Living and Working in Australia

Well, it’s been a few months now and Damien and I are settling into life in bustling Brisbane. I am working as a teacher at a great dynamic English language school for international students right in downtown Brisbane. Damien is working as an enrollment officer and occasional teacher at another school in downtown Brisbane. We got our own 2-bedroom apartment about a month ago in the same area where we were before, Toowong. We are only a 5 minute walk from the nearest train station and so we both take the train into work every morning. The trip is only about 10 minutes and the trains are pretty crowded. I don’t like the ticket system though. Sometimes there is no one to show your ticket to and other times there is just one person at the ticket gates who hardly even glances at the tickets. It is almost like an honors system. I paid good money for my monthly pass and I want someone to actually look at it when I go through!!! Ah well, I should be happy that they have a half way decent public transport system at all. We actually don’t use our car much. Luckily we now have a garage. But we only take the car out on the weekends if we go somewhere.
I was asked recently to make some observations on little differences to life that I have observed here. Things that are different from the life I know in Indianapolis. Well, let me see….
The animals are different. The opossums around here are cute and fluffy. Our trees outside have giant fruit bats in them instead of squirrels. And the birds are often colorful parrots and cockatoos that screech like pterodactyls in the morning.

Car insurance is different. When you register a car, you have to pay a yearly registration fee. It is not for the license plate as it is in Indiana. And the registration automatically includes minimum car insurance. So you don’t have to worry as much here about getting hit by someone with no insurance.

Australia has two really good national public TV channels that have great reception and excellent programs. We watch documentaries and interesting news from around the world on those channels: SBS and the ABC (not the same as the American ABC).

Food is more expensive here. I mean restaurants and in the supermarket. Fruits and vegetables are especially more expensive. But the general run of the mill supermarkets (Coles and Woolworths) have a greater variety and selection of foods than their counterparts in Indianapolis. Orange colored cheddar cheese isn’t common like in the US. There isn’t much corn syrup in foods here. I guess they don’t have as much corn. Most things are sweetened with cane sugar.

Supermarkets here are just now starting to implement mandatory unit pricing but the country of origin is very prominent here. There are a lot of local tropical fruits like bananas, passion fruit, avocados, papayas, mangos, limes, dragon fruits, macadamia nuts, and custard apples.
The coffees here are pretty good and there are more coffee shops than you can possibly imagine. There are a few Starbucks but mainly there are local independent places or Australian chains. Coffees are between $3-4 a cup.

I feel much safer on the streets here than I did in Indy. And although I sometimes see homeless people there aren’t as many as in Indy. I mainly see aboriginal homeless people. Of course there are many non homeless aborigines here and it is not uncommon to see them a lot in Brisbane. Actually, Brisbane is one of the most diverse cities I have ever been in. I’ve heard that this is new and wasn’t the case even 5 or 6 years ago.

The police here have white cars with a black and white checkerboard pattern with bright orange accents. This is the pattern on their uniform too. I need to get a photo on a police car here. They are very different and look like taxis to me.

Well, these are just a few things that I can think of off the top of my head. Really, overall life is very, very similar to life in America. Just a lot of different words for things. Maybe that will be the subject of my next blog!