Difference # 6

Saving Water & Water Restrictions

Australia has a long history of drought. Because of the lack of available fresh water and the dependency on catchments/reservoirs there are water restrictions and huge media campaigns focused on saving water.

Depending on where you live will depend on how strict the restrictions are. Right now, metropolitan Melbourne is on Stage 2. Around Easter we eased from 3A restrictions to 3 because of the amount of water in the catchments and then while I was away we went to stage 2. When we were here in 2007 there was talk of some towns going as far as checking on each home's usage and if it was over a certain amount, the water flow to the home would be turned down to a point where you wouldn't really be able to use any water in your home (I heard around 2L/min when the typical is 9L/min I think?).
Because of these restrictions, there's no such thing as water fights/slip 'n slides/running through the sprinkler. It's something that "older" Australians (Glen's age and older) talk about with sadness and whimsy to the younger generation (ie: Glen's niece and nephew's age - 5 and 12 - have never had a water fight or used a slip and slide).

People are doing all sorts of things to try to save water and a lot of people (or at least the people I know) keep a close eye on how much water they're using. There's an initiative called Target 155 which has people aim to keep their daily water usage to under 155L/day.
Glen's parents for example have containers in their sink and buckets in their shower and tub. When you wash your hands you let the water flow into the little tub and when that gets full it gets emptied into one of the larger buckets. Once the larger buckets are full, the water either gets used to water plants or (more often) it gets poured into the back of the toilet and the main water to the toilet gets shut off. Another thing a lot of people do is direct the hose for their washing machine out into the garden and water the plants with the washing machine water (it seems most washing machines empty into a laundry sink rather than being permanently hooked up to the main plumbing). A lot of the detergents (all of them?) are marked as being grey water safe

On the news, they have regular catchment updates (especially after any large amount of rain). In June the catchments were up to 35% vs the 26.8% it was in June last year. When we were here in 2007 the catchments were around 17% and there was a serious concern about whether or not we would run out of water (at 17% that was approx. 2 weeks of water).
It seems the water storages are at 45% now and some parts of the state are experiencing flooding. Some catchments in NSW are actually full and overflowing!

It's one interesting thing to think about and something you definitely take for granted in a place like Canada.

Picture from our window of a crazy rainstorm we had in March.

Temperature: +11C
Sunrise: 6:20am
Sunset: 6:11pm

Little Difference #5

The Damp

This is a specific difference between the Arctic (or even Alberta where I grew up) and here. There are a lot of other damp places in Canada so I'm sure what's going on here happens in places like BC or even Ontario.

Because of not having central heating and only single pane windows, the house gets quite damp in the winter. You wake up in the mornings with most windows fogged over and if you're not careful mould/mildew will start to grow on outside walls and around the windows (the mystery over why the carpet along the walls in the spare room are bleached has been solved).

I've spent the morning scrubbing the bathroom, the windowsills and I've taken the pull-down shades off the windows, sprayed them and have hung them outside.

Living in the Arctic, you would have to purposefully try to grow any sort of mould. You were more likely to find dust (oh the dust!) and cobwebs around your windowsills if you neglected your cleaning. Here, you only have to go a week or two without wiping the windows down and you'll have a lovely science experiment right in your house.

I think I'd gladly take all the other frustrations of expat life over worrying about if there's mould lurking behind the curtains when I open them.

(Sorry, no pictures in this post. I don't think anyone wants to see any pictures of me cleaning!)


Temperature: +12C
Sunrise: 7:32am
Sunset: 5:20pm

Little Difference #4

Cheese

It seems there is only one type of cheese here "Tasty Cheese". Australians like their cheese old and sharp. Cheddar cheese here is white instead of orange/yellow* and my favourite type of cheese - marble - doesn't exist. Finding a mild cheddar cheese is pretty difficult and it seems like "harder" block mozza doesn't exist either (which is fine because I prefer softer mozza even though it's tough to grate).
It's weird to go to the store to look for cheddar and then get to the shelf and realise that all the cheese virtually looks the same - white/cream. I've spent many a grocery trips standing in the dairy aisle trying to find the cheese I'm after.

*this cheese isn't specifically labelled as "white cheddar" it's just understood that it's cheddar since other colours don't exist or aren't popular.

It's only in writing this post that I've learned that "Tasty Cheese" just isn't an Australian thing - it's an actual term to describe the age of the cheese (like mild, medium, strong, sharp, extra sharp, mature, old, or vintage, --- tasty falls between strong & sharp. At home I usually bought mild. I'd only get medium if that's the only thing the store had). It kind of cracks me up that the term is "tasty" and most packages have "tasty" in massive letters on the front. I always thought "you silly Australians, you don't have to tell me cheese is yummy!".

Any kind of pre-packaged thing (like side kicks type noodle dishes) that have cheese in it taste different because of the type of cheese that's used. Something I didn't really think about until I bought a package of noodles & cheese, made it and found that it tasted like stinky feet. Kraft dinner isn't popular here either. I bought a box once and again, it tasted weird. They have "EasyMac" but you cook it in the microwave, not on the stove.

I've also found that the "Christmas Cheese" phenomenon only exists at home. "Christmas cheese" is the cheese you buy around Christmas time for cheese platters. It ALWAYS seems to taste better (soft and mild).

I think it goes without saying that most varieties of processed cheese don't exist here or aren't popular. Most people put block cheese on their sandwiches rather than processed slices and I haven't seen cheese whiz or spray cheese anywhere (I bought a jar of "cheese spread" thinking it might be cheese whiz-y but it wasn't).



Temperature: +13C
Sunrise: 7:36am
Sunset: 5:09pm

Little Difference #3

Food

This little difference is about navigating around the grocery store and other situations when you might need to find, eat or talk about food.

A lot of common foods have different names here.

Tomato sauce = Ketuchup
Biscuit = Cracker & cookie
Dry Biscuit = Cracker
Soft drink = Pop
Mince = Ground Beef
Capsicum = Red/Green pepper
Chips = Fries or potato chips
Hot chips = Fries
Lollies = Candy
Chewy = gum
Lemonade = Sprite/7up/similar

Using the words you're used to is either seen as cute/weird/funny (ie: Pop) or as American (ie: Ketchup).
A lot of people won't do/say something if it's considered American - like hanging Christmas stockings, putting Christmas lights on your house outside, Halloween and using a word like ketchup. This is a bit frustrating because a lot of things I'm used to -as a Canadian- fall under the "acting like/doing something like an American" and we all know how much Canadians love being confused with Americans. While I can appreciate keeping a country's customs and traditions alive and well, I don't see people shunning tea drinking and driving on the left because it's "too British".

Because I'm not ready to start calling everything by their Australian names (ie: Tomato Sauce), the situation I'm in will dictate what word I use. First of all, you're "outed" immediately at the grocery store/similar if you ask for ketchup and secondly I've been in situations where people just don't understand (or pretend not to understand) when you ask for something like green pepper. (Last week I had a girl at Subway repeat "Capsicum?" to me about five times -after I'd said green pepper- until I finally gave up and said capsicum.)
I'm sure in time I'll just be calling things by the Australian names and it will come naturally instead of feeling like an impostor when I ask for "chips".

There's also the issue of navigating the whole range of NEW foods. Things like lamingtons, pavlova, the incredible range of fruit, different kinds of cookies, crackers, flavours of pop, and candy. It's fun to go to the store and try different flavours of things you're used to (like Musk Lifesavers) or different flavours of hard candy (like Barley Sugar).

Finally, there's the issue of familiar products tasting completely different or not existing at all. Most people eat spicy mustard (the mustard I'm used to is labelled as "American Mustard"), mayo tastes different - kind of spicy, pasta sauce has a different more tomato/tinny taste, 2 minute noodles taste different, canned soup flavours are different, cheese is different (I could write a whole post on cheese).
When I get homesick, I crave food from home. It's a bit disappointing to buy say, a jar of pasta sauce only to have it taste COMPLETELY different to what you're expecting. Creamy type salad dressings (namely Ranch) and things made with cheese (kraft dinner) taste completely different. The only place I know of to buy Rice-a-Roni is in an American shop on the other side of the city and a box is probably too expensive for it to become a regular menu item.

Temperature: +12C (feels like: +10C)
Sunrise: 7:31am
Sunset: 5:07pm

Little Difference #2

The Toilet is in a Separate Room

Most houses and apartments in Australia have the toilet in a separate room from the bathtub/shower and sink (some bathrooms even have a tub AND a stand-up shower!). I'd like to say it's not very common for the toilet to be in the same room as everything else but there's of course exceptions (Glen's brother's apartment is one exception). At home the opposite is true even though more new homes are building "powder rooms" there will usually be another full bathroom somewhere else in the house.

It takes a bit of getting used to not being able to complete 100% of your bathroom needs in one room. Going to a different room to wash my hands just seems weird.

Here is a picture of our toilet room and the bathroom right beside.

Another thing that is taking me a while to get used to is the fact that this little room is literally called "the toilet" and people talk of "having to go to the toilet". Glen thinks I'm crazy but I find all this talk of the toilet (and having to use it) a little rude and maybe a bit too direct. We were taught that we were to ask for "the washroom/restroom" in formal/public situations and the term "the bathroom" was used in less formal occasions. My mum denies this but I distinctly remember her talking to me before I went to school about making sure I asked for the "washroom" and not the "bathroom".

I don't know if I'm 100% sold on the whole idea of the toilet being in a separate room... I can see having a separate toilet room if you already have a full bathroom (toilet included) OR having a toilet room with a sink would also be not too bad. And because I'm having troubles with this whole calling that room the toilet, I've been calling it the "toilet room" which cracks Glen up (calling it the washroom/restroom just gets you strange looks).


Temperature: +13C
Sunrise: 7:27am
Sunset: 5:09pm

Little Differences

I read a few expat blogs and one blogger specifically does a segment on the little differences between her home country (US) and her new country (Luxembourg). I find this sort of thing endlessly fascinating and have been toying with the idea of doing the same sort of thing.

So in an effort to blog more often, I'm going to occasionally blog about the little differences between Canada and Australia. The thing I keep telling everyone here is that Canada and Australia are actually quite similar BUT there are a few things that pop up occasionally that take me off guard. It's like you'll be cruising along in your daily life doing things how you always do them and then *BAM* something will be completely opposite to what you're expecting. So some of these differences are going to be pretty obvious (ie: driving on the other side of the road) and not so obvious.
I'm not going to present them in any specific order. It's basically going to be as I think about them/photograph them. So without further ado, I present to you:


Little Difference #1:

Most Houses Don't Have Central Heating


(This is something I mentioned in this post so it's a bit of a repeat.)

In an effort to conserve energy it's getting more popular for people in North America not to turn their furnaces on in the autumn until absolutely necessary and then turn it off at the first possible moment come spring. Not having a warm, cosy house in the spring/autumn/winter is the reality for most people here. It seems that only new houses are built with central heating and even then it seems kind of optional. Growing up in Canada and spending the last 6.5 years in the Arctic, not having a furnace just wasn't an option. Not only would it be extremely uncomfortable, it would be downright dangerous (and expensive once your pipes freeze and burst). A lot of time, energy and money goes into keeping our houses warm in North America.
For a lot of people at home, when they're cold, they go and turn the thermostat up. Here, you make a cup of tea or put on (another) sweater.

Glen's parents have a gas radiator type thing in the living room and otherwise, they rely on a space heater (and heat lamps in the bathroom) to take the chill off. Glen's sister has a wood fireplace and in-floor heating that they rarely turn on (it's expensive and takes a long time to really heat up).
We have space heaters and possibly in-floor heating (we have a thermostat on the wall but no vents or radiators... We have no idea what it controls so we haven't bothered checking - also, in-floor heating is expensive).

Our new heater. The only thing standing between me wearing a toque, scarf and mittens in the house.

We've been using a small portable heater in the evenings that didn't really do a great job heating a room the size of our living room - we basically set it up and then sat close to it. We have a portable radiator that doesn't do a very good job either (it makes great heat but doesn't move the heat around so you only have a two foot radius of heat around the thing). After Glen spent the day home by himself (I was working) I think he realised that the two heaters we had weren't adequate and brought home this beauty from work. One of the major pluses of this thing is that it oscillates so not only is it blowing air out towards you, it's blowing air in different directions and circulating it a bit. We've noticed a HUGE difference in the evenings (I'm still drinking multiple cups of tea, wearing sweaters, slippers and watching TV under a blanket BUT I'm not so cold I hurt).
Another thing that's helped is closing the doors to the bathroom/toilet/bedrooms/hallway so we're only really heating up the living room. I'm thinking about getting a tension bar and a set of curtains to hang over the arched doorway that connects the living room to the hallway/kitchen/laundry room.

This whole heating one room at a time/preserving heat is a concept I'm familiar with but never had to put into practice. It's also a bit of an adjustment to waking up to a cold house/showering in a chilly bathroom/etc.



Temperature: +9C
Sunrise: 7:19am
Sunset: 5:14pm

Things you find on your sidewalk...

Now this could be a variety of mostly unpleasant things but I'm happy to report that I've found something quite awesome sitting on the sidewalk that runs down the side of our building (one way leads to the street, the other way to the carport and in the middle is the door to the building).

It's a Feijoa (or Pineapple Guava/Guavasteen). I've never seen one of these before in my life so imagine my surprise one night when we were walking towards our door and we found a few of these on the sidewalk. Normally I wouldn't pick up random things and bring them in but this looked pretty interesting. I cut it open and smelled it and it smelled pretty good so I set out to figure out what it was before I sampled it (I'm living in a pretty crazy country and it wouldn't have surprised me if I found something poisonous). I called Glen's parents and they had no idea but Google came through for me when I searched for "green skinned fruit" and then looked through pictures until I found something that resembled what I had (I also posted on Facebook and a forum). After a few "It's a Feijoa/Pineapple Guava/Guavasteen!" answers I was reasonably assured and ate some. They are delicious! Sort of like a cross between a concord grape, pear and kiwi. (I'd also like to say I think I'm solidifying myself as the family weirdo with my in-laws. They thought it was HILARIOUS that I'd pick some random fruit off the ground, bring it in, cut it open, decide what it was and eat it. In one way they were surprised and in another... They weren't so much haha).

So since I found the first one, every few days there seems to be a few more on the ground (no idea if other people are picking these up or not) so I've been bringing them in when I find them. I took a few over to Glen's sister's last weekend too.

I find it absolutely insane that something like this is just growing outside our door! There's other examples of random exotic fruit growing around here (back home you were hard pressed to grow anything besides crab apples and choke cherries). I'm devising a plan to get a few of the pomegranates from the tree around the corner (which means I'm working up the courage to knock on their door). Pomegranates!


Temperature: +13C
Sunrise: 7:12am
Sunset: 5:20pm