Transcript of AE 673 - Australian Culture Shock: 10 x Weird Things About Life in Australia!

What's going on, guys? I'm Pete from Aussie English. Welcome to this episode today where I'm going to be talking about Culture Shock in Australia. Let's get into it.

Alright, so I was recently chatting to my wife, trying to come up with a list of things that she had a culture shock with when she came to Australia. So, if you don't know, my wife is originally from Brazil. Hey, Raquel, if you're watching.

And, so she came to Australia, and obviously, Brazil is a different country, different culture. When she got to Australia, there were a bunch of different things that she found strange cultural aspects of Australian life that she found different, weird, strange. So, I made a list and now let's go through ten of those things, ok?

And let me know in the comments below if you found them weird as well. Alright. Number one: cars are incredibly cheap second hand in Australia. So, cars in Australia are actually really expensive when they're new, at least as far as I know, comparatively speaking, especially if you get into luxury cars like European luxury cars like Mercedes, BMW and Audi.

In Australia, we used to have the Ford and Holden manufacturers here building the cars in Australia. They no longer do that. When they did that, though, the government put tax on any cars that were luxury cars, more than 60 thousand dollars. And, so you'll find that a lot of these cars from overseas, that are luxury cars, especially those from Europe, will be very expensive compared to other places in the world.

She also found that second-hand cars were incredibly cheap. In Brazil, car whether New or second-hand are, apparently, much more expensive, relatively speaking, than they are here. For instance, when I bought my second hand Ford Falcon that I got recently, I recently gave away, though, but when I bought that second hand, it was about 12 years old and it cost me three thousand dollars.

When I bought my first Holden wagon, again, it was about 18 years old and it cost me two and a half thousand dollars. So, it wasn't very much at all. So, there you go, in Australia, cars, if they're second hand, can be incredibly cheap.

Number two: cuts of meat. This is one that totally caught me by surprise. I had never thought about this, but the cuts of meat in Australia are very different from how they are in Brazil. One example was when I was looking up how to do Brazilian barbecues in Australia. I wanted to buy some meat and I wanted to try and do them authentically Brazil style, churrasco.

I tried to get the cut of meat for picanha, but picanha is a style of Brazilian barbecue where they buy the rump part of the beef, like, from the bull, right?. And they put salt on it. There's fat on the beef and they do it on a barbecue.

I tried to go and get this and I couldn't find it anywhere. I couldn't find the becoming a cut of meat at any different butchers that I went to. So, I had to specifically ask them to get the entire part of the cow that they normally chop up into different cuts and remove that part for me to then use because it actually for them, they would chop it up and use it as porterhouse steaks, which would cut through that slice of meat, usually, like this, as opposed to taking out the whole section.

The rump section and using that instead. So, I had no idea that the cuts of meat in Australia are very different from those in Brazil. And if you want to get the certain cuts of meat that you want to use from other cultures, other countries, you might have to go and specifically ask a butcher to cut them for you.

Number three: toilet paper. Toilet paper. So, I was aware that toilet paper isn't a universal thing when I went to Southeast Asia for the first time, I went to Indonesia where some of the motels and hotels would have toilet paper, because I guess they were used to foreigners from the West coming to Indonesia, but a lot of the time, they had a hole in the ground and a bucket of water that you would use to wash yourself.

Makes sense, but in Australia, we use toilet paper. One thing that was shocking to Kel was the fact that in Australia you can flush toilet paper down the toilet because in Brazil the sewage system isn't set up to be able to handle flushing of toilet paper.

So, instead of flushing it, you have to put it in a bin next to the toilet and empty that every day. So, there you go, toilet paper was on one of those strange things in Australia that you can flush down the toilet.

Number four: coffee culture in Australia. Any of you guys who have come to Australia and spent a significant amount of time in some of the big cities in particular, like Sydney and Melbourne, will know that we are mental, we are crazy about our coffee. We take that stuff seriously, there are probably hundreds of cafes in the CBD of Sydney and Melbourne alone.

The quality of the beans that are used, the variety of different coffees that you can get and the artisanry that is used, the skill with which people are trained up to make the coffee is pretty much as good as it ever gets anywhere in the world, at least I'm told, right.? I used to work in a cafe and that was one of the things they prided themselves most on, the quality of their coffee.

So, it may be a shock when you come to Australia that the coffee is very, very good. Not everywhere, but in a lot of places. Probably not very good if you go to Starbucks, because that's American style and Americans, they have their own way of doing coffee.

Number five, barbecues at camping grounds and at the beach. So, again, I grew up in Australia. I used to go camping all the time, several times a year with my parents. We would go to places in the bush, you, our forests, national parks, places like Wilsons Prom, Wilsons Promontory in Victoria. Every time you go to those places, they tend to be places where you can barbecue food, you can cook food. Quite often they have gas.

You might have to put some money in there to be able to use the gas, maybe you have to bring your own fuel for the barbecue, you know, there might be some places at camp sites where you have to make the fire yourself, but pretty much every campsite you go to will have some kind of barbecue for you to cook food.

And it's the same for a lot of beaches that have tourist spots where people come in large numbers and they want to have food. So, there's barbecues everywhere. This was something that Kel found really strange, and it wasn't the cultural norm in Brazil for you to go to camping grounds or to beaches and find places to just barbecue your own food. If you wanted to do that, you'd have to bring your, BYOB barbie.

In Australia, you don't have to.

Number six, and this is one that Brazilians always tell me whenever I meet them: our second hand culture in Australia is different from Brazil, probably elsewhere in the world as well. So, what happens if I have a couch in my house that I don't want anymore? I don't just throw it out. I don't just give it away to friends, although I could do that if you wanted. Quite often what will be done is it will be taken outside, put on the nature strip with some cardboard that says 'free', and so people know that if they see junk or chairs, TV's furniture, all that sort of stuff, if they see that in the nature strip out the front of someone's house, they know that it's free.

Someone can take that, that it's free to a good home, that anyone can come and pick that up and take it home. And we do that all the time. A lot of the stuff that we have in our house is a bought second hand online through places like Gumtree or Facebook, or we've seen it on the side of the road and thought, we don't want to waste that, we want to use it. So, let's just bring it home in and use it.

So, that's something you'll notice in Australia quite a lot when you drive around the streets. There'll be furniture on nature strips. There'll be second hand stuff and it's free to be picked up.

Number seven: drinking water from the tap. This was another one that shocked me quite a lot, because it's something I take for granted that the water in our water system that gets brought to our houses is drinkable, where you can drink the water out of the shower.

When you're having a bath, you can drink any of the water that comes out of the pipes in your house generally, right? Should be all good. That is not the case elsewhere in the world. Quite often when I was travelling in Southeast Asia, that would definitely not be something that foreigners like me should do because we would quite often end up with sickness, end up on the toilet, writing the porcelain throne for quite a few days with a digestive illness.

In Australia, it tends to be fine. We put chlorine in the water to kill everything. There's fluoride in there too for our teeth. So, that was something that really shocked me elsewhere in the world. You may not be able to drink out of the taps, I know that in Brazil they quite often have purifies for their water right next to their sinks in their kitchens.

In Australia, you won't see those things. They may be purifies on the taps themselves or people may have some kind of equipment in the fridge, you know, a jug that purifies the water, but generally anywhere in Australia that has flowing water that comes out of taps. It's fine to drink unless it says otherwise.

Number eight, and I'm totally guilty of this: leaving things unlocked. So, we leave in Ocean Grove, which is a seaside town down the coast, about an hour and half away from Melbourne.

And quite often I leave the doors unlocked in the house. I leave my car unlocked. It tends to be a very safe place, there's very little robbery, there's there's very little criminality taking place in Ocean Grove. Most places in Australia tend to be pretty safe and you won't see things like massive locks on doors, grills protecting windows and doors and people leaving their cars and their houses unlocked.

Don't get me wrong, I definitely lock it from time to time when I'm going away or I'm going out for a long period of time and no one's at home. But this was something that my wife Kel from Brazil found very strange, that you would just leave doors open or, you know, you would go to bed and have the gauze doors shot at night, which could just be opened to let air in, and she would find that very strange that they would not be locked, and also that you wouldn't lock your car.

Number nine: walking the streets at night. So, when I met my wife, I was living in Melbourne, in North Melbourne. And quite often I would be busy during the day studying, and then I would go to the gym, I would go and do Jiu-Jitsu, I would come home, and it may be 10 or 11 o'clock at night. I would go for a run or I'd go for a walk, listen to a podcast and just walk around the streets.

I would walk through some of the parks like Royal Park or Princes Park, and I'd be like, you know, it's not a problem. That was a massive no no for Kel. That was something that she would never, ever, ever do. Because in Brazil, it's relatively unsafe to walk around by yourself at night, especially in places like parks where there's no light. So, that was something that kind of shocked me as well. I was like, well, you know, it's Australia, it's pretty safe.

You can sort of walk around anywhere and it's, you know, you're fine. Obviously, we have our own fair share of crime and sometimes bad things do happen to people. But usually you can walk around at night, especially in somewhere, like a CBD or a city like Melbourne or Sydney, and you're perfectly safe.

So, that was something that she found very strange. That was a big culture shock for her when she found out that I would sometimes go for a walk around midnight throughout Melbourne, throughout the parks with music in my ears or listening to a podcast. You know, for an hour or so, and it was no big deal. But, yeah, there you go.

Number 10, guys. The very last one for this episode in Australia is that there is very little rubbish or littering in Australia compared to a lot of other countries. Culturally, this is a big no no. So, I cringe every time I see someone smoking who throws their cigarette butt on the ground because usually there's a bin within walking distance that they could just put the cigarette out and throw it in the bin.

The same with throwing newspapers or any kind of rubbish bottles, whatever it is on the ground. That tends to be a very big social no, no. You don't do that. You put it in the trash. We have bins all over the country in parks, on streets where you can throw your rubbish out. So, in Australia, littering it occurs, people definitely litter, but it is a social no no. You will quite often be yelled at, or people say something if you do that in front of people, ok?

So, that's it for this episode, guys. I hope you enjoyed it. Make sure to let me know down in the comments below if you have another piece of cultural shock. Another thing that shocked you about Australian culture when you came here, because I'm sure that I haven't included everything that is a bit shocking about Australian culture.

So, I'll see you in the comments, guys, and for everything else about Australia. Australian English history and culture, make sure to subscribe to my channel, press the notification button and also cheque out www.aussieenglish.com.au, where you'll get access to my podcast, my courses and all my other content related to Australia. Thanks for joining me and I'll chat to you soon!