the frozen section) are small to non-existent. Cafes sell coffee. They may have a baked good or two, but we haven’t found one yet (other than downtown) that carries pre-made sandwiches or salads that we can grab for dinner. And when the average cost for any meal here is $10-12, laziness quickly becomes an expensive habit.
Let's pee together! (Flickr: psd)
4. Peeing with your mates. Many, if not most, public institutions in Australia still have trough-style urinals, where men line up shoulder to shoulder and pee into a great big trough. No individual urinals here and definitely no ‘privacy’ walls between urinals. At first, I thought these would only be found in old pubs who hadn’t upgraded in half a century. I was wrong. The brand new AAMI Park, a state-of-the-art soccer and rugby stadium, is two years old and its urinals are trough style (see photo on the right). What’s even stranger to me is that you stand on grates above the tub while the pee runs under your feet. Just don’t slip! As many of you know, I’m pretty comfortable with my own excreta (i.e., can’t wait to get my own composing toilet) but this kind of weirds me out.
5. Credit vs. debit. This is our biggest frustration this week. We bank with ANZ and have a debit card; they won’t even let us apply for a credit card for another six months (and there’s no point anyway since the points schemes here are so minimal). We have three accounts – main chequing, main savings, and internet savings. When we use our ANZ debit card at a point-of-service we have the choice of either credit (credit) or savings (debit) or chequing (you would think debit). In fact, if we use chequing the transaction is always declined. If we use savings the transaction is deducted from our chequing account and if we use credit the transaction is also deducted from our chequing account. All of that kind of makes sense to us — at point of service credit/savings work and chequing doesn’t — even if the descriptors of where the money is coming from seem off. It’s at the ATM where it gets really upside down. At an ATM, if you pick savings, it comes out of your chequing. And if you choose chequing, it comes out of our savings.
6. Where to find ‘fair and balanced’ news. We really, really miss NPR. There’s nothing like it in Australia. Sure they have ABC (like BBC or CBC), but it doesn’t provide the breadth of coverage (both short-form and long-form) that NPR does. And ABC has separate channels for local broadcasting and national broadcasting, unlike NPR that reserves a 5-10 minute block out of every 30-60 minutes of programming for local affiliate news. In other words, I can tell you a lot about Australian national news at this point but very little about Melbourne. In desperation we decided to subscribe to The Age, Melbourne’s least trashy paper.
On a more trivial note: did you know that FM radio channels really didn’t catch on until the late 70s here? AM is still the dominant band used in radio here for anything that’s not a music station, so almost all of the broadcasters that carry news are found on the AM dial. It’s like I never left a world in which people drive El Caminos! (foreshadowing people, foreshadowing).
7. Crossing the street. Everyone knows that Australians drive on the opposite side of the road from the U.S., so of course crossing the street is something we knew would take some getting used to. We are now pretty good at remembering to look “right, left, right” before stepping off the curb. However, Melbourne seems to have fairly long blocks, busy streets, and very few mid-block crossings. This means that, more often than we would like, we are forced to run across the road, dodging cars right, then left and there are bicycles and trams to look out for as well. Overall, Melbourne is very pedestrian-friendly (it’s pretty flat and has great sidewalk connectivity), but we would love to be able to cross mid-block without risking our lives!
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Sydney Rd., Brunswick. Photo credit: Nomad Tales (Flickr).
Or more specifically, in our new neighborhood (aka suburb), Brunswick! When Justin told one of his co-workers where we are living, he responded, “Have you seen the show Portlandia? The dream of the ’90s is alivein Brunswick!” (For those of you who’ve heard of Portlandia but have never watched the show, take 3 minutes out of your day and click on the dream of the ’90s link. It’s worth it). This wasn’t why we chose this neighborhood, and it isn’t obvious, at least to an Oz newbie, that Brunswick embodies the Portlandia ethic. Sure, there are plenty of people with tattoos, girls with glasses, local bands (there is even a large library display for locally produced CDs!), record stores, bicycles, and skateboards. But Melbourne is a creative city, and none of these seem unique to this suburb. Perhaps after a few more weeks here, I will start sleeping until 11am and decide to go to clown school (just kidding, Mom!).
Our apartment building.
So why did we choose this neighborhood? After apartment hunting non-stop for nearly two weeks, I was growing weary. Searching for an apartment in Melbourne is a bit different from the other places we have lived. Real estate agencies hold 15-minute open houses. That’s right, you (and everyone else) have a 15-minute window to check out an apartment and pick-up an application. And many of the nicer places seem to only have one open house. We didn’t know much about Brunswick when we decided to submit an application for our new apartment, but it met our six requirements (in no particular order): 1. Plenty of natural light and preferably hardwood floors (known as floorboards in Oz); 2. Walking distance to a grocery store and other amenities; 3. Reasonable commuting distance from Justin’s work; 4. Good public transit access; 5. Safe; 6. Within our budget. Fortunately, we were the first to apply, and we officially moved in on Monday!
I grow more impressed with Brunswick every day. If you have seen the Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations episode about Australia, you have already gotten a taste of our new home. Anthony consumed three meals (kebabs, Lebanese pizza, and an amazing meal at Rumi) within walking distance of us.
Mmmm ... Lebanese pizza. Photo credit: avlxyz (Flickr).
There’s such a variety of good food in our neighborhood because our neighborhood is amazingly diverse. And diversity is delicious! In fact, Brunswick is one of Melbourne’s most diverse suburbs. According to the 2006 Census, over 40 percent of residents speak a language other than English at home.
If this weren’t indication enough that we are living in a food lover’s paradise, there is the Mediterranean Wholesalers, a supermarket the size of an urban Whole Foods that services Melbourne’s long-established Italian population. The store has an entire aisle (both sides!) devoted to pasta and multiple refrigerators full of Parmigiano-Reggiano alone! And olive oils, wine, cured meats, fresh cannolis, cakes, special blended coffee…I could go on and on.
Perhaps this week we will venture beyond the grocery stores, bakeries, cafes, and restaurants. We could lawn bowl (barefoot no less), play tennis, or watch a professional Footy (aka Australian rules football) practice (Go Carlton!); explore some of Sydney Road’s boutiques and book stores; listen to some local, live music; or just ride our bicycles.
Google makes it amazingly easy to take a stroll through Brunswick. This link will take you straight to the intersection of Michael Street and Sydney Road – what we see when we walk out our front door. Click on the arrows to ‘walk’ in a direction and use the compass in the top left corner to window shop.
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Giant extinct tree lobsters on a rock in the ocean (and now at the Melbourne Zoo)! A fantastic story by Robert Krulwich - who also happens to be COA‘s commencement speaker in June. Way to pick a winner black flies.
The Dingo, Australia’s protected pest. I guess they’re still trying to figure out if dingoes eat babies or not. Seriously.
Flying Fox. Photo credit: Oystercatcher (Flickr).
We love flying foxes! And they make love too! There’s a huge colony right in the heart of Melbourne that we’ve already visited. Laura fell in love immediately but was denied the request to bring one home. They sure are cute in a ‘as long as 3,000 aren’t flying at me’ kind of way.
Where do spiders go in a flood? The city of Wagga Wagga in northern Victoria just found out. The floods here have been big news and just about the only thing covered by the national media last week. They look to have subsided for the most part with, what one might consider, minimal damage.
I am too cute to hate. Photo credit: Gundy (Flickr).
Why do so many of the trees in Melbourne wear collars? Well, Melburnians are at war with one of their native marsupials but only have themselves to blame.
The fight between drivers and bicyclists get ugly in Sydney. And a lesson in the differences between governmental devolution in the United States and Australia.
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View of the CBD and the Yarra River
We arrived in Melbourne exactly two weeks ago today and so far are incredibly impressed with this city. One of our most commonly exchanged thoughts has been, “Why aren’t more people talking about how great this city is?!” The parks, cafes, markets, interesting retail, music/art/food festivals, the beach, rivers, art-filled laneways, trams, flying foxes, parrots … all things we have seen or experienced in the past week!
We have been keeping a running list of our first impressions and have organized them into “things we love” and “things we (already) miss” about the U.S. and Washington, D.C. in particular.
THINGS WE LOVE
Tram on Brunswick Street
1. Trams — We have yet to decide if we will need to buy a car during our time here, but so far, a car seems unnecessary for around town trips because of the lovely trams! The tram network is set-up to primarily connect the surrounding suburbs (or, in U.S. terms, neighborhoods) to the CBD (central business district or, in U.S. terms, downtown). They run frequently and are pretty quick. There are also trains to access areas further away from the CBD, though we have yet to really experience them.
Public art in Fitzroy alley way
2. Art everywhere! — As we had heard so much about Melbourne’s laneways, we had a feeling that Melbourne would be a creative, art-filled city and have not been disappointed. There is public art everywhere, not just in the laneways but in every neighborhood. Melbourne’s love of art also extends to fashion. Melburnians generally dress well, and there are numerous, local fashion designers.
3. Endless, independent retail — This city is known (at least within Australia) to be a shopping mecca, and it certainly lives up to its reputation. The CBD and almost every suburb we have visited is packed with stores … retail streets that literally go on for miles! Granted we haven’t been here long enough to recognize the local chains, but they largely seem to be independent shops and boutiques. We don’t know how half of them afford to stay open (cheap rent?).
View of CBD from the Shrine of Remembrance
4. Parks — Botanical gardens, river walks, English gardens, sports fields. We can’t seem to walk more than a few blocks without finding another park!
5. No tax, no tips — Eating out in this city is expensive (entrées tend to be $20 and up), but at least the price you see in the menu is the price you pay … no tax is added and tips are never expected.
THINGS WE MISS
1. Internet — By far the thing we miss most about the United States is easy, fast, reliable internet access. We didn’t have internet for our first week (our hotel doesn’t have internet) until we finally bought a dongle, a portable wifi hotspot. It works okay for basic internet use, but it can be slow and unreliable. We hope to figure out another solution in the next month or so.
2. Capital Bikeshare — Washington, D.C.’s bikeshare system is awesome, and we had come to love having it as a transportation option while we were living in the District. Melbourne also has bikeshare, but it is limited to the downtown so can’t really be used as a means of commuting to work or exploring the neighborhoods (suburbs) surrounding the CBD. Fortunately, Melbourne does have an extensive system of bicycle lanes and trails and appears to be a very bikable city. We will be buying bicycles again very soon.
3. No smoking — Smoking is banned in bars, restaurants, and other public spaces in every U.S. city we have lived for the past six years. We’re pretty sure that this is the case in Melbourne as well but are still surprised by how many Melburnians smoke.
4. Inexpensive restaurants, ice cream, alcohol — While restaurants are expensive, it is pretty easy to find reasonably priced food in the grocery store and markets — that is unless you are buying ice cream or alcohol! Ice cream frequently costs at least $8 a pint, and a 6-pack of beer for under $20 seems to be rare.
5. Real bacon — It’s still summer in Melbourne and one of our favorite summertime sandwiches is the BLT (mmm … crispy bacon and fresh tomato and lettuce). BLTs are also common on lunch menus in this city, so we have tried a couple since arriving (not to mention bacon as a breakfast side dish). Unfortunately, each time we have been disappointed. The bacon is closer to fried, fatty ham or somewhat like Canadian bacon. We have heard it is possible to get American-style bacon, known as streaky bacon, here. I just need to find it before Justin tries to make his own!
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