gedge

Prepare yourself for Australian TV by getting your mates to come in every 5 minutes whilst your watching a movie, and then try to sell you utter crap in amusing ways. Repeat ad nauseam.

Pollyana

Close all the curtains to keep out the sun, and sit in a darkened house, with sheets over all the good furniture just in case a glimmer of light gets in and fades it.

Rip your good clothes to shreds when taking them out of your front-loading washing machine, so you know what effect a top-loader will have.........

Ceri

Invite all those cheap skates that ever gave you their foul tasting homebrew to drink at their BBQ's to your BBQ . Offload your most "crappiest" gone wrong batch of homebrew for them to drink .Get them to say oooh this is very nice, how did you make this etc And keep plying them with the foul tasting drink, until they can't take any more and keel over... while you sneak back into the house and open a few bottles of the secret stash of nice stuff just for yourself.

RichS

1. Practice saying "how are you today" in the most bafflingly nearly sincere way you can manage.

2. Stop eating Indian, start eating Thai

3. Get your car on a package so you can kid yourself you don't care about the price of petrol

4. Mention Gallipolli a lot, but don't mention Australian troops deserting in their thousands to go on the ale during the fall of Singapore in 1941. I tried this one and it proved very unpopular.

5. Don't call football football.

6. Agree that everything about England is absolutely rubbish, and it always rains.

Ceri

Blimey - Gordon Bennett!

mlbonner

Swap the word 'lots' for 'heaps'.

Start putting beetroot on absolutely everything.

Remember that Chips can be hot or cold (and still taste good).

Ceri

Get up Sunday morning at 7am - do this when those B*stards next door just had a party the night before that went on until 4 in the morning keeping you awake, the same G8ts that keep mowing their lawn every Sunday without fail at ungodly hours!. ( had a neighbour like this in my previous house). And wake them up with the sound of your lawnmower, while you do this.. get hubby to test out the reving engine noise on your car.

renth

Get used to living in Perth's northern suburbs by moving to Benidorm first

mlbonner

Start doing your shopping between the hours of 9am-9pm and no later/earlier (if you're going to Queensland)

Stop buying alcohol in your supermarket (grocery store) and instead get it from the off licence (bottle shop) as this will be your only option when you get here.

jayr

OK, some more real tips:

Employ a gardener if you can afford to. It's not so much the work but how to get rid of the garden waste is the problem. You can put it in your normal rubbish bin (wheelie bins here) but if you have palm leaves you'll find you can only get a few in at a time.

Also, get a pool guy. Swimming pool maintenace is far too complicated in my opinion for the average Pom. Too many chemicals and stuff to worry about. You need to be brought up on it.

Only buy stuff from Myer and David Jones (the two big department stores) when there is a sale, you will get some very good bargains. Also, if there isn't a sale this week, wait until next week - there's bound to be one.

Don't compromise on your CV. Australians do not limit to one or two pages.

If you want an ex-directory telephone number, you need to ask for a "silent number". Note you will pay for the privilege.

'Fly Buys' is a loyalty card, mostly for use in the Coles-Myer range of stores. If, in your early days here you are asked "have you got Fly Buys?" just say "no".

Pollyana

Ask your postman if he would mind screwing up all the mail and dropping it on the ground somewhere near you front gate, to get you used to the idea of not having a letter box (and to get you used to the state your mail will arrive in)

Ceri

After loading up your shopping into the car, don't take your trolley back to the bay - roll it into the nearest parked car. The owner will be most overjoyed with his groovy scratch marks

scoobydoo

Whenever you take money out of the cashpoint or use your debitcard keep a little bit of cash aside........at the end of the month go into the bank and give the money you've saved to them, tell them they can keep it to spend on whatever they like! This will help you to get used to some of the bank charges!!!

jayr

Practice speaking like an Australian? Make, all your statements sound like questions? I promised I wouldn't do this? I now seem to all the time?

Ceri

If you are running a pub , please close early - when you feel like it.. do not advertise your closing times, only your opening times. Wait until a load of potential customers walks into your pub . Then say I'm closing up as there are no customers.

Make sure you go to the clubs to play the pokies.
You can practice this by putting some "fairy lights" around your mail box slot, grab a chair and sit in front of it with a blank stare while lifting your arm to slot lots of your money into the hole.