I’ve been living in Australia for about 10 months now. Long enough to have noticed many of the quirks that make it unique in the world, yet not long enough not to notice those quirks as quirky anymore. Quirks isn’t a great word really, but I don’t know how else to describe all those little things that stand out as different to the ‘normal’ way of doing things back home. I’m not saying they’re bad, I’m saying they’re different - in fact they are probably the whole reason why travelling and living abroad is a good thing to do, because you realise there are different ways of doing things.

I’m going to attempt to summarise some of these for you, and in the interests of entertainment I’m just going to pick the most entertaining! And of course most of these have a Sydney perspective, they might not apply to the rest of Oz.

1) one of their most popular ice-lollys is called ‘Golden Gaytime‘ (made by Walls). The 4 lolly multipack says on the box ‘4 delicious chances to have a gay time’.

2) lolly doesn’t mean lolly over here. In the UK sense lolly, of course, refers only to lolly-pops. Over here lolly is used instead of the word ’sweets’ to describe all sweets that are and aren’t lolly-pops. So you get lolly shops. Oddly though, for all those homesick ex-pats you also get ‘British lolly shops‘ which I always found odd because they would be called sweet shops in Britain, never lolly shops….

3) something I noticed today…for the first time I noticed a British import section in the local supermarket (Coles). In amongst the tins of mushy peas, chip shop batter and PJ Tips that made up most of the section, was also some strange product called ‘Our Mate’ which looked suspiciously like Marmite. I’m guessing to avoid treading on the turf of Vegemite they’ve had to remove the ‘mite’ bit from their name! (if you’re wondering, Vegemite is indeed very similar to Marmite, but not as pungent. It’s easier to eat – in fact I might got so far as to say it’s nicer…controversial!

 4) To avoid this becoming a list of different names for things I’m going to summarise several in one point. All pubs are called Hotels (a bit like us calling our oldest pubs Inns, since that’s what they started off as I guess).  Burger King is called Hungry Jacks, Weetabix is called Weet-bix, off-liscenses are more sensibly called Bottle Shops (or Bottle-o’s), the word ‘wog‘ is not offesive here and people use it surprisingly frequently. It has a different meaning – it refers to someone of Eastern European descent, and people are happy to describe theselves as wogs, such as my Eygptian colleague Remy. After the initial shock of hearing it I soon realised that my friends weren’t all racists, and one day asked them what they actually meant when they said it.

One day I said something like ‘I was rooting around in my handbag to find it’ when my colleague said, you don’t want to say that around here, it means something different. I soon found out what it meant! You could use it in, say, the phrase ’sheep rooter’ – used here to descibe someone from New Zealand (as opposed to Wales!). This caused me problems when I was shopping for a wireless router. To avoid embarrassment I had to switch to pronouncing router in the American (and Australian) way to rhyme with grout-er. I hated to do it, but far better then the other option (I’ve never come across rooter as a sexual term in England, but perhaps I was just being innocent, I’m not sure, so I assume it’s an Aussie term)! 

5) you can buy sparkling ale

6) Australians hate Bondi beach (probably because it’s packed with Brits!)

7) Australians LOVE Top Gear! Ok, so this is’t a difference to UK, where we also love it. The Aussies loved it so much they’ve been lapping up every imported series and have recently started their very own Top Gear Australia, identical to the original in format, but with Aussie presenters!

they don’t censor swear words in songs (at least not Triple J, the radio station I listen to, probaby most  similar to XFM in London). This is a good thing in my opinion, as word are just words, and we do not need a nanny state to tell us what we can and can’t listen to.

9) They don’t know what an aubergine is (but an eggplant on the other hand….)

10) They laugh when I say yoghurt (again, they use the American pronounciation)

11) they have kiss and ride areas outside train stations, which along with the sign showing a person leaning into a car window confused me; why was there a sign to the local kerb crawling area!? Thankfully it just means a drop-off/pick-up point for cars

12) I love the slogan for the SBS World News: ‘If you live in the World, it’s home news’

14) Sydney smells nice. It’s true, I often walk about, especially where I live which is close to the city centre (you might say it’s the distance equivalent of Clapham from Lambeth, perhaps closer), and I catch wafts of beautiful scented plants many times as I walk from the station. Quite surprising in a major city, and definately an improvement to the black, fuel-scented ‘air’ of London.

15) school kids really do wear those horrendous purple tarten uniforms as seen in Home and Away

16) gangs of ‘transit officers‘ (and here) patrol the trains, in groups of 3+ (I’ve seen 6 in a group before). They’re puffed up and swagger with an irritating air of arrogance, wearing ridiculous over-the-top outfits, carry hand-cuffs and batons…and all they seem to do is check tickets. Very different to the geeky train-spotting guards that check tickets on UK trains.

17) there’s lots of flies and cockroaches

18) there aren’t many wasps

19) birds are noisier (especially the parrots which make a horrible sound), but I quite like the sound of them

20) I also ike the sound of the crickets and cecadas buzzing in the trees around the city. I just know that in years to come if I hear that sounds, or smell a fragrant plant I might be taken straight back to my time in Sydney.

21) taxi drivers don’t know where they are going

22) contrary to what most Brits will tell you, it is possible to get a decent curry round here, my local Indian, Maya, is a case in point. Beautiful food!

erm, ok I’m struggling a bit now. The trouble is you spot these things and then don’t think about them again until you next see it! But I hope it enlightened you a little on the ways down-under!