10 Things You Didn't Know About Australia

Throughout the course of the mission, I picked out a whole bunch of things in Australia that were different than they would be in America.  Eventually, I started working on a list of things that the everyday American wouldn't know about Australia, but it turned out longer than I thought, so there's some honorable mentions for you as well.  There's no particular order with the honorable mentions, but I tried to put the top ten in the order I would find most interesting.  Enjoy!

Honorable Mentions

• Men wear Uggs. Yeah it's weird, but it's a thing. Not all guys do though, fortunately.
• The oven heat comes from that top. At least in every oven I used in those two years. Needless to say, I frustratingly burnt my fair share of cookies and brownies.
• There aren't a ton of sidewalks, which they call footpaths. Most of the sidewalks are in school zones. So a lot of the time, you'll just be walking on a front lawn.
• It's probably a thing in the US too, but a lot of people would be "house sitting". Apparently it's pretty fun to get paid to live in someone's house for a week.  
• Soda is either called fizzy or soft drink. And they drink a lot of it. In the middle of summer, we got offered it nearly as much as water.
• Every school, public or private, has a uniform. The most common color schemes would be charcoal gray with a green or blue and maroon with white or gold. I always enjoyed seeing the green blazer bc it'd look like they just won the Master's.
• Most gas (petrol) stations you gotta go inside to pay. There's a few new stations that have pay at the pump and I think it's a pretty big deal.
• Australians have a low key really intense rivalry with New Zealanders (Kiwi's). They have each "claimed" things like better meat pies or fish and chips, but one thing that isn't debatable... The All Blacks demolish the Wallabies in rugby every single year. Sorry mates.

Top Ten

TEN: Size compared to the US. Australia is relatively close in size compared to the mainland USA, but population wise, Australia has only about 4 million more people that the entire state of Florida. Also something I didn't know before I got there, Australia has six states!

NINE: Two different sizes of bread. You have two options when buying the cheap generic bread, sandwich or toast. Toast is almost double the size of sandwich.

EIGHT: Sydney public transport is pretty solid. Missionaries ride the buses and trains all the time, so we got pretty used to the schedules and what not. Here's a train map:

SEVEN: Rugby and beer. There are a lot more things that make up Australian culture (like horse racing, cricket, and little farms) but these two have gotta be on top.

SIX: The rubbish bins are tiny. Okay they aren't this small all the time, but most of the residential bins were. I should've stood next to them, but the red bin was shorter than my hip.

FIVE: Do not knock signs. This is your "no soliciting" sign, but they are literally everywhere. On any given street, roughly 80% of the doors have these signs. They range in color and size, but the only time we wouldn't knock is if their sign included religion, like this one:

FOUR: Australi-er. Every once in a while, you'll meet someone who has a really thick Australian accent. You can always tell bc some of their words, especially when they end in a's and o's, will roll into r's. Hence this poor child thinking ballerina is spelt like so:

THREE: Utes. Alright, so ute stands for utility vehicle. They come in two main types, but "trucks" don't really exist in Australia bc they call them all utes anyway. So the first type is the front cab of a "truck" attached to what they call a tray, or bed. The second type is when the front of a car (usually a sporty looking one) has the "tray" and the entire thing is the same color. Long explanations but depictions below:

TWO: L and P plates. Another car thing again. So it takes around five years to get your full license in Oz. You start off on your learners (L plates) for a year and that's pretty much your permit here. You drive with red and green p's for a certain amount of time and that's like your provisional, and then you can upgrade to your "black license". Each plate allows you to drive ten kilometers faster than the one before, working your way up to the full 110 km/h speed.  

And the moment you've all been waiting for...

ONE: There is no such thing as "putting a shrimp on the barby". Yup, sorry Outback lovers, you heard that right. Shrimp doesn't even exist, they actually only eat prawns. Australians do love their BBQ's though. They have what they call a sausage sizzle, which is mainly sausages (but not the kine you're thinking, it's pretty close to what you could get at the Costco food court) and onions inside of a slice of that cheap bread I talked about earlier, topped with barbecue or "tomaddo" sauce. And that's it. They even have these things at the local Bunnings, which is like their Home Depot: