OK, so we have been living here for 18 months now and we are absolutely thrilled we moved here. Australia is a wonderful country to live in with so much going for it. Here is a list of things we love about it. And, for objectivity sake, a couple of things we love to hate. Hopefully it will act as an incentive for the rest of you to emigrate here as we miss you all!
Things we love
1. The beaches
Miles and miles of gorgeous golden sand, warm water, crashing waves - and plenty of different beaches to choose from. Some of our favourite beaches include
Manly, Dee Why,
Bondi (mostly for the beautiful people), the
two mile beach in Port Douglas,
Palm Beach (where they film Home and Away) and the mangrove fringed beaches of Cape Tribulation.
2. The Australians themselves
Friendly, laid back, full of fun - I cannot extol the personal qualities of the "Aussies" enough. We have felt nothing but welcomed by the locals since we arrived. I was terrified that we'd be treated as "Not another bloody South African clogging up our country" but there has not been even a hint of that. The Aussies have a great sense of humour, very similar to our own. And who couldn't love a nation of people who's national saying is "no worries mate." We have made some wonderful Australian friends already like Doug and Claudia who I firmly believe will be life long friends.
3. The migratory pull of Australia
Being the magnificent country it is, its been pretty easy (through our avid recruitment campaign) to attract some of our friends and family to share our lives downunder. Kerry, Ally's sister, has been here now for close to a year and hopefully she will stay.
Brendan and Eva have returned here from Cape Town.
Roger and Lucy have moved here from South Africa (now we just need to get them to move to Sydney from Melbourne). Andreas and his wife are emigrating here from the UK in March. Plus, thanks to the pull of Sydney, we have been graced with lots of visitors including
Dorothy,
Hubert and
Martin. Mum and Mike,
Colleen and Steve,
Gabrielle and Hamish are all visiting early next year.
4. The local wildlife
There are amazing (and exceedingly strange) creatures to enjoy here including hopping
kangaroos, cuddly koalas, chunky wombats and mischievous possums. Not to mention enormous
fox-like bats and the extraordinary warm blooded
duck billed platypus that lays eggs and has a bill like a duck. The birds are also great, including Aussie icons like the laughing
Kookaburra, the enormous flightless Cassowary and the Splendid Lyrebird with its amazing mimicries. There are still over 550 birds that I have yet to see and I look forward to hunting them down during my life here.
5. The sunny weather
Australia comes with tons of sunshine and warm weather. The weather is just right for picnicing, lazing on the beach, hiking and generally enjoying the outdoors. I find sunshine makes such a difference to how I am feeling and am sure this one of the key causes of the sunny disposition of most Aussies. Even the winter here provides some gorgeous blue skies and warm weather.
6. Nature reserves and beautiful scenery
Australia seems to have more nature reserves than just about any other country I have visited. Its obsession with looking after what's left of its natural areas is admirable and as a result, there are a plethora of parks and reserves to go hiking in. This extends from reserves on the outskirts of the city like
Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park to the mighty wetlands of Kakadu in the North (which I cannot wait to visit.)
We have loved visiting the parks in and around Sydney and our favourite so far is the
Royal National Park which is the second oldest reserve in the world and contains forests and beaches and beautiful lagoons. Plus it's so big, you could get lost in it for weeks. And its only 30 minutes drive from Sydney. The
Hawkesbury Reserve is also beautiful; a vast network of rivers that we explored in January this year. The reserves of the
Blue Mountains also provide spectacular scenery, only a 90 minute drive from Sydney.
7. Place names
Would you like to live in Woolloomooloo? Or pehaps Turramurra or Barooga? Or Dunnydoo, Innaloo or "Come By Chance"? If that's not exciting enough, how about Burrumbuttock, Rooty Hill, Indented Head, Chinaman's Knob or Wet Beaver Creek? Yes, many towns in Australia have wonderfully strange names. Many of the stranger names have Aboriginal roots which adds to the allure and historic heritage. Being able to pronounce some of these names correctly definitely sorts the "fair dinkum" Aussies from the rest of us.
8. Sydney itself
Ah Sydney, what a glorious city! Graced with the likes of the Sydney Harbour and its distinctive bridge and the glorious Opera House (breathtaking
beautiful at night). Not to mention a bevvy of great restaurants and hot night spots - and the amazing beaches of Bondi, Manly, Dee Why and lots of others. As described above, it is also interspersed with beautiful national parks and reserves that extend around the city like giant green lungs. The city is incredibly cosmopolitan too with a wonderful mix of Asian and European cultures that bring with it great benefits like authentic Yum Chow for breakfast and sublime sushi for lunch.
9. Plenty of job opportunities
Australia is booming at the moment economically thanks in no small part to rampant China. The extraordinary number of jobs available combined with a general skills shortage makes it very much an employee's market. Do a search at
Recruit.net, for example, and you'll find over 6500 marketing jobs available. When I first looked for a job, I had 3 simultaneous job offers to decide between after a very short time. Not suprising that Australia has an unemployment rate of just 3%. All the big companies are literally crying out for people. A great position to be in if you are a job searcher.
10. The facilities
The facilities here are excellent and everything works like clock work. The public transport is wonderful and you get amazing personal touches like the bus drivers decorating their buses with tinsel and other Xmas decorations. Being able to
commute to work by ferry and view the Sydney skyline every morning before work is also a very special thing. The big parks have inbuilt barbecues that you can use for free. And all the public loos are in excellent working order and you never need to worry that their won't be loo paper. Ah, you can't ask for more than that!
11. Fair Dinkum Aussie Sayings
You cannot help but love a nation that uses expressions like "arse over tit" (to fall over), "mad as a cut snake" (very angry), "sticky beak" (a nosey person), "budge smuggler" (speedo costume) , bush telly (camp fire), "as dry as a nun's nasty" (parched), "rip snorter" (fantastic), "root" (to shag), and "tall poppy" (a successful person). Very eandearing! For a full account of Aussie terms,
see here.
12. The sense of space
Australia is an amazingly huge country. Not suprisingly, it's the largest island on the planet and the only island that is a continent. We have not visited the vast outback yet, but I hear its extraordinarily stunning with its enormous wide open spaces and parched red earth. This is where you will find Uluru, the world's largest rock. Huge it is; amazingly it extends 6 kilometers underground. Nothing is small about Australia.
13. Amazing seafood
The sea food here is absolutely wonderful. The Sydney Fish Market, just 10 minutes from where we live, offers gigantic prawns, mud crabs, lobsters and scollops - all at really reasonable prices. Once of our favourite rituals is to buy a kilogram of succulent tiger prawns and eat them cold with sweet chile sauce. Yummy beyond belief!
14. Amazing Fireworks
The Aussies love fireworks, particularly over their bridges. Come
New Year's Eve and they unleash millions of dollars of fire rockets. The results are awfully impressive. We get to enjoy
fireworks over the Opera House just about every second Saturday. And we love it.
Things we love to hate
OK, so its not all a bed of roses! There are some things that we are not too fond of...
1. Huge parking fines for trivial reasons
We have had to pay over $600 in parking fines in just 18 months. $150 for a single parking infringement is bloody steep in anyone's book. And the fact it's generally incurred for trivial things is salt in the wound.
For example, in Byron Bay, we failed to park at 135 degrees to the pavement as was the requirement (advertised on a tiny sign that was hardly visible). When we sent in a complaint to the authorities with photographic evidence of this, we got no joy back and had to pay.
The "no parking" sign outside Brendan and Eva's home in Mosman was even more obscure - tiny in size and hidden on a lamp post. When we failed to see it and parked directly along side their house, we got another $150 fine. Enough to cause the blood to boil and spoil the weekend. Eva and Brendan fell prey to exactly the same thing a few weeks prior to us.
The bottom line: when you park anywhere in Australia, always spend at least 5 minutes probing around for obscure parking signs. Becasue if you fail to follow them, know that there is a fanatical ticket officer just waiting to pounce.
2. No right hand turns
In just about every other country I have driven in, there is absolutely no issue with right hand turns. Simply indicate right and when the traffic thins out or the traffic light turns red, turn right across the traffic. Simple, right? But not here...
The Australian powers that be have an absolute phobia about anyone turning right across traffic. So everywhere that you could possible need to do such a manouvre, they have a big "no right hand turn" sign. Generally it means you need to do a doubly dangerous U-Turn so you can change the right turn into a left turn. Or drive for bloody ages so you can turn left into the next available street and then come all the way back. Enfuriating indeed!
3. Cheesey advertising and too much of it
Much of the advertising on the TV is highly localised. Lets say you have a store in Burrumbuttock and want to advertise yourself. With the technology at hand, you can purchase a TV ad spot at a low rate that will just show in the Burrumbuttock region. And because you don't have muich money, you can cobble together a very cheap advert. The bottom line: many of the TV ads here are highly irritating cheapies with no redeeming qualities at all.
To add insult to injury, the Australias interupt programs every 10 minutes. And each ad break can last at least 5 minutes. That means that a 90 minute movie lasts over 140 minutes. So irritating does it become that we have almost given up on watching TV altogether which is probably not such a bad thing.
Radio is even worse with tons of irritating ads. Even the traffic reporter does an ad recital after his regular traffic report. And the radio DJ's are paid to read out ads during their slot to make it sound conversational and not an ad. But an ad it is. So now we listen to CD's in the car, not the radio.
4. Politics
Australian politicians love nothing more than to slag each other off in the most vicious of ways. On TV and through political advertising, they veritably tear each other apart. It really is no holds barred. An Australian politician is far more likely to spend his 5 minutes in the limelight telling the world why his opponent is an absolute tosser than 5 minutes telling you what his policies are and why they are good. It's all really negative. Also, the government spends gazillions of tax payers' money each year running ads extolling their social programs. Which of course, adds to the advertising issue discussed above.
5. Dancing with the stars host
OK, so this is a trivial one but still... One of the TV shows that we kind of like is "Dancing with the Stars." We would probably watch it regularly if it weren't for its highly irritating host,
Daryl Somers. For god sake, please put him out to pasture!
6. Highly poisonous creatures
Five of Australia's creatures - the funnel web spider, box jellyfish, blue ringed octopus, paralysis tick and stone fish are the most lethal of their type in the world. Australia is home to 10 of the world's 15 most venomous snakes. In fact, of Australia's 155 species of land snakes, 93 are venomous. The Australian Taipan is the most poisonous snake in the world with a lunge so swift and a venom so potent that your last mortal utterance is likely to be: "I say, is that a sn-" The bottom line? You need to be seriusly watch your back in Australia. The creepy crawlies
can kill you!
7. Buying a house
Finding the right home is made rather difficult. Very few of the houses advertised actually have prices shown. So you never know if a house you are going to see is actually in your budget. You need to get this information from the estate agent when you see the house. How silly is that! Also, houses are generally only open for a 45 minute window on the weekends. So if you want to see 5 houses, you need to plan your trip like a military operation with 10 minutes in each place with lightning drives between houses. When it comes to looking at houses, I really miss the South African way - except for the exhorbitant estate agent fees.
Conclusion
I think you'll agree, the pros significantly outnumber the cons. If you'd like advice on how to emigrate to this wonderful country, just drop us a line :) If you are living in Australia and feel I have forgotten something in my lists, please leave a comment!
