Looks like your being billed for the previous tenant as well, a unit of gas is your meter reading X 1.1.

Well definatly question them!
I pay about $55 a quarter for gas (just for the oven). About $50 of that is bloody usage charges.

A mixer tap does the same job and is definitely on the market. I have never understood the antiquated shower/bathroom/kitchen double taps that seem to be in most houses here. Changing them to mixer taps saves water as you can easily turn it on and off.
The first thing we did when we bought our house was to change the kitchen taps to a mixer system so that it's easy to stop and start when doing the dishes (I have 2 young children I regularly have to stop from killing each other, which they seem to do most often when my hands are in the sink )

We also have a shower with a mixer tap and I turn the water off while shampooing or soaping myself down (only in summer though, cos the bathroom has no heating and gets freezing in winter )
Mind you, my average time in the shower is 3.5 minutes, 5 minutes if I wash my hair so I am not responsible for the water bill! The OH spends about 8 minutes in there every time and he has no hair

Our kitchen sink has a mixer tap, but standard bathroom/laundry taps here have hot and cold taps. We would have been charged a fortune by the builder if we'd chosen a mixer tap instead. We could change over now, but it would be pretty expensive and would involve some re-tiling. My 2 kids often get into a major dispute, but usually when I'm on the phone.

Ditto, I'm very quick in there and my OH does the same as yours, only takes even longer - perhaps the small amount of hair left needs gentle (and slower) handling.

we have gas bottles here. 2 years ago they were $60 each and lasted approx 10 weeks, last week $138 each and I get only about 8 weeks out of them (even keep them connected when they smell real funky at the end of the bottle - waste not want not!)
only use is hot water and stove. 2 young boys, hard pushed to get them into a shower at the best of times! I wish there was a gauge on them though so I could see for myself that they are full when delievered.
we don't have heating here but have a log burner.

One way of telling is to pour hot water over the bottle. Apparently a line of condensation will appear on the cylinder showing the gas level. We used to have a strip that you stuck on the side of the gas bottle, you can get magnetic ones for household bottles that are easy to transfer from one bottle to another. Bunnings or camping stores might have these.

We used to have 2 bottles at our house, so that if one suddenly stopped, we could just switch over to the new bottle, then order a replacement. The supplier warned us to chain the bottles up, as there had been a spate of gas bottles being stolen.

the way to find out how much in the bottles is to weigh them infront of the delivery person, as the bottle will have a weight empty and a weight of liquid gas,this way they cant sting you, it is common practice to way gas in and out of bottles, when filling air con systems etc

Deb68, threaten to have their hair cut short if they dont get with the program! And look like you mean it. They will soon be on board.