After living in Australia for 5 years, I want to tell you some interesting things I find every day in the country.

Hey! My name is Natalia and I’ve been living in a country where everything is backwards for 5 years; to be more precise, in Australia, in the city of Sydney. Here I work as a marketer, I have my Instagram and a radio segment. I also organize picnics for my compatriots who have decided to emigrate to this country like my husband and I. Life around here is full of interesting discoveries and to this day I couldn’t help but be surprised by some of them.

Especially for readers of awesome.clubI will tell you the whole truth about the peculiarities of this distant and wonderful country.

The question I get asked the most: how did you move to Australia? We moved here thanks to my husband, since he got a work permit. We decided to try to live in this country and then we stayed, and not once did we regret our decision. As in any other country, living in Australia has its advantages and disadvantages. If you are interested in
If you move here, I recommend that you check the Department of Immigration’s website as the rules change regularly. And also check if your profession is on the list of specialties in demand by immigrants.

Well, and to make the decision easier, I invite you to start getting to know Australian life in detail.

Before, I thought that Australia was always hot, a sunny climate where you could swim all year in a warm ocean. This is indeed a very hot land (about 250 days of sunshine a year), but the weather can be different and even unpredictable. In Sydney, the ocean rarely warms to a comfortable temperature, even in summer: here the temperature rarely exceeds 20°C and Australians themselves prefer to laze on the beaches of Bali, Fiji and Thailand.

Also, a large part of the continent is occupied by deserts, and rainforest is found only along one coast.

It is something paradoxical: although the winter here is not below zero, the absence of central heating and “cardboard walls” make it colder here than in my home country. That’s why sheep wool slippers were my first purchase.

Winter on the street is often warmer than at home: once, in a friend of mine’s apartment, the thermometer rose to a maximum of 9 °C, while the temperature outside the window was close to 13 °C. That’s how I spent about three months. Australians save themselves as best they can: they use heaters or simply dress in very warm clothes. The UGG boots, with which everyone walks down the street in winter, are used here at home.

A typical street near a neighborhood: instead of cars, many families park a speedboat or even two. In Sydney, there are over 100 beaches (imagine that every weekend you can choose a different one!) and people try to enjoy their free time. Many are surfers, paddleboarders and others simply swim or rest during the day.

For some reason there are some legends about the Australian accent, which really leaves an inexperienced ear paralyzed! Locals speak very fast, eat a lot of sounds and also use a lot of abbreviations: arvo = afternoon and brekky = breakfast, among others. If we add Asians with your accent, at this point your head will spin because of this mixture of languages.

Here are some interesting observations about the mindset of the locals:

Aussies at work don’t give in completely, they consider it better to do 80% and then surf. And it doesn’t matter that you expect 100% from them. At work, sometimes this turns out to be convenient: first, you can do something quickly and deliver, and then, leisurely, finish it. Second, in the end, the problem may be different from what you originally expected. Users will test, possibly find bugs, which can be fixed along with modifications. “I work to live, but I don’t live to work”this is their motto.
Nobody gets stressed. And why stress when you have a cup of coffee in your hand and have the vast ocean stretching out before your eyes? You can go outside in your pajamas, sports pants and even barefoot! In fact, nobody cares. It may seem like the people here are a bit childish, and often it is until they are between 30 and 35 years old. In general, at this age Australians form a family and have children (commonly 2 or 3, no less). This is a strange thing, but despite their relaxed pace of life, Australians like to plan ahead. Airline tickets are purchased 8-9 months before travel, vacations are planned a year in advance, and meetings with friends are arranged a month in advance. Australians won’t win your heart. When talking to you, they will be friendly and keep their distance with those who might be unpleasant. Of course, racism in Australian society exists, but, in general, immigrants like us are treated well.

An interesting fact: according to statistics, 50% of Australians never iron their clothes. No one will look out of the corner of their eye if you start working in pants and a wrinkled shirt: if it’s comfortable, why not do it?

Also, if you want to go in your pajamas to buy bread at the bakery, go for it! Did you feel like walking down the street without shoes and going into the nearest store? In my town, this is how one out of every two people walks the streets: once, at the supermarket checkout, i met a man who only wore a towel, what do you think?

Australians have another habit: they like to drive without shoes. Before, I used to make a face of amazement and suspicion when my acquaintances told me that they liked to drive barefoot, but a few years ago I started doing this myself and believe me, it’s actually very comfortable.

The seasons are upside down: when it’s summer in the northern hemisphere, winter reigns in Australia. So June, July and August are the winter months. Consequently, New Years and Christmas take place in the middle of summer and so at first it was difficult to get used to. An Australian tradition is to spend these two parties with a barbecue on the beach. We take a Christmas tree, salads and make sandmen. (It’s worth remembering that Natalia lives in Russia, where it’s cold at the end of the year, because it’s winter there.)

On gifts, each Australian spends an average of 400 to 550 dollars, because it is good to buy gifts for all family members, including children and large families. Once, a colleague had to look for almost 40 gifts.

There is also the party “Christmas in July”, which is what they call Christmas in July. This is arbitrarily celebrated in July, in the middle of winter, when the streets begin to cool: it is customary to sit by the fireplace with the attributes of the new year and give gifts to close ones.

The school year in Australia is also “upside down”: starts at the end of January and ends with Christmas, in mid-December (as in Brazil). The fiscal year also differs from the ordinary year, which begins on July 1.

If everything were so bad, Australians would probably not be in the top 10 happiest nations in the world. Sharks, poisonous snakes, matchbox-sized cockroaches and hand-sized spiders live here, but people have somehow adapted to live peacefully surrounded by this fauna and flora. Each animal has its own habitat area. Elementary rules help to reduce fear and protect yourself: it is worth shaking your shoes before putting them on (maybe someone has crawled into your boots), during rests in nature you have to carefully monitor your things and swim carefully in the ocean. Being cautious doesn’t hurt anyone!

Once, a giant spider entered our house, from which we heroically pulled it out. After talking about the situation with some friends, I understood that in many Australian homes they even have a special cup to catch the spiders and they don’t kill them, but take them outside.

Many people often ask me: is it true that in Australia sharks eat people in the sea? Here, it really can happen, but if we believe the statistics, more people in Australia die when they fall out of their own bed than from shark bites.

I once got really close to a shark, but to be honest, I didn’t even see the fin. We were on one of Sydney’s southern beaches: we swam and climbed on our boards in the coastal waves. Suddenly the siren went off, the nervous lifeguards started to evacuate all the people from the water because in the ocean there were 2 or 3 sharks that were a little bigger than a speedboat.

I asked a woman lifeguard how many times she encountered sharks. It seems she sees them pretty much every day, but they’re all harmless to the human species. Great white sharks arrive infrequently (seasonally they only see them 3 times on this beach): when this happens they simply close the beach.

Australia’s national heritage is subject to a mandatory census: in 2011, in Australia, there were around 34 million kangaroos. Which means that, compared to the number of inhabitants in the same year (23 million people), there are more kangaroos than people. That’s an interesting statistic.

On the streets of Sydney, of course, you won’t find any, but it is worth going a little further to the mainland, to the national parks, and the probability of encountering these animals increases dramatically. True, they are a bit naive: they regularly go out onto the roads and appear in front of cars.

The bad news: over Australia (or, to be more exact, over Antarctica) there is a hole in the ozone layer. The good news: experts predict that this layer will fully recover within 30 to 50 years. Regarding the level of morbidity from skin cancer, Australia occupies one of the first placesso the population tries to follow the safety rules regarding the sun and their children start…