Crazy Aussies

Top 15 Weird/Different Stuff in Australia... so far.

1. Let's start with the obvious: they drive on the left side of the road. This in itself is not so surprising but what got to me is that everything else in the country is backwards too. For example, escalators/travellators (inclined moving sidewalks to take your shopping trolley on) are on the opposite sides so you often try to go up the down side and down the up side, keys turn the wrong way, light switches flip down to turn ON the light, people walk on the left...
2. You cannot have a normal cup of coffee here... you must order a long black or flat white or any number of other combinations of distance and colour that all have something to do with espresso... this is very disconcerting when all you want is a coffee, just a coffee.
3. I cannot tell you if toilets flush in the opposite direction because in Aus. all the toilets are water conserving and do not use enough water to create a swirl. And all the toilets have a low water and normal water flush option (your choice depends on the amount of mess you made I guess haha) and you will rarely see paper towel in the bathrooms... everywhere has air dryers.
4. Things have weird names here: the trunk of a car is the boot the hood is the bonnet, ketchup is tomato (toe-mat-oh) sauce, a flashlight is a torch, the parking lot is the car park, bell peppers are capsicum, snapping your fingers is called clicking, something sketchy is dodgy, granola is called muesli flip flops are thongs, the pound key on the telephone is the hash key, a bogan is a moderately derogatory term for a country person - kind of like a hick, a spook is someone who you don't ever see because they are in their rooms studying all the time, and every word longer than one syllable requires an abbreviated form (board shorts are boardies, sunglasses are sunnies, university is uni, people who live in student res are ressies, the salvation army is the Salvo, afternoon is arvo...)
5. The most common greeting is: How ya goin'?, if there is a lot of something there is 'heaps' (something can also be "heaps good" rather than really good), 'I think...' and 'Do you think...' are 'I reckon...' and 'Do ya reckon...'
6. This one is not weird or different from home but still interesting: a group of kangaroos is called a mob and a group of jellyfish is called a smack.
7. If you ask for a lemonade at a restaurant they will bring you a sprite. Lemonade does not exist.
8. Aussies in the cities do not drive trucks, they drive Utes which are more or less the modern day El Camino.
9. If you order a burger 'with the lot' you can expect to receive a burger with pineapple, a fried egg, bacon, beetroot (everything in this country seems to come with beetroot), tomato, lettuce and cheese. It seems really disgusting but is actually quite tasty.
10. There is no orange cheddar cheese in Australia and you will be very hard pressed to find a bagel.
11.Cars all have different names. For example, a Ford Escort is a Laser.
12. Words are spelled with s instead of z like realise and analyse but they do say zed rather than zee so they can be forgiven.
13. Songbirds seem to have abandoned Australia. Instead they have big ugly things that sound like dying babies, or kookaburras that I think sound like howling monkeys not like laughter at all.
14. The dentist's office is called a surgery which can be very disconcerting when you walk down the street and see a sign that says surgery over a dodgy door in some side building.
15. Parking metres are electronic and fire hydrants are found in the sides of buildings, not little yellow things on the sidewalk.