A Guide for Americans Shopping in Australia

Because I can’t get hold of a used Concord, but am desperate to see all my American friends and family, I’m convinced you all need to hop on a plane and head Down here.

But I realise also that things are pretty different here, so I’ll tackle the first thing that will genuinely confuse you.  Well, maybe it’s the second thing – the first thing will be light switches that go opposite to what you are used to.  I cannot tell you how many times I prepared to leave a bright sunny room (the windows are much bigger here so the rooms tend to be brighter) and turned the light *on* when leaving.

Shopping.  More specifically, the money system used to shop.  Like the U.S., we have lots of annoying change.  Your wallet periodically becomes heavy enough to use as a weapon, and if it landed on anyone it would surely knock them out.  Although unlike America, coins are real money here, and if tipping were part of the culture in Australia, you could actually use them and not insult anyone.  The reason for both concepts is the $1 and $2 coins.  I suspect these were pushed through by vending machine lobbyists who were sick of counting small change, and festival organisers to ensure we paid at least a dollar for anything we donated to (“Gold Coin Donation.”)   And unlike the rest of the coins, they are shrouded in the same bizarre logic and the U.S. nickel and dime – the larger denomination is smaller than the lower one.  Frankly, I’m not a fan of dollar coins, because sifting through coins to give to the cashier takes longer than it would though paper bills, and it is always embarrassing to delay your fellow shoppers.  But you have to do this, otherwise you wallet becomes so heavy with metal that you can no longer move in forward direction.

Another difference in the coins, and hence shopping procedures, is that we do not have pennies.  Yes, you heard that correctly.  No pennies.  But we do have 10% tax on goods.  And, also unlike the U.S. tax is *exactly the same* everywhere.  And it is almost always included in the price, so there are no surprises. These two things actually make shopping easier.

Now some of you math nerds are scratching your heads and saying, “Wait a minute.  How can you function without pennies?  If you add a percentage tax to something, you will not come out with a 0 or 5 at the end of your figure every single time.  This simply can’t work!”  Well, I’m glad to say they came up with a solution, and no one has died prematurely because of it.  If you pay cash, they simply either round up or round down to the nearest 0 or 5.  So some days you pay a few cents less, and some days a few cents more, depending on what you’ve put in your shopping trolley.  If you prefer to pay using a plastic card, you get charged the exact amount. 

The actual bills are what I find make life really easy here, and why I wish they’d use $1 and $2 bills.   Some of you might be thinking, “More bills?  Then you have to look at each one individually and figure out what it is!”  But others of you might have guessed it:  our bills are different sizes.  AND different colours.  And made of plastic so if you accidentally run them through the wash they don’t disintegrate.  So it’s really easy to look at your wallet and figure out how much you’ve got in there, because in the case of the bills they got it right, and all of them go up in size as they increase in value.

Now, everything isn’t perfect Down Under, lest I give that impression.  There are two critical factors which keep us humble.  The first is the price of goods.  Paying $4.50 for coffee is *normal.* But second, and more dangerous one, is the Man-Eating Trolley.  Our shopping carts have all-way castors on all wheels.  At some point in time, someone somewhere said “let’s make trolleys more maneuverable in small spaces.”  In theory, this is great.  But the minute you have any sort of weight in the trolley, such as zero grams – or worse, any sort of surface that is not 100% level and smooth – you are doomed to hernias, scratched cars, and runaway groceries.  It is common to see people coming out of stores with trolleys flipping and flopping and angling in all directions, their owners ending up in the far reaches of the parking lot, never to be seen again.  Sadly, the inventor has never been found, possibly having been mowed down by the first production run.   Or maybe he was trying to wheel some goods out to the Concord to get them somewhere quickly, and ended up on a different plane.