Getting Started

After arriving and sitting a bit at the indoor soccer game, we were driven back to Mel and Jacobs townhouse. In Australia we live in the state of Queensland (the word “land” is pronounced heavily), in the city of Brisbane, and the suburb of Carina Heights. Mel and Jacob live about 10 minutes walk away in the suburb of Camp Hill. The addressing here is quite odd, as there are hundreds of suburbs and no real boundaries between them. Each suburb seems to be very small (about 2-4 square kilometres) and if you don’t know all of the suburbs it is quite difficult to navigate. Luckily, we brought our friend Bernie, the talking GPS with whom we would literally be lost without. As I have been looking forward to, we were driving on the left side of the road, with the driver on the right side of the car. This is very cool, but takes a bit more thought than I had anticipated. Later in my series, we’ll get into all things auto related.

One of the things I first noticed were the toilets, which do not have handles to flush, but instead two buttons right on top. One button is for a half flush and the other is for a full flush. You can guess when to use each button. It is true that Brisbane is currently in the middle of its worst drought in history, but even in spite of this the world outside of America is very concerned about saving water. The toilets do not fill with water, wasting possibly 4-5 litres each time you flush, but instead barely fill into the cavity at the bottom. When you flush it, there is no swirling (much to the dismay of my American friends who are interested in the direction of rotation) but gush water from the front and the rear at high volume for a short minute. 90% of toilets I have seen are made entirely out of plastic, including the seat.

Other than the bathrooms, Mel and Jacobs townhouse is much like home, except appliances like dishwashers are rare, clothes washers are smaller, clothes dryers are the lines for hanging in the backyard, and an average refrigerator is about half the size. Ducting is non-existent in Brisbane homes, and heaters / air conditioners are for the upper class. A few other random things I’ve noticed from homes in Brisbane: the walls are always painted with flat white paint, which is impossible to clean. Every home has crown moldings, every door and window has a screen / security door of the exact same style, built in robes (closets) aren’t regular, and 1 bathroom per 3 bedrooms is average. Every house has an electric tea kettle to quickly boil water for tea; nobody has a coffee machine of any sort. These are the things that are different inside a home, later I will venture outside. Stay tuned!