2 Texans Down Under

Finally, we have a clear notion of “the Darling downs.”

Most Brisbane folk watch the ABC television weather news on weekday evening, I expect, for hints on how to dress the next day, but for me it’s a geography lesson as much as anything else.

On an outline of Queensland, town and city names are posted with their high and low temperatures for the day, and I think, “Oh, that’s where that is” or, more rarely, “We’ve been there.”

But the names of various regions such as “the Darling downs” never get put on the screen because, obviously, everybody knows where they are. Unless, of course, you’re newcomers, as we are even after nearly three years.

Until Easter weekend this year, we didn’t know where Australia’s “New England” was. Then we drove through there and expanded our knowledge even further by visiting Texas, QLD, which is, appropriately enough, in the southwestern part of the state. Well, south, anyway, and as far west as we’d been.

On that trip, we also learned, while hiking over large chunks of it, where “the granite belt” is and we got to know a bit about Stanthorpe, where our farmers’ market apples come from, near the New South Wales border.

But “the Darling downs” was an entirely mythical place as far as I was concerned. I assumed it must have something to do with the Darling River, which is dying a slow death from drought, up-stream irrigation, and city-water demands.

Our printed maps don’t use the term as a label and my trusty Australian dictionary carries no definition of it despite listing “Darling shower.” That’s a dust storm.

As I said, though, we are finally in the know. This past weekend, Kristi and I traveled west and then north, passing near Ipswich, driving over the Wivenhoe Dam’s dam, and going through Esk, Toogoolawah, Blackbutt (named after the tree of the same name, I assume), Read the rest of this entry »

Two liquids, water and gasoline or petrol, are big news here this week, as is the case in many parts of the world.

The good news is that we’ve had rain, glorious alternating bands of light to heavy rain for more than a day, ending this morning, about three inches of unexpected wet stuff here in Brisbane. That’s about twice the normal June total.

News reports say farmers south and west of here, who’ve missed out on earlier rains this year, also got welcome totals.

The three lakes (called “dams” here) that are Brisbane’s main water source — Wivenhoe, Somerset, and North Pine — have all caught some runoff and their total content is approaching 40 per cent, the point at which water-use restrictions here would be eased back a notch.

The largest, with about two-thirds of the storage capacity of the three, is Wivenhoe and it is often shorted by weather systems that soak Brisbane. Located well inland from the coastline, where rain is almost always heaviest here in Australia, it’s increase yesterday was less than two-tenths of one per cent of capacity.

Worse, government bar graphs show a decline from nearly 30,000 megalitres of stored water in the three dams in April, 2005, to just over 10,000 in April, 2008, roughly the time we’ve been living here. (Honest, though, we’re not at fault; the two of us use just a bit more water daily than Brisbane’s Council has set as a usage goal for one person.)

Petrol is another matter, of course. While the gasoline pumps seem to be delivering ample supplies, the cost has soared here as it has in the United States and elsewhere. Unleaded regular was selling this morning at our local 7/11 for about $1.43/litre or roughly 5.15 US dollars per gallon.

I put in premium on the recommendation of a Prius mechanic and paid Read the rest of this entry »

Thinking of taking a big leap? Thinking of starting a new chapter in your life and considering Australia as its setting? Then you may be in luck.

The new Rudd Government has announced for the coming fiscal year the biggest annual increase in permanent and temporary migration into Australia since the 1940s, and there doesn’t seem to be much backlash. Some worries, but no real opposition.

The plan is to open the door to nearly 300,000 workers from overseas between July 1 this year and the end of June, 2009, and the work visas will be not only for high-demand jobs, but various kinds of work, skilled and unskilled.

As I noted in my last blog, Treasurer Wayne Swan, speaking for the Labor Government of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, announced this widening of the immigration door in his budget presentation last week and it could be good news for anyone considering moving to the Land of Oz.

(Note: My spell checker IS working. Aussies put a “u” in “labor,” writing it “labour,” but not in the name of the party now in power, Labor.)

Inflation is a hot topic here and business leaders hope opening the door to more migrants will help dampen wage demands. Labour union leaders fear that it might, but they don’t seem to be too worried, only protesting that they need a place at the immigration decision-making table.

The reasons behind this substantial change and the absence of acrimony about it, so far, were expressed in a column May 17 in The Australian by the newspaper’s primary political-affairs editor, Paul Kelly.

Kelly wrote: “Australian labour shortages are here to stay. They are Read the rest of this entry »

Australia is one of the few countries that it is still relatively easy to get into, one of the few not closing down its borders, according to the Dallas-area doctor who did our health checks as we were applying for visas to move here in 2005.

Certified to screen visa applicants for Australia and other countries, he seemed to know what he was talking about. The news here these days supports his opinion.

Of course, that Texas doctor said “relatively easy,” not “easy,” so his remark didn’t do much to calm our fears about all the requirements and paperwork looming up between us and the work permits that would allow us to move down under.

Three years later, as we look back, the scary mountains we saw before us in 2005 look like rounded hills. With permanent residency status in hand,we have a “that wasn’t so bad” perspective.

Moving here does involve clearing many hurdles. You have to pass Read the rest of this entry »

People everywhere, even those of us who enjoy travel and find ourselves able to adjust well to living in countries other than the one in which we were born, long for “the comforts of home.”

Being near family and friends is at the top of the list of what we miss.  Knowing one’s way around and speaking the most-common language, is up there, too.

But sometimes what we expatriates miss is  “comfort food” or, at least, food we’re accustomed to buying and eating.

Friends of ours from Amsterdam were missing “pindakaas” until they found a Dutch food store not far from where they live now in Brisbane.  That Dutch word means “peanut cheese,” which is Read the rest of this entry »

Money. Since beginning consideration of your compatibility with Australia, I’ve discussed two of the three traditional areas of concern: degree of neatness and sex. I took the easy one’s first.

Money is the tough one. First, flying to an Aussie destination from the US will cost you couple of thousand at least, maybe much more, for a round-trip ticket, and then you’ll need food (expensive) and lodging (very expensive).

It helps a little, of course, that your US dollar will still get you an Australian dollar and nine cents more, and maybe you are one of the fortunate few who don’t have to worry about such things. A “New York Times” story this past week said there are in the world today 2,000 superyachts (120 to more than 500 feet long, valued in millions) and about 200,000 people could afford to buy one of them.

Are you more interested in the minimum wage than the price of yachts? You could be in luck here. Is the minimum wage still about $5.50 per hour in Texas and up to around $10 in one or more states of the US? I know middle- and low-income earners in the US have been losing ground.

It doesn’t seem so here. Aussies prefer to speak in terms of minimum wage per week and a week is counted as 38 hours of work. The current, Australia-wide minimum wage is $522.12 or $13.74/hour (US$12.60).

The Australian Fair Pay Commission (AFPC) wants to give the lowest-paid workers here a $26/week raise to $548.12/week or $14.42/hour (US$13.23). Unions want more. The Rudd government is expected to decide soon.

No worries, though, if you’re between 18 and 45 years of age, and your training or experience qualifies you for a 457, skilled migrant worker, visa. That lets you stay four years, at least, and according to this morning’s newspapers, you won’t be worrying about the minimum wage.

“The Australian” has a front-page story today by Paul Maley and Matthew Franklin saying Australia’s full-employment economy is currently paying skilled migrants $15,000 more per year than the average Australian earns.

Here are a few facts from that story:

1. In 2006-07, the average skilled migrant’s salary was $71,600 (US$65,682) while the average salary Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday, I talked about three important considerations for predicting compatibility in relationships — sex, money, and degree of neatness — and speculated that these concerns could be important to the question of how compatible Australia and you might be. Could you move here and sustain a relationship with this continent?

I dealt with degrees of neatness first. Now you might want to be sure no one’s looking over your shoulder because I want us to consider s-e-x in the US and in AU.

SEX — I have no idea what single life here is like. (How embarrassing, to have to begin with a confession of ignorance, but then, knowledge isn’t a requirement of blogging, is it?)

I get the impression, though, that sexual mores are pretty relaxed here. Live together for a while and you’ll be seen, legally, as being in a “de facto relationship.” You may even be identified, a bit inelegantly, as “a de facto.”

On the positive side, some states allow same-sex and opposite-sex de facto couples to register with the state in order to get a certificate as verification of their commitment to each other.

More than US women, Australian women seem to have an easy-going attitude about the exposure of skin.

My wife has noticed, for example, that cleavage is much more common here Read the rest of this entry »

I read somewhere that people considering marriage or living together should ask themselves, first, whether they are compatible in three aspects of life: money, sex, and degree of neatness.

The idea was that if your would-be partner (the all-encompassing Australian term for what I would have referred to, once upon a time, as “boy friend” or “girl friend” or “fiancé”) was much different from you in attitudes toward the acquisition of and spending of money, in sexual preferences and ethics, or in her/his place on the slob-to-neat-freak continuum, chances for long-term love were poor.

That’s exactly the sort of wise counsel that people falling in love have no interest in hearing, of course. Most will be making the classic errors I saw illustrated once in a cartoon that showed a man and woman passionately kissing. Above his head there was a thought balloon saying, “She’ll always be this way.” Above her head? A thought balloon saying, “I can change him.”

But what if you’re falling for a country? What if you’re thinking you might love living, for example, in Australia? Could you and the Land of Oz have a good thing going? Should you make the big leap, abandon your present neighborhood, and flee to a new neighbourhood in Sydney, Perth, Brisbane, or some other down under place? Could you and this continent be compatible?

Obviously, I know nothing about your attitudes toward money, sex, or neatness, but I am in a position now to tell you a bit about Australia’s tendencies in those areas. You be the judge of whether or not this sounds like a partner for you.

DEGREE OF NEATNESS — Per capita, Australia pollutes more than any other country, because of coal (mining and burning), industrial plants, and too many cars on the roads too often for too long. It’s a suburban culture along the coasts and the growing traffic jams are not neat.

On the other hand, the population is less than a tenth that of the US, so congestion away from the city centers tends to be not too bad. In the capital cities, mass transit is better than in most US cities other than, perhaps in Boston and New York. We’ve never lived anywhere that is so Read the rest of this entry »

Having two homes — Australia and the United States of America — is wonderful for us, but it creates a problem for someone else, the person who receives and sorts our mail at our US address. Perhaps some of you can relate.

In our case it is Kristi’s patient mother who receives mail addressed to us in Houston and sorts through it to see what envelopes, flyers, magazines, and catalogues we need to see and what pieces of mail we’ll be happy to have her discard.

The third possibility is “maybe they want to see this, maybe not.” Mail with that designation goes into a pile we sort through when we next show up to visit. It can be a substantial pile.

We’ve sent lots of change-of-address and stop-and-desist cards and letters to companies, without much effect. We’ve always wanted a way to shut off the flow of fat, glossy catalogues we got, especially in the months before Christmas.

Today, thanks to the folks at Tidbits, producer of an email newsletter I read to stay current with Mac computer issues, I’ve found a solution, or at least something that may help.

It’s an organization called “Catalogue Choice,” and it provides an easy way Read the rest of this entry »

I sometimes refer to Australia as “the land of Oz,” as do others.

In doing so, I may be sounding pretentious or just silly to some folks, so I think it might be a good thing to explain to everyone who reads this blog (as I explained to a few of you in an email recently) where that description originates.

Although I thought it might the first time I heard it, this way of referring to Australia has nothing to do with Dorothy and Toto wandering around the outback with a lion and a tin man looking for a wizard.

To explain it, you have to talk a bit about Aussie pronunciation, which is something we’ve come to appreciate gradually.

When we first arrived in Brisbane (which, by the way, rhymes with “tin,” not “pain”), we were describing the folks around us as “Aussies.”  We were correct, of course, but we were pronouncing the word “Awe-sees.”

That’s not how people here say it, but before we explain how the term is pronounced, we have to tell you something else we learned early on.  Here, “z” is pronounced “zed.”  I’ve heard that’s not true all over Australia, but it is here in Queensland, at least.  People say “… x, y, zed.”  The name of a bank here, ANZ, is pronounced “Ann zed.”

Maybe you knew that already, so I need to warn you that, in the very next sentence, I’m going to use an American “z” sound, not the local “zed” sound.

Aussies say “Aussie” as if it were spelled “Ahh-z.”  If you say that rapidly, and everybody here says nearly everything rapidly, it comes out “Oz-ee.”

Lots of words get shortened here, too, so the spoken “Oz-ee” became just “Oz.”

You’re right if you’ve already thought that we’re surely not in Kansas anymore.

How “land of” got attached, I’m not sure.

I have a theory, though, about how “antipodean” came to refer to Australia and New Zealand.  An “antipode” is a point opposite another point on the globe.  I expect British folk in the 1700s and 1800s, while colonizing this continent with prisoners, considered Australia and its people to be the exact opposite of the cultured homeland and its upstanding gentry.

So, saying something or someone was “antipodean” surely was not a compliment.  Now the tables are turned and, in the land of Oz, one doesn’t necessarily want to be known as a pomme (someone from England).

As John Douglas Pringle said in Australian Accent, “Australians are strongly pro-British but tend to dislike individual Englishmen, while they like individual Americans but tend to disapprove of the United States.”

I think I’ll get a lapel button that says “Individual American.”– Bob