Speaking of Australia...
- Thread starter preacher_dawg
- Start date
Spent 10 days in and around there in '05. The cleanest, safest city I've ever visited. Wanted to move there but... Will probably never go back because of the 16 hour flight which is brutal, but it's definately a bucket list vacation.
Just got back from Australia about 6 weeks ago. Standard-issue Commonwealth city, and I mean that in a good way. Generally clean, safe, be prepared for somewhat more governmental involvement in your personal and business life than you may be used to in the U.S. Their underground system is not as developed as in many European countries.
Hyde Park, Royal Botanic Gardens, and of course the Opera House, Harbor, Harbor Bridge, etc. are all as great as they appear in the marketing. If I ever go back, I want to do the bridge climb but it'll have to be without my wife as she is too afraid of heights to try it.
Caveat: I spent most of my time in the city proper, so I'm not as familiar with the suburbs and exurbs that you may be considering. But the city itself - if proximity to family were not an issue, I could easily live there for a few years.
Good luck, and have fun.
Hyde Park, Royal Botanic Gardens, and of course the Opera House, Harbor, Harbor Bridge, etc. are all as great as they appear in the marketing. If I ever go back, I want to do the bridge climb but it'll have to be without my wife as she is too afraid of heights to try it.
Caveat: I spent most of my time in the city proper, so I'm not as familiar with the suburbs and exurbs that you may be considering. But the city itself - if proximity to family were not an issue, I could easily live there for a few years.
Good luck, and have fun.
Great place to visit
I've been there on business 7 or 8 times and it's a pretty awesome place to go. I'm not sure about living there unless you had a definitive end date because it is pretty expensive. If your expat package covers cost of living I would say it's a no brainer and a once in a lifetime opportunity. Bonus feature of Australia is you are next to New Zealand which I highly recommend. Also a lot of direct flights to SE Asia...stating the obvious I know but things to consider.
I've been there on business 7 or 8 times and it's a pretty awesome place to go. I'm not sure about living there unless you had a definitive end date because it is pretty expensive. If your expat package covers cost of living I would say it's a no brainer and a once in a lifetime opportunity. Bonus feature of Australia is you are next to New Zealand which I highly recommend. Also a lot of direct flights to SE Asia...stating the obvious I know but things to consider.
Inner Mongolia's People's Party? Sorry just a case what IMPP means. Uuuhhhhmm, maybe I shouldn't know being a preacher and all.
Been there several times......
Sydney is a somewhat typical major city. Populated by people from all over the globe. Is not necessarily representative of the real Australia if you will. Same for Melbourne. Suburbs pretty typical. Single family houses. Suburban areas tend to be more population dense than in US even though the country has very large stretches of unoccupied land. Suburbs and small towns I've visited I have found are very charming, very 'real' people. Never been to west coast. Beaches are very nice.
Sydney is a somewhat typical major city. Populated by people from all over the globe. Is not necessarily representative of the real Australia if you will. Same for Melbourne. Suburbs pretty typical. Single family houses. Suburban areas tend to be more population dense than in US even though the country has very large stretches of unoccupied land. Suburbs and small towns I've visited I have found are very charming, very 'real' people. Never been to west coast. Beaches are very nice.
Was there in 90-91during Christmas break at State. Dad worked there for a few months. Gypsied all up the east coast as far as Bundaberg. Beautiful country with nice people for the most part. It's definitely on my bucket list to return with my wife. The flight is an absolute killer though.
They have some of the better attributes that America used to have. Sensible people, and way way way way way way less violent crime. Mass shootings are virtually unheard of.
My parents moved to Sydney for business a number of years back and I had a chance to spend a summer there ('96, i think). It is an amazing experience and Sydney is one of the cleanest, safest cities I've ever been to and I've traveled quite extensively. They lived just outside the city in the 'burbs and the public trains to and from the city center were easy to come by and relatively inexpensive (as far as I can remember... it's been a while). I will warn you that my dad says living there was the poorest they've ever been in their working adult lives. The costs of everything from housing, insurance, gas, etc. was considerably more expensive than what they were used to. I'd go in an instant, but I would want to be sure that my cost of living subsidies were sufficient to ensure a comfortable way of life. Also, they drive on the wrong side of the road and you'll go to the beach on Christmas instead of bundling up by the fire. =)
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Having a wife who is British she has several relatives in Australia. We went in 2000. Spent 3 weeks there and stayed with family the whole time. Only way it would have been affordable for us at that time. It's one of the most overpriced places you could ever want to vacation based on nothing monetarily significant. No gold reserves. They base the value of the Australian dollar off ours which is ********. You get dicked coming and going on the exchange rate.
They don't produce anything except for what they use themselves because their import taxes are ridiculous. Nothing exports. Except maybe boomerangs, didgeridoos and exceptionally pretty chicks looking to get out. And a lot of families have a couple of generations of kin folk living with them because real estate is so expensive. Young people generally live with their parent/parents until they "shack up" with someone. No one lives on their own. Costs too much. It's basically like living in Hawaii except without all the government subsidies attempting to make it affordable.
Also groceries are absurd so most people who live in a house with any kind of yard will use every inch of that yard to grow produce to offset the cost of groceries. It never really gets cold in Australia so you can grow stuff year around. Probably why they are healthier than Americans. It's not because of their healthcare which is based on 1970's British socialist medicine which means if you are seriously ill, and can afford it, you try to make it to the US for treatment. My mother-in-law has had to recover a few family members in her home who came here for procedures that they would have had to wait a year or more for or that aren't even done in Australia.
Sydney is one of the largest cities I have ever been in. We spent most of our time in the suburbs of Sydney, around Manley Beach, which is where most of them live. Lots of bowling fields where lawn bowling (or "bowls") is played, which is honestly pretty fun to play. We also spent 4 days in Brisbane where other family lived. The Gold Coast in Brisbane was great. Only real waves I have ever been in. Pretty close to the Great Barrier Reef too. Huge stainless steel cyclone fences out in the water to keep the 1200 lb Great Whites honest. The surf is so strong that people have had their necks broken getting driven into the beach by the waves.
Also I may mention that every beach we went to in Australia was "top optional" so if you are a minister that will probably limit your choices of where to go. Cause if you go to the beach you will see tittays by the hundreds. Some good and some not so good. Went to a German beer hall the last night in Brisbane and got my *** kicked by a 70yo 90 lb Japanese dude in a beer drinking contest. How the hell they can drink beer that fast I still haven't figured out.
Day trip to Canberra from Sydney to see their "D.C." The only place I would suggest anyone ever going in Canberra would be the Anzac Museum. Their Parliment House, the new one anyway, looks like something designed in 1970's-era East Germany by a very depressed architect. Lots of faux symbolizations too. Imagine walking around Texas A&M's campus and having to honor all their "traditions". That's what the ACT (Canberra) is like. They are probably the most socially liberal country in the world too, so there's not a lot of groups they will not apologize and make reparations to.
Asians are everywhere. It's cheaper for a Japanese person to book a flight to Sydney for a round of golf than it is to play in their own country. Most downtown Sydney is not English-friendly as they cater to the Asian population. You may get ignored if you try to use English so some Japanese or Chinese would be a great thing to know. Asian companies treat Australia like a big warehouse. It's there for their use and has plenty of room that they wouldn't have back home.
There is no real history in Australia. It's even younger than the US so if you like architecture you just won't find a lot of it there. The large cities all tend to look just like New York and Chicago in the 50's. The oldest building in Sydney, and all of Australia for that matter, is a small limestone prison, maybe the size of an old one room school house here, right on the beach in Sydney Harbor where prisoners of the British Crown were brought to populate the country. It was a British penal colony after all. But so was Georgia.
It was my general observation that Australians are possibly the vainest people on the planet save maybe the French. They are generally way too concerned with their appearance and that of their significant others. That goes back to living at home with your parents and pretty kids get shack'd-up much easier than ugly ones so lots of emphasis is placed on physical appearance. No one goes to church or gets married. That's a commitment and they don't like words like that. A large percentage of people who enter college don't make it out of the first year or two of university, which is crazy because their secondary education, while not great, is free. There seemed at the time to be an overwhelming issue with motivation to excel or overachieve as you would just get taxed more heavily. Trade schools turn out most of the young workers entering the work force.
The country is so isolated that most Australian youth, upon graduating primary school(their HS) depart on a one year tour of the rest of the world. They hit every continent, stopping at all the other English Commonwealth countries long enough to get an odd job and earn enough money to advance their journey, buy more weed or establish themselves where ever they are. A lot never return home. Not because they are missing or they get abducted and sold into white slavery, but because they don't want to return. Lord knows we sponsored a few nieces and nephews and I could not wait for the leaches to leave. They are overly liberal, very opinionated and want to know why every US President has to have his own war. They feel they are morally superior to us because "hey, how many wars has Australia been in mate?" I didn't have the heart to tell them no one wanted to invade their ****** country because we would have to bail them out. They also complain about the number of churches we have.
They love to remind Americans that Australia is only about 10 years behind the US in infrastructure. Truthfully speaking, the dirt roads I grew up on in Scott County are on par with their major intercity byways. The roads between major cities are literally identical to our 2 lane highways with the exception of a alternating passing lane down the center. So it's actually 3 lane highways with a chicken lane in the middle. The drives between cities is so unbelievably boring that they designed curves in the road system for no other reason than to keep you awake.
Australia was in the lead among developed nations for traffic fatalities at the time we went.
98% of the country lives along the east coast and west coast not because Sydney and Brisbane and Melbourne and Perth are so awesome. It's because the 90% of the country between the coastlines is incompatible with life and exists for the sole purpose of killing you. Australia has more mammals, reptiles, insects and aquatic life with lethal intent to humans per square foot than any other place on Earth. Also you can count on a huge sand storm about every 5 years or so coming into Sydney and depositing an inch of Neshoba County's finest red dirt all over everything you own. It comes in from the Outback and it is horrible to get rid of. It turns the whole city into a Mad Max-style post-apocalyptic scene.
I have been to New Zealand, Australia, Mexico, Germany, United Kingdom, France and Poland. Australia is the only country I never want to visit again but unfortunately I will be forced to because the wife thinks it's the most awesome place on Earth.
Being your typical socialist country Australia has a huge issue with getting enough taxes to cover all their social programs. A huge population of Australians are on some form of pension or welfare. They call it "the dole." Be prepared to have your earnings HEAVILY TAXED. They also like to nail you on car privilege taxes. Similar to Great Britain's MOT. So the cost of cars is much greater than what they would be here. Inspections to clear MOT are expensive as well. They literally nail you every chance they get. Your driver's license is going to cost you about $600 bucks also.
They also have very restrictive gun laws which means only criminals will have guns. They may be even more prohibitive than Great Britain's laws as there just aren't many animals you can hunt in Australia. You don't often hear of shootings and such in australia but when it happens it's gruesome as the average citizen has nothing to defend themselves with. So it is a soft target-rich environment for any budding Islamic radical who wishes to go Jihad-mode and cash in on those 40 virgins.
I would not want to be an adult and have to live there. I'm sure if I was 18 Australia would be a blast as pot is legal, and from what I've seen, encouraged, and I believe the legal drinking age is 18. I think it was when we were there. Sydney even has legal prostitution in the Kings Cross section of town.
That's the most honest breakdown you will hear. Many will disagree with it but you need to know more than the "aww man I was there and it was awesome" kind of feedback. Australia markets itself really well for tourism. Hell look at the koala bear. The symbol of Australia. Cutest thing you have ever seen. I let one crawl on my shoulders at the Sydney Zoo, under the very watchful eyes of a wildlife curator, and it tea-bagged the back of my neck and I smelled like a dog's anal glands for the rest of the day till I could get back to her aunts house and take a shower. They don't tell you the koala smells like a dog's ***. They just show how cute and cuddly they are with their sleepy eyes. That's Australia in a nutshell. I absolutely loved Germany and would go back every decade or so, BUT I would never want to live there for a lot of the same reasons I listed above. Any place can seem awesome for a week.
They don't produce anything except for what they use themselves because their import taxes are ridiculous. Nothing exports. Except maybe boomerangs, didgeridoos and exceptionally pretty chicks looking to get out. And a lot of families have a couple of generations of kin folk living with them because real estate is so expensive. Young people generally live with their parent/parents until they "shack up" with someone. No one lives on their own. Costs too much. It's basically like living in Hawaii except without all the government subsidies attempting to make it affordable.
Also groceries are absurd so most people who live in a house with any kind of yard will use every inch of that yard to grow produce to offset the cost of groceries. It never really gets cold in Australia so you can grow stuff year around. Probably why they are healthier than Americans. It's not because of their healthcare which is based on 1970's British socialist medicine which means if you are seriously ill, and can afford it, you try to make it to the US for treatment. My mother-in-law has had to recover a few family members in her home who came here for procedures that they would have had to wait a year or more for or that aren't even done in Australia.
Sydney is one of the largest cities I have ever been in. We spent most of our time in the suburbs of Sydney, around Manley Beach, which is where most of them live. Lots of bowling fields where lawn bowling (or "bowls") is played, which is honestly pretty fun to play. We also spent 4 days in Brisbane where other family lived. The Gold Coast in Brisbane was great. Only real waves I have ever been in. Pretty close to the Great Barrier Reef too. Huge stainless steel cyclone fences out in the water to keep the 1200 lb Great Whites honest. The surf is so strong that people have had their necks broken getting driven into the beach by the waves.
Also I may mention that every beach we went to in Australia was "top optional" so if you are a minister that will probably limit your choices of where to go. Cause if you go to the beach you will see tittays by the hundreds. Some good and some not so good. Went to a German beer hall the last night in Brisbane and got my *** kicked by a 70yo 90 lb Japanese dude in a beer drinking contest. How the hell they can drink beer that fast I still haven't figured out.
Day trip to Canberra from Sydney to see their "D.C." The only place I would suggest anyone ever going in Canberra would be the Anzac Museum. Their Parliment House, the new one anyway, looks like something designed in 1970's-era East Germany by a very depressed architect. Lots of faux symbolizations too. Imagine walking around Texas A&M's campus and having to honor all their "traditions". That's what the ACT (Canberra) is like. They are probably the most socially liberal country in the world too, so there's not a lot of groups they will not apologize and make reparations to.
Asians are everywhere. It's cheaper for a Japanese person to book a flight to Sydney for a round of golf than it is to play in their own country. Most downtown Sydney is not English-friendly as they cater to the Asian population. You may get ignored if you try to use English so some Japanese or Chinese would be a great thing to know. Asian companies treat Australia like a big warehouse. It's there for their use and has plenty of room that they wouldn't have back home.
There is no real history in Australia. It's even younger than the US so if you like architecture you just won't find a lot of it there. The large cities all tend to look just like New York and Chicago in the 50's. The oldest building in Sydney, and all of Australia for that matter, is a small limestone prison, maybe the size of an old one room school house here, right on the beach in Sydney Harbor where prisoners of the British Crown were brought to populate the country. It was a British penal colony after all. But so was Georgia.
It was my general observation that Australians are possibly the vainest people on the planet save maybe the French. They are generally way too concerned with their appearance and that of their significant others. That goes back to living at home with your parents and pretty kids get shack'd-up much easier than ugly ones so lots of emphasis is placed on physical appearance. No one goes to church or gets married. That's a commitment and they don't like words like that. A large percentage of people who enter college don't make it out of the first year or two of university, which is crazy because their secondary education, while not great, is free. There seemed at the time to be an overwhelming issue with motivation to excel or overachieve as you would just get taxed more heavily. Trade schools turn out most of the young workers entering the work force.
The country is so isolated that most Australian youth, upon graduating primary school(their HS) depart on a one year tour of the rest of the world. They hit every continent, stopping at all the other English Commonwealth countries long enough to get an odd job and earn enough money to advance their journey, buy more weed or establish themselves where ever they are. A lot never return home. Not because they are missing or they get abducted and sold into white slavery, but because they don't want to return. Lord knows we sponsored a few nieces and nephews and I could not wait for the leaches to leave. They are overly liberal, very opinionated and want to know why every US President has to have his own war. They feel they are morally superior to us because "hey, how many wars has Australia been in mate?" I didn't have the heart to tell them no one wanted to invade their ****** country because we would have to bail them out. They also complain about the number of churches we have.
They love to remind Americans that Australia is only about 10 years behind the US in infrastructure. Truthfully speaking, the dirt roads I grew up on in Scott County are on par with their major intercity byways. The roads between major cities are literally identical to our 2 lane highways with the exception of a alternating passing lane down the center. So it's actually 3 lane highways with a chicken lane in the middle. The drives between cities is so unbelievably boring that they designed curves in the road system for no other reason than to keep you awake.
Australia was in the lead among developed nations for traffic fatalities at the time we went.
98% of the country lives along the east coast and west coast not because Sydney and Brisbane and Melbourne and Perth are so awesome. It's because the 90% of the country between the coastlines is incompatible with life and exists for the sole purpose of killing you. Australia has more mammals, reptiles, insects and aquatic life with lethal intent to humans per square foot than any other place on Earth. Also you can count on a huge sand storm about every 5 years or so coming into Sydney and depositing an inch of Neshoba County's finest red dirt all over everything you own. It comes in from the Outback and it is horrible to get rid of. It turns the whole city into a Mad Max-style post-apocalyptic scene.
I have been to New Zealand, Australia, Mexico, Germany, United Kingdom, France and Poland. Australia is the only country I never want to visit again but unfortunately I will be forced to because the wife thinks it's the most awesome place on Earth.
Being your typical socialist country Australia has a huge issue with getting enough taxes to cover all their social programs. A huge population of Australians are on some form of pension or welfare. They call it "the dole." Be prepared to have your earnings HEAVILY TAXED. They also like to nail you on car privilege taxes. Similar to Great Britain's MOT. So the cost of cars is much greater than what they would be here. Inspections to clear MOT are expensive as well. They literally nail you every chance they get. Your driver's license is going to cost you about $600 bucks also.
They also have very restrictive gun laws which means only criminals will have guns. They may be even more prohibitive than Great Britain's laws as there just aren't many animals you can hunt in Australia. You don't often hear of shootings and such in australia but when it happens it's gruesome as the average citizen has nothing to defend themselves with. So it is a soft target-rich environment for any budding Islamic radical who wishes to go Jihad-mode and cash in on those 40 virgins.
I would not want to be an adult and have to live there. I'm sure if I was 18 Australia would be a blast as pot is legal, and from what I've seen, encouraged, and I believe the legal drinking age is 18. I think it was when we were there. Sydney even has legal prostitution in the Kings Cross section of town.
That's the most honest breakdown you will hear. Many will disagree with it but you need to know more than the "aww man I was there and it was awesome" kind of feedback. Australia markets itself really well for tourism. Hell look at the koala bear. The symbol of Australia. Cutest thing you have ever seen. I let one crawl on my shoulders at the Sydney Zoo, under the very watchful eyes of a wildlife curator, and it tea-bagged the back of my neck and I smelled like a dog's anal glands for the rest of the day till I could get back to her aunts house and take a shower. They don't tell you the koala smells like a dog's ***. They just show how cute and cuddly they are with their sleepy eyes. That's Australia in a nutshell. I absolutely loved Germany and would go back every decade or so, BUT I would never want to live there for a lot of the same reasons I listed above. Any place can seem awesome for a week.
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That's a great post. If any of you guys thought it was TLDR go back and read it. Good info and perhaps a caveat to those who wish the US to be more like all these other places.
Haha. You go to Honky High?
I have come a long way since growing up on a chicken farm. I married outside the central Mississippi box too so that's how i was able to see so much of the world.
I have come a long way since growing up on a chicken farm. I married outside the central Mississippi box too so that's how i was able to see so much of the world.
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My Dad called them double breasted beach birds. I left a few beaches (esp Lady Musgrave island) believing there should be a cutoff age for going topless.
Haha. My father-in-law called them white tips as in "hey son. Look at those white tips." Wife thought we were looking at sharks the whole time.
And yes there should be an Minimum age and a maximum age. But there is not. It was always tricky to know if what I was perving on was even legal age.
And yes there should be an Minimum age and a maximum age. But there is not. It was always tricky to know if what I was perving on was even legal age.
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Haha. The drive from Sydney to Brisbane is roughly 900 kms. My father-in-law and I shared driving responsibilities. We rented a Toyota Tourago van and I did the initial leg. I was fine on straightaways and small intersections but they love them some damn roundabouts and every time I would enter one I would almost always exit out into oncoming traffic. Driving on the wrong side of the road is the most unnatural thing in the world to do.
They actually do not. that was one of the first myths I had to dispel. You do get to see a completely different night sky than we see in the northern hemisphere though. And if you fly nonstop you end up crossing the international date line and arrive in Sydney the day before you left home. Crazy!
Thanks for all your insights. It gave me some things to think about, but I'm pretty strange in that I enjoy a challenge. I just got another job possibility that I will ask you guys about.
Yes, Brisbane is a great city. We have an office there, so have been there many times.
Great location within driving distance of the Gold Coast, Sunshine coast and great barrier reef. - And Steve Irwins Australia Zoo, not to mention the Koala sanctuary.
Having said that, it's a great place to visit, but VERY expensive.
Great location within driving distance of the Gold Coast, Sunshine coast and great barrier reef. - And Steve Irwins Australia Zoo, not to mention the Koala sanctuary.
Having said that, it's a great place to visit, but VERY expensive.
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