1. First and foremost: birds are pests. In Brisbane, and especially on campus, ibises are EVERYWHERE. And they are shameless. It's totally normal to have one hop up on your table and steal (or try to steal) your food (yes, this has happened to me twice now).
2. Turkeys aren't rare here. At home it's extremely unlikely to see a wild turkey milling around. Here, brush turkeys are all over campus--usually digging and kicking loose dirt on you because they don't care about your personal space or hygiene. I'm currently covered in a fine layer of my university's dirt because one of our friendly neighborhood turkeys decided to dig a hole next to the table where I was sitting.
3. The sun hurts. It doesn't matter how much SPF 50+ you put on in the morning, if you're out in the sun and you've got the fair skin of someone who's just come from a winter season spent indoors, you will get sunburned. After visiting the Gold Coast this weekend, I'd be lying if I said my shoulders aren't the color of freshly picked strawberries right now.
4. The tropics are hot and humid--and everyone hates the heat. I figured most Aussies would be used to the climate (because, you know, they live here), but it looks like most people avoid the heat when they can (air conditioning is everyone's best friend) and curse the average temperature (86 degrees F) the rest of the time. Self note: return to middle school arithmetic and learn how to calculate Celsius--and the rest of the metric system while I'm at it since, you know, the U.S. is one of the few, the proud, the only places that doesn't use it.
5. Spiders and bugs--even if you can't see them, they're probably there. I used to have a terrible fear of anything insect-related and now I'm beginning to get used to living with them. That's not to say that I like them (I'll probably burst into tears the first time I see a huntsman), but I accept that they're here and there's nothing I can really do about it. I killed my first Australian spider last night as it was scuttling across my bed...and I didn't scream(!) (although I'll admit there was a brief millisecond of internal panic).
6. You'll hear a lot of weird sounds--they're probably possums and geckos (also toads). Despite the size of the Australian geckos I've seen, they make incredibly loud sounds. They're probably about 3 inches long at most, but they're as loud as some of the birds I hear at every waking (and sleeping) hour of the day. That rumbling on your roof? Yeah, that's probably a possum.
7. Lizards are pretty commonplace. You know the kind you can usually buy in an exotic pet store? Yeah, they're everywhere. I almost stepped on one on campus because the little git had his 900 meter-long tail across the pathway.
8. Australia's public transit beats America's twice over. It's a bit more expensive (as is everything here), but the buses, trains and ferries run reliably and frequently and are incredibly easy to navigate.
9. Brisbane (and Sydney) are a lot cleaner than the big U.S. cities. Granted, both are quite a lot smaller than places like New York and Chicago, but whatever the Aussie government is doing to keep up these places...like a middle school yearbook inscription "don't ever change".
10. Aussie barbecue is nothing like southern BBQ. This is what I think of when I think of barbecue (ahh, home). This is what Australians mean when they say barbecue. It's not bad, it's just not as good as Lexington-style pulled pork (sorry 'bout it).
11. Just go with it. Whatever it is, whether it's a bird trying to steal your food, wrapping a non-venomous snake around your shoulders (which is, in my opinion, the weirdest sensation on the planet) or trying to slackline with random surfers on a beach (harder than it looks, people), life will be much more comfortable if you learn to adopt the Jeff Spicoli outlook on life.
I look calmer than I feel tbh.Until next time, here's a kangaroo punching out a drone...because Australia.
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