OZ is a Land of Opposites

"One's destination is never a place but a new way of seeing things" - Henry Miller

-The seasons are opposite (i.e. It's summer in January, winter in June, it's strange to get used to)

-The further south you go in Australia, the colder it gets. The further north you go, the warmer it gets (since you're moving closer to the Equator)

-The toilets flush in the opposite direction due to the pull of gravity. In fact, a hurricane here is called a cyclone because it rotates in the clockwise direction (rather than counterclockwise like a hurricane). Cyclone Yasi stormed through Cairns the night before Kearse and I were to fly there. Yasi's winds got up to 189 miles per hour and sustained this speed for several hours. It's the biggest cyclone disaster in Australia in living history, nipping the heels of the Brisbane floods, the most treacherous floods the country has experienced.


-In the Blue Mountains, the towns are built up on the mountains. This is actually why Europeans (esp. Germans) are the tourists who get lost the most. In the European Alps, the towns are built in the valleys. If you get lost, you follow the river down into the valley to find the towns. In the bush, following a river will take you deeper and deeper into the bush, and further and further from any rescue.

-The AUS coins are sized differently than the US coins. In the US, the larger the amount, the larger the coin (for the most part), i.e. the quarter is bigger than the nickel. In AUS, the larger the amount, the smaller the coin. The 20 cent coin is as big as a US half dollar, and the 2 dollar coin is the size of a US penny! I feel like I'm going to lose so many two dollar coins...


-Because of the British influence, Aussies (and New Zealanders) drive on the left side of the road. They also walk on the left side of the sidewalk and pass on the right, rather than walking on the right like in the States. It's strange how it's so natural for me to drift to the right side of the sidewalk, and then I immediately barrel into hoards of Aussies and Asians, oops. You also have to look the opposite way when crossing the street. It's quite tricky!



And here is some brilliance from Bill Bryson:


"The world those first Englishmen found in 1770 was famously inverted- its seasons back to front, its constellations upside down- and unlike anything any of them had seen before even in the near latitudes of the Pacific. Its creatures seemed to have evolved as if they had misread the manual. The most characteristic of them didn't run or lope or canter, but bounced across the landscape. The continent teemed with unlikely life. It contained a fish that could climb trees; a fox that flew (it as actually a very large bat); crustaceans so large that a grown man could climb inside their shells."