Aussie oddities

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After two months of amazing experiences, I've come to the end of my time in Australia. Tomorrow I fly to Auckland (and get up at 4am to do so - joy!) and I can't wait to explore New Zealand.

To mark the end of my time here, I thought I'd share with you a list I've been compiling over the past few weeks, of little things about Australia that are different to England. On the surface it can feel like a very similar country - everyone speaks English and drives on the left for instance - but there are lots of unimportant things that remind you that you're in a foreign place. Of course the landscape and weather help with that as well! So, here is my list of strange things to expect if you ever venture this way.

- Pedestrian crossings emit a slow clicking noise while the light is red. When it's your turn to cross, they make a strange "splat" noise before clicking very fast while the light is green.

- While you're crossing the road at a green light, cars can still turn left into the road that you're crossing. They have to give way to pedestrians, but most will try to sneak through in the gap between people leaving the near pavement and people arriving from the far pavement. It doesn't seem the safest system to me for a country with otherwise good road safety precautions...

- Debit cards are called "Eftpos" cards here. Until I worked out what this meant, I was very confused when I presented my card to be asked, "Is it Eftpos?". Either way, foreign cards have to be put through machines as credit cards as they don't belong to Australian banks, so it's easiest just to say no even if it is a debit card.

- Every single tv station is crammed full of adverts. In one 20 minute episode of The Simpsons there will be three ad breaks. Watching tv for more than an hour gets almost unbearable, especially since the variety of adverts isn't that great. While I'm on the subject, I haven't seen a single current affairs, documentary or otherwise serious programme either on tv or being advertised - it's a stimulating mixture of American imports, soaps and reality shows. Great for when you want to switch off but not so good for the mind.

- The seat backs on trains (in Sydney at least) can be flipped over so you can make the seats face whichever way you want. This seems to me to be one of the most genius things ever.

- Sticking with seats, in cinemas the seats are one long comfy bench with armrests that can be up or down. This means you can snuggle up if you're in a couple, but separate yourself if not. Another excellent idea!

- It must be very easy to drive here as there are no complicated road junctions of any kind. Generally the roads are one long straight stretch for thousands of kilometres, and even in cities there's nothing approaching the complexity of even the system round the Tile Hill area of the number 12 bus route. Goodness knows how Aussies cope when they come to England and have to navigate round the magic roundabout!

- Peppers are called capsicums here.

- Milk can be either Milk, Lite or Skim, and the full-cream stuff is most common as is shown by the fact that it's called simply Milk.

- They have Cadburys chocolate here, but it's made here and tastes completely wrong. I had quite a shock the first time I ate Dairy Milk! Apparently it's different again in New Zealand. For the record, our version is much better.

- Similarly, Special K tastes all wrong and isn't very nice at all. I've had to become a Cornflakes eater!

- When flushing the toilet you have two options: a half flush or a full one. In almost all cases one of the buttons won't work, rendering the options useless.

- Burger King serves exactly the same food, but for some bizarre reason is called Hungry Jack's.

- The @ and " keys are in opposite places on computer keyboards. This led to a few weeks of repeated errors when logging into Facebook until I mastered typing email addresses correctly!

So there you have it: my guide to all those cultural oddities that will perplex all Brits who travel to these shores. Consider yourselves prepared!

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