I'm Australian. AMA

[TwistTwoo]

I live in Australia and would be happy to answer any questions you have about it. Things like:

• The weather
• Housing
• Schooling
• Healthcare
• Politics
• Dangerous animals - are they that dangerous and do you come across them often?
• Jobs
• etc.

What size is the biggest spider you’ve ever seen in the wild? I’d love to visit Australia but I couldn’t cope with the spiders and other dangerous animals.

2L of milk is about £5. A meal out for two (not alcohołic drinks) would be about £51, conservatively.

A 2-bed flat in Sydney can sell for £388,342 and a 3-bedroom house with a pool in my area £776,843 or more. Sydney is crazy!

I do!

Is there a shortage of any trades? Electric or plumbing for example? What are the highest paying jobs in Aus?

This is interesting OP! It’s been a while since I’ve read anything about Australia but I have a hankering to reread Bill Bryson now

How is your skin, re sun damage etc? Are parents really careful with their kids, at school and so on? I know you can’t really compare if to others if you haven’t lived abroad but I wonder if people eg in the UK actually age more quickly in the face as we are maybe not used to being careful? Sorry for the shallow question

Also what are your best cultural venues - galleries, museums etc - that you would recommend?

The biggest spider Iʼve seen would be the harmless huntsman. You wonʼt really come across anything dangerous on a holiday. I live here and rareły do. I did squash five redback spiders and their egg sacs yesterday, but thatʼs uncommon. They were underneath an outdoor table I was cleaning - crevices are a favourite of theirs. Once you know things like that, youʼre fine.

Just read they can have up to a 5 inch leg span! I think I’d pass out if a came across one but you must get used to it.

Iʼm not sure about trades, but engineering is one of the highest-paid and in-demand jobs, and any biotech and science.

Not at all shallow! We are very used to skincare from very young. I have used suncream and moisturiser since a was a teenager until now (50), and I still have a little sun damage on my neck and chest. I have good skin otherwise - few wrinkles, but tat could be genes.

All the museums and galleries in Canberra are wonderful. The Art Gallery of NSW is not to be missed too if you are ever in Sydney.

Guess if you were central coast not western Sydney you wouldn't get it.

Did you vote in the recent indigenous voice referendum. Were you surprised by the outcome?

You've lived all your life in Australia. Is that true for your parents and grandparents too? If your ancestors emigrated to Australia, do you know/are you interested in knowing where they originally came from? And, if so, do you still have links to the country/countries where they were born?

Or perhaps you aren't bothered about the past - you just regard yourself as Australian (rather than Australian with Irish roots, Greek roots, etc.)?

OP thank you for making this thread. it has been a lifelong dream for me to travel to Australia.... I have been waiting until I can take a few weeks off to do it properly. few questions for you:

1. what is a good amount of time to cover the whole country? is 2 weeks enough?
2. I'm scared of the animals.... how likely am I to die on this trip? I do want to visit the rainforest in the North and see cassowaries in the wild.... is there anything I can do/read to reassure myself?

Am loving this thread OP. I lived in Sydney over 32 years ago and absolutely loved it. Has Sydney changed much over the years? My son is going to Melbourne in July . How does it compare to Sydney.
He is an ecologist,are there ecology jobs in Australia? I want to go with him .Haven’t been invited! Best years of my life before having my children.

I think you're underplaying those temperatures. I lived there for a year and temperatures in Sydney frequently went into the late 30's and that was 25 years ago! I've got a friend living there and she often tells me what the temperature is and it's closer to 40 than 30 that's for sure.

Climate change is already hitting Australia very hard, the fires, the floods, not sure how they can really be underplayed...

Two weeks no where near enough if you want to see it in any depth whatsoever. It's a huge country and a helluva long way to fly just for a fortnight, you'd have barely recovered from the jet lag! If it's a trip of a lifetime I really think you need at least a month.

Oh and the animals are fine, just be mindful of kicking logs or disturbing piles of leaves etc. If you're camping, don't leave your boots outside the tent 😏

We get pademelons in our garden. They're a type of wallaby so smaller than a kangaroo. Very cute but they eat the plants

I have a cousin who lives just outside Sydney, and he said he had temperatures of 44-46 a few days earlier this year (in January, I think).

Sydney has a sub tropical climate so warm and humid. It doesn’t tend to have the temperature extremes of other parts of Australia. Yes it can hit early 40’s but this is unusual. Rainfall is high.

Sharks and salties (saltwater crocodiles). How often do you see them? It shocked me once (a few years ago) that I think a man was fishing or something, there was a flood of a river and he went up a tree (I think) and a saltie was there and got him. I mean surely you know about that, right? That they're there and they can be deadly.

That's less than London prices though.