Let me begin by saying this is not enough time to see Australia. At roughly the size of the United States, it has a shit load of stuff to see, and many backpackers come here for months, even years when they find out how much they can get paid for picking fruit. It wasn’t on our original itinerary, but to get from Asia to South America we had to book a flight through. We spent most of our time in Melbourne, which after being in Asia for 11 months was some crazy culture shock. Basically San Francisco with a Australian twist, it was complete with fixie bicycles roaming the streets, trendy bars/coffee shops on every corner, and vintage boutiques selling new clothes that looked old to the hipster fashion elite. Just being in a place where we could communicate with everyone was bizarre; it was almost too easy and took a lot of the fun out of traveling.
The biggest shock by far was the blow to the wallet. When the Vodaphone salesperson told me the rates I would get on my prepaid SIM, I almost punched him in the face by sheer reflex. At one dollar a minute with a 50 cent connection fee, it was more than 100 times the rate the same company gave me in India. And it wasn’t just the phone service – with the Australian dollar at about the same value as the US dollar, shit here is crazy expensive – $4 for Vitamin Water, $30 for a dorm bed, $8.50 for a beer! Gone were the $5 hotel rooms and $1 meals of Asia, now we were living of bread and water. Melbourne was a great city… it felt strangely familiar and I could even see myself settling down there, but it felt out of place on this trip.
In the end, we were happy our time OZ was short – from what we saw it reminded us too much of life back home. On the other side, we only saw a small corner of this huge country and lived like hobos while there, so perhaps one day we’ll have to give it another chance.
Oh, something to look forward to when you return to America… 🙂