Ten Surprising things about Brisbane/Australia

We emigrated to oz almost on a whim with no real idea of what to expect, heres some things that took us by suprise.


1. It gets dark early, even though its 25 degrees and feels like summer (its winter at the moment) it still gets dark between 5:00 and 5:30, but dawn is early 5:30am.

2. The locals think its cold, even though its 25 degrees, some locals think its cold and can be seen walking their dogs on the beach wearing coats while the crazy English family are swimming in the sea.

3. Wild parrots all over the place, You can make it obvious you are foreign by excitedly pointing out parrots and other colourful birds to your children and taking photos.

4. Giant Fruit Bats roam the skies at night, our first day out at the local park suddenly cut short by the sudden fall of night at 5:30 resulted in seeing several hundred odd looking crows flying low overhead, that turned out to be rather large fruit bats.

5. Its full of cars, coming from Scotland where the roads are relatively empty it was a surprise to find how busy the roads are. Every attempt to drive along the M1 from the north into brisbane has resulted in a 10 km traffic jam.

6. 4x4's rule the road. Every other car is a 4x4, big toyota landcruisers seem to be the most popular.

7. Petrol is cheap, really cheap. At $1.35 a litre its nearly half the price of the UK, allthough the price is rising fast, its gone from $1.35 to $1.55 in just the few weeks we have been here allthough it seems to be dropping again.

8. The night is noisy. Maybe we are just unluky but our nights are filled with the sounds of wild creatures tap dancing on our metal roof, even after having a possum removed from its cosy home in our loft in week 1.

9. Fatal snake bites. None of us have been bitten/stung/eaten alive by snakes, spiders, jellyfish, sharks or crocodiles. Infact apart from spiders none of the above had made an appearance and even the spiders we have seen, while big are probably not life threatening, probably...

10. Its not cheap. The cost of living is supposedly cheaper in Australia (so everyone says) but you have to shop arround to get a bargain and a lot of things are just downright more expensive than the UK.