British Expats - Some silly idiosyncrasies and differences..

One of my earlier posts that may amuse you...................

On a lighter note than normal. Some silly idiosyncrasies and differences between Australia and UK.......

We all know that the water spirals down the plughole differently, due to the difference in the pull of gravity.

But did you know that?

Food and Drinking Category

Some restaurants are BYO, bring your own. But not just your average couple of bottle of wines. No,no, but a full on esky (cooler box) with beers and spirits is quite the norm.

I still laugh now when, in a pub someone orders "a pot of gold!"

A pot being a small glass about half a pint. Gold being a level of alcohol. Light, gold (in between) and heavy.

Off licences are called bottlo’s and are mainly drive in.

Beers are mainly sold in slabs i.e. 4 x 6 packs of half pint bottles, in a box. Again, asking for a slab of gold makes me giggle even now!

For the serious drinkers, beer comes in tallies, pronounced tall ees, a pint size bottle. The three bottle size choices are 1/ throw downs (about a third of a pint. 2/ Stubbies (about half a pint. 3/ tallies as I said about a pint. Or if you are drinking in you can get a jug, which is about 6 glasses.

We call one-arm bandits; pokies and most pubs and clubs have about 50-100 of them in a little side room. Users range from old age pensioners with their portable oxygen cylinders and masks. To teenage school leavers that finish school every day at 1pm as they start at 7am. There is normally free tea, coffee and water provided and the average user doesn’t even drink, plus most of the machines one pull is 10c = to 3p

Almost all pubs and clubs have a TAB (betting shop) with about 10 screens showing the racing etc.!

Sweets are lollies - lollies are icey poles – crisps are chips but chips are also chips – chickens are chooks – sausages _ snags.

They have a cereal advertised as: full of fruit and nuts from Sanitarium (the manufacturer)

90% of fish and chips the fish are SHARK

A shandy isn’t beer and lemonade but a chinese meal, split 50/50 with main meal and rice.

At the footy they have kegs on legs (a bloke with a keg of beer strapped on his back with a hose to dispense the beer walking amongst the crowd) and also at to save you leaving your seats there is a guy distributing boxed pizza in insulated heat bags.

In the middle of nowhere on a deserted beech you may find a cold drink vending machine solar powered, no need to plug in to anything. Even streetlights & speed cameras are solar powered.

A popular brand of cheese is called Coon cheese. And yes they do know its offensive. The Aboriginal people tried to get the name changed before the last Olympics in Sydney but no go.

We still even have the little gollywogs on Robertson jam!

Time zones and geographic
Due to the wide span of Australia we have a number of different time zones States next to each other might only have 1 hour difference , South Australia even bothers with half hour difference. Both being handy at New Years eve Allowing you in some circumstances to walk across the road to the next pub and have 2 celebrations. Or if you miss your favourite tv show. Wait an hour and it will be on again but on the NSW broadcast time zone.

As Queensland is the first state to see the sunrise and it rises early. There was a referendum to decide whether to put the clock forward in spring. So as not to have it bright at 4 o’clock in the morning . The rural community were up in arms as they believed it would confuse the cows with the milking. AND THEY WON! So we suffer with it being dark at 6 at night and about 5 in the winter.

What winter? In Queensland we really have two seasons, summer and winter with winter being like the UK’s hottest day and summer like a Spanish summers hottest day.

When it rains though it really does rain. About 60% of Qld is under government subsidy for either drought relief or flood relief and about 50% for both at the same time.

In the summer the sun hasn’t a different arc to that of winter. Summer it starts low and goes overhead at noon and straight down in the evening. The fastest sunsets I’ve ever seen. But in the winter instead of going overhead it. Moves very low in the sky east to west, staying very low over the horizon.

There are more Greeks in Melbourne than in Athens.

Others that don’t fit into above categories.

Football is Rugby League

Rugby Union is Rugby

Soccer is football

Aussie rules is footy and to start the game they have “a balls up”

Throwing a sickie is making sure you get your full allocated amount of sick days, which the Aussies believe is their right . Even if they aren’t sick.

The classic is, Aussies are hardly monarchists but when it comes to the Queens birthday it is a public holiday.

An MOT is a WOOF warranty of fitness.

Personalised number plates can be purchased from the motor transport dept in many colours with logo’s or slogans on. Mine is GMM77 with a palm tree on and underneath written “Tropical Qld” cost about 90 pounds.

Personalized with an actual name like “SIMON” about 350 pounds

Maroon is still spelt maroon, but pronounced marone . Why I don’t know.

In Europe,The Mitsubishi Shogun 4WD was to be called The Pajero but before the launch they found out that pajero in Spanish meant "wanker” So they must have shipped all the ones they made and branded Pajero over here, as we obviously didn’t care as we still have them as Pajeros.

By the way you might not believe it, but it is absolutely true . I own a marone Pajero!

Intercourse is legal for girls at 16 but boys have to wait till they are 18. A few problems there!

We have a curfew on 15 year olds and under . they have to be in doors by 10pm Well there not allowed to have sex so they might as well go to the movies with their parents where anyone, even 5 years olds can watch XX rated movies, as long as they are accompanied with one adult.

So an 18 year old girl, could take her 15 year old boyfriend to watch a porn movie at the cinema , but she has to have him home by 10 as he’s got to be up by 5.30am to get to school and not have sex on their way and drive herself home on her own, in her marone Pajero with personalized number plates “no sex”. But at least they could pop in the pub on the way and she could have a pot of gold while had a free glass of milk while she played the pokies until they stopped on the way home a gain at the takeaway Chinese, where he could at last, have a shandy. After dropping him home she could go back out clubbing and have a few throwdowns as it doesn’t matter if she gets a hangover........

No problems!

Now send me Karma!