Australia

[barely_pointless]

It's hard to believe you have lived there.

The only really expensive thing is rubbish / convenience food, which I guess is what most english people live on. Fresh fruit and vegetables are grown outside, without the use of pollytunnels or massive amounts of fertilizer, strawberries taste like strawberries, not like the watery yuk you get here. All fresh food is excluded from GST. The choice of food for lunch is massive, unlike the frozen sandwiches M&S offer.

I lived in Kirribilli for seven years, and drove everywhere, the traffic is nothing like London, and the roads in and around Sydney and Melbourne are well thought out and and queuing is unheard of, getting left on the motorway overnight, for any reason would cause outrage.

The weather is superb. The people are friendly and life is sweet.

hmm, lets qualify, Sydney is a pretty good city for a single (I had a blast in 96/97 - especially around "the oaks" ,or a dink, but as devlin points out the majority of people will live in the "burbs" and I can tell that the burbs with their mac-mansions and faceless suburbs and super-chiurches are pretty grim, especially if you have to commute using the roads from somewhere down SW then it's not a fun thing, the rail network is in dire need of rationalisation but because it was not planned with any foresight or capacity it's impossible to say do the equivalent of live in "KENT" and work in the city mile in sydney, it's just not doable. I know guys who travel down from the Central coast each day and it takes them 2 hours each way.


Kirribilli for those that want to know is where the PM of oz resides in Sydney, and it's on the top 5 list of desirable places to live, lower north shore, we live in Birchgrove which is also a beautiful suburb, but not sustainable for the long term, our house has tripled in value since we bought it, but it's all irrevelant, we don't even commute using the motorways and we still pay over 1K per annum on tolls, just imagine what the poor sods who commute will have to pay, and trust me, unless you already have a significant "deposit" ready for the real-estate vultures, you'll only end up wasting your time.

The people are no more friendly than anywhere else in the world, perhaps less so as regards taxi drivers, they are a disgrace.

Trust me, the traffic is not good, at the moment I cycle to work in 20 mins, it takes more than 30 mins car drive against the flow , and it takes 1.5 hours by public smelly transport where I inevitablely end up sitting next to nutter on the train, least the ferry bit is nice


It is a very health conscious place, and it is great for the summer , especially as you can go to the beach after work and swim with the kids, but that can also be done outside sydney, and here's the rub, rates are just shockingly crap!

[Lucy]

It is a lot more expensive now that it used to be, especially Perth where I'm from. House prices have shot up, but wages haven't. I bought my house for about £65K in 2003 (4X2) & it's now worth about £220K, yet in 4 years wages have hardly risen. As a contractor in the UK I can get between £350 & £450 /day whereas in Perth I could probably get about £120/day. In general everyday things such as food, petrol etc are cheaper than the UK, but when you look at wages and house prices, it's not that cheap.

I think you will find house prices doing a similar jump in all most major cities, and many people are priced out. Perth houses were very cheap for a long time, and when Sydney prices went mad, I imagine many people went to Perth to buy, and investors did the same. I know which country I would rather be poor in, and it aint england.

[XTC]

I know which country I would rather be poor in, and it aint england.

yups i agree!

[richard-af]

Yes but that’s before they built houses & breweries, then they chilled out and started playing a bit of sport.

I can imagine the Romans weren’t too impressed when they first landed on this shivering 5hithole.

The Romans may have felt the cold, but they knew a good thing when they saw it! Fought hard to win Britain for themselves, and invested heavily here and settled, too. I except Scotland from that, though. The Romans knew when they were mining an empty seam.

[snaw]

The people are no more friendly than anywhere else in the world, perhaps less so as regards taxi drivers, they are a disgrace.

The taxi drivers in Sydney are the worst in the world, lucky if they can drive, speak english and know their way around - all three in one is almost a miracle!

And generally yeah, I don't think Sydney people are particularily friendly.

[Devlin]

yups i agree!

Agreed. However, is anyone on this board poor?

[rootsnall]

I know which country I would rather be poor in, and it aint england.

I don't think there is much in it these days other than the weather. In the late 80s in Sydney I was on about 6 quid an hour doing labouring and bar work and I bet you'd struggle to get a lot more than that these days in stirling terms the best part of 20 years on. Similar work in the UK was 2 quid an hour at the same time. The standard of living at the bottom of the heap in Oz has fallen substantially in the last 20 years, in the UK its not much different if you are unskilled.

[XTC]

I don't think there is much in it these days other than the weather. In the late 80s in Sydney I was on about 6 quid an hour doing labouring and bar work and I bet you'd struggle to get a lot more than that these days in stirling terms the best part of 20 years on. Similar work in the UK was 2 quid an hour at the same time. The standard of living at the bottom of the heap in Oz has fallen substantially in the last 20 years, in the UK its not much different if you are unskilled.

Yeah think you're right. There is no affordable housing there. In 1998 you could buy a house/land package for $80K (Aus) 10 mins walk from the beach, now there's nothing under $350K

[snaw]

Yeah think you're right. There is no affordable housing there. In 1998 you could buy a house/land package for $80K (Aus) 10 mins walk from the beach, now there's nothing under $350K

Not in Sydney you couldn't ...

[XTC]

Not in Sydney you couldn't ...

yeah Sydney has been tres $$ for a long time.