OZ, THE LAND OF SUNSHINE AND 'ROO-BURGERS: IMPRESSIONS AFTER 2 WEEKS
Sydney, Australia: the far-away, sunny, dream destination for many. The pictures that come to mind are blue sky, stunning beaches, kangaroos and koalas. It’s all true, and it’s incredible. We’re still very much at the beginning, and have a few mixed feelings about it:
We almost feel ashamed that we were so lucky to have been transferred here without too much hassle.
We also feel grateful for all those colleagues, family and friends who helped us accomplish this.
And we feel a bit scared knowing how incredibly far we are from everyone and everything. If you find a flight with good connections, you might be lucky to make it home in as short as 26 hours! This will surely put a challenge ahead of us to try to stay in contact with loved ones, so that we don’t only get notified from Facebook about weddings and upcoming babies.
Before the idea of this move came up I didn't know too much about Australia (and still don’t). Flights are expensive and take long (even after Singapore, you still fly for 8 more hours!), which tips the scales towards exploring other beautiful destinations closer to home. Finally, there are spiders (big spiders), snakes and many other dangerous animals - it seems they all came to live here - that you don’t feel like encountering on your holidays or ever in your life.
Once it turned out we’re coming, we were a bit surprised how literally everyone's first reaction was how lucky we were! In the UK, Australia is a dream destination where most people have already visited either on holiday, on a multi-month round-the-world trip as part of a gap between schools or jobs, or on a 1-year working holiday (a type of visa available for those below 30 to come and see the country while making some money).
So we started reading and learning about the country, first to get to know more about the place we were going to live in, and also to understand the hype about it in the UK. Now we can say that based on what we have read, heard and seen so far, it’s actually a quite fascinating place. Its history, geography and culture are full of surprises and exciting facts.
Geography
Surely everyone knows where Australia is on the map, right? Easy. Somewhere down there on the Southern Hemisphere, far from everything. We knew that too. But probably not that many think about the consequences of this geographical location, and some of the differences a European would find here. So to start with, being below the Equator on the Southern part of the globe means that seasons are opposite to those on the Northern half – so far it’s still pretty logical. This also comes with the fact that vegetables and fruits are grown in different seasons. I cooked a nice butternut squash soup the other day, the one you would see at Halloween in November elsewhere, since July is the season for it here! You can now get “heart-warming winter soups” at cafes, and find “mid-July winter sales” at the stores. But this is not the best! Some stores dress their windows in Christmas and (fake) snowy winter decoration saying “Christmas in July”. We’re excited to see how the real Christmas will be celebrated in December in the middle of the summer, at 40 degrees!
The country itself is also a bit strange for the European eyes. Its size is just vast. It's the 6th largest country in the world with the size of about 75% of that of the whole Europe. It is the only island which is both a continent and a country at the same time. The territory is so huge that several climates are covered: desert in the middle, similar to continental in the South and lush rainforest in the North. If you want to hop over from Sydney to Melbourne (which look so close on the map after all!) it's a 900km journey, so you're better off flying! And then we haven't even discussed the journey to Perth, the journey to the Western edge of the country is a massive 4000km (2.5 times the distance between London and Budapest)!. This makes day trips limited to the city and its surroundings – which is still a lot to see though. In terms of population density Australia is quite unique again: on its huge area there are only 22 million people, nearly all living on the Eastern rim of the island with a massive uninhabited desert in the middle, and another inhabited patch on the Western coast near Perth.
Sydney
Despite the common belief, Sydney is not the capital of Australia. The capital used to be Melbourne but when Sydney grew in size and business importance Melbourne's position got challenged. To avoid conflict, the solution was to artificially create Canberra, a political and administrative centre and name it the capital (at least according to our book on Australia – we need to get confirmation on this from locals). Canberra is still a much-much smaller city halfway between Sydney and Melbourne, and as far as we know there’s not much there apart from the government and a bit of supposedly mediocre skiing (we're told that Australian mountains are some of the oldest in the world and therefore not very tall, leading to relatively short slopes. Ski-crazy Ozzies prefer to head to New Zealand or Japan instead).
Today Sydney is considered to be the business centre while Melbourne is the cultural capital, although these lines are blurred since both cities excel in the other city’s specialty too. Whoever we have spoken too, they loved Melbourne, so it’s definitely a destination on our list, as soon as we feel we have discovered Sydney a bit more.
So far we find Sydney to be a very livable city. We have discovered the centre, the lower Northern districts and some of the iconic beaches, including Balmoral and Manly. The rest is yet to come – our primary objective so far was to decide where to live, find an apartment there, move in and furnish it. There is a compact business district South from the Sydney Bridge and the Opera House, and in a 5-minute bus ride from there (to the North at least) you find green residential areas with low-rise buildings, mommies with pushchairs, cafes and restaurants. This is what we loved about the North and hence moved there. It feels incredible living in such an area, but not having to commute more than 25 minutes from door to door into the business centre. In the “village” of the residential district we can find everything we need, including a 2-story supermarket, yoga and many fitness centres, hairdressers, restaurants, cafes etc. so we could easily get on without going into the city too.
As mentioned, it’s winter here, but we have to admit that we don’t play with snowballs at weekends. July and August are “the worst months” as we learnt, which means that so far we have had some chilly days with strong wind. On these days, however, the temperature was still about 15 degrees, with around 10 at night. So it’s absolutely bearable, if you have warm clothes and heating in the apartment – which we did not have in the first week or so when we arrived, so after the Malaysian 30+ degrees it was a big change. However, the real bright side is that the sun comes out even in the winter, so it’s common to see people in winter coat and sunglasses – a non-existing phenomenon in the UK, and maybe even in Hungary – which feels weird (Szilveszter says it feels like when we are skiing), but the sun can be so strong that you really do need the glasses. So these are the cool days, and then on some days it’s just so warm that you need no coat, maybe a light jumper, which is the equivalent of some summer days back in Europe. So we struggle to feel sympathy when locals complain here about the weather…
People
“What are Australians like?” my Mum asked the other day. To start with, it’s hard to say who’s Australian here, who’s not, because pretty much every second person has an accent. So first, you can’t decide who lives here or who’s just on holiday, and second, who do we consider Australian? This is a longer philosophical topic going back to the historical roots of the country, so I would just say that as one might expect, Sydney is an extremely international city with really open and friendly people. Wherever we go and chat to people we are warmly welcomed in the country, and locals offer to help us if we have any questions about the neighbourhood, or if we just want to have a drink with someone as we don’t know many at the moment. And it seems that they really mean it!
Another interesting surprise to us was the Hungarian presence in the city. It must be only coincidence, but we have almost met and heard about more Hungarians here so far than in London, which is the home of a large community! (In London we lived in the opposite end of the city from the community though, whereas now we live quite close to it.) According to some statistics from 2011, around 70,000 Hungarians and Hungarian descendants live in Australia, most of whom reside in Melbourne and Sydney. The first big batches arrived here after WWII and then after the 1956 revolution, followed by the newest large wave a few years ago, when the heartbreaking political and economic situation encouraged crowds to leave the country. It seems every profession is represented: there is a Hungarian mechanic, dentist, moving company and sausage-maker, just to name a few we've heard so far. The owner of the Hungarian real estate agency told us, that he considers the government back home as one of his best friends, given all the business the newly arriving Hungarians have generated! Luckily, straight on our first day we met Zoli, a Hungarian guy living here, who helped us to some further connections, and this week we joined the community dinner and got to know a bunch of nice people! Otherwise, in case we miss food from home, we were happy to realise that there are some grocery stores selling Hungarian food, like salami and sausages (although we were told it does not taste the same, but I’m sure it will be good enough when we long for one), and what’s even better, there’s a local café chain called Kürtősh selling chimney cakes, the famous Hungarian pastry – one of these cafés is 3-minute walk from our apartment! We’ve tried it out, and it’s amazing! They even sell a variation filled with Nutella, which we haven’t seen back home, but Szilveszter says it is even better than the original, and it would be a big hit in Hungary too!
Animals and Wild Life
Despite the common belief, there are no kangaroos in Sydney. At least no wild ones, only in the zoos and wildlife parks. We’ve read about areas within driving distance from the city where you can spot them in the wild, so we’ve added these to our list. It's estimated that there are 50-60 million kangaroos in the country, 2-3 times as many as humans. To people used to thinking of kangaroos as exotic, it can be hard to fully understand how common they are here: they are unfortunately regular roadkill victims (they freeze when caught in the headlights, just like deer back home) and Australian expatriates tell us one of the things they miss most when they've been away from home for a long time is a good 'roo burger! For the time being we visited the Featherdale Wildlife Park in the outskirts of the city, as that is said to be one of the best parks in terms of getting close to the animals instead of just watching them through glass walls or fences. Here you can see many different types of kangaroos, wallabies (a relative that is smaller) and many other variations which all look like kangaroos to uneducated eyes, they only differ a bit in colour and size. They are really sweet, come and eat from your palms and you can pet them. In the park you can also see up close many other unique Australian species. After all, Australia is the home of marsupials, who have evolved to fill all the roles in nature that we're used to seeing from different animals back home - so besides the kangaroos, you also have mouse-, cat- and pig-sized marsupials. The difference between marsupials and placental mammals (the ones we're used to seeing) is that placental mammal babies grow in their mother's placenta until they are fully mature, while kangaroo babies are born already a month after conception, when they only weigh 1-2 grams and spend 8 months developing to maturity in their mother's pouch.
Kangaroos - Wallabies - Pademelons
The weirdest animal that we saw by far wasn't a marsupial, it was an echidna. At first you'd think it was a hedgehog and walk right on, except that it's a mammal which lays eggs! It's one of only 2 species that do so, the other being the platypus. It was so unbelievable, that when it was first discovered in the 19th century, scientists continued insisting that it must be a hoax even after some stuffed specimens were sent back to Europe!
My favourites are the koalas though, some of which you can even pet and take pictures with (they don’t seem to mind being on display as long as their handlers keep the food coming and they just fall asleep when they’ve had enough posing). We didn’t expect koalas to be so cute, they look like a soft cuddly toy and behave like babies, not doing anything apart from eating and sleeping.
Koala babies and adults sleeping as a soft ball
Wombat variations
A few other local species
In terms of other animals, like the dangerous ones people often think of regarding Australia, luckily we have not encountered any of those (fingers crossed..). Of course, they generally don’t live in the city, and spiders at least are even less common in the winter. The ones we have seen don’t seem to be any bigger or more dangerous than the ones you see back home in the corner.
And a few we don't want to see too much
Lifestyle and prices
Even in the winter people seem to spend much time outside. Parks, beaches are all full in the weekends with families, groups of friends and jogging people, and with mothers and small kids during the week. So are the restaurants and cafés, most of which have open-air facilities since guests can sit outside most of the year.
Interestingly, we haven’t seen many of the big clothes brand stores here (at least not on the streets, they might be at shopping malls where we haven’t been), but there seem to be many small local stores instead. Also, online shopping is much less developed than in the UK, not sure if this is because there’s less demand for convenient solutions as people do go out anyways or it’s simply the question of time. One thing is for sure, we need to learn how to live without the convenience and competitive prices of amazon.com as it’s not available in the country.
We were warned in advance about rocket-high prices, even compared to London, so we were a bit (positively) surprised to find acceptable prices! Here are a few examples:
Rent costs a bit less than in the UK, and due to the structure of the city you travel less to the center, and less than 30 minutes to most locations in the heart of the city. A few words here about apartments, as we did not cover it elsewhere: Most apartments are unfurnished, so you need to calculate with this as a set-up cost. On the bright side, people come and go, so the second-hand furniture market is large, you just need to organise pick-up and delivery. Local references to get an apartment are important (which we did not know and struggled with international references), so as first renters it’s better to target less popular flats or look for smaller property agencies where you can make a personal connection. Rental contracts are usually 6 or 12-month long, and 6-month is a popular choice, which is much shorter than in Europe!
Grocery shopping costs about the same as in the UK (which is cheaper and better quality than in Hungary by the way, where people make much less money…), with a bit higher prices for fruits and vegetables; this is mostly due to most foodstuff being grown locally, and that Australia is a small market is global terms with much less competition than in Europe. Promotions, however, tend to be larger than in the UK, about 50% off on selected items, meaning that you end up paying a real bargain price if you get the right thing at the right time.
Restaurants cost slightly less than in London, about £10 for a meal (with obviously the range being wide, but for this much you can get something nice), and there’s a rich variation of Asian and European food at all corners.
Public transport is surprisingly cheap, or maybe we paid too much so far! The upper limit is the equivalent of about £4 per day, half of the level in London, and there’s a limit of 8 charged rides per week after which you travel for free, even to the outskirt of the city, saving loads. On Sundays the daily limit is less than £2 to encourage activities. Despite all these, a car is considered as an absolute necessity and people drive everywhere, but complain about the lack of parking space. As we heard, in the inner districts the public transport is well-connected and reliable, but it’s less so as we go further out, maybe that’s why we don’t feel the need to have a car now. For weekend outgoings we're going to try out rental or carsharing companies first.
In terms of food it’s worth adding that there are many specialised organic, bio and other healthy food stores and chains, which we have not seen elsewhere in so much abundance before. Even at the 'normal' supermarket almost each product has at least one organic or low-fat variation, and prices are not much higher than that of the original. People seem to live a more health-conscious life which is reflected in the product supply.
This is all we can think of now. If you have any question, let us know! We discover something new and surprising every day, so the impressions above might change over time, it’s only the initial view. There’s so much to learn and experience, but the adventure has just begun.