Living costs, cellulite, and romantic gestures...

I didn't want to bring up the issue of living costs in my first post from Oz -- it seemed a tad déclassé to mention money so early on; but now that -- five weeks in -- I'm on my second, I can restrain myself no longer.

The cost of living here is ridiculously expensive, and for the first couple of weeks I wandered around the shops feeling like Alice strolling through Wonderland -- wide-eyed and bewildered -- since the prices seemed as fantastical as if they'd been dreamed up by the Mad Hatter and March Hare themselves; over a pot of something far stronger than tea.

'A bag of apples? Nine dollars seems fair!'

Having lived in three different countries, nay continents, in  the past 12 months, I'm well placed to make cost comparisons between them and I must say, the UAE wins hands down when it comes to being the most affordable for food, furniture, and of course petrol - naturellement, (although rent in Abu Dhabi borders on the farcical and of course who can put a price on free speech and liberty? And we mustn't forget that the reason for such low costs is the institutionalised slavery which passes for a labour market, leaving the victorious bargain-hunter feeling a little sullied if they stop to consider this fact for a minute), and Ireland suddenly seems dirt cheap for rent and clothing in particular, and I'm pining for the fact that 10 quid will buy dinner and a bottle of wine in Aldi if you seriously lower your standards (it has been known....)

And yes, I get it -- Australia, and Perth in particular, is pretty much the remotest place in the world and therefore shipping costs are sky high; but considering this place is so darn massive, and the population relatively well-educated, I don't understand why they don't have a go at growing their own fruit and veg, or building a factory or two and having a stab at manufacturing their own  ketchup or light bulbs or mandatory baby car-seats (absolute bottom of the market price $150 going all the way up to $600!) so that they don't have to charge the bollox out of everyone to have these things imported? (Mental note, get in touch with the Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research and share my thoughts with him - he will no doubt be extremely grateful for my insights).

And Ikea, that last bastion of hope for the true bargain hunter, is three and sometimes four times more expensive, although it pales in comparison to the high street home stores which are the cost equivalent of popping into Brown Thomas's for your kettle or chest of drawers; even if they do look as if they came from Argos.  All this means that there is a thriving second-hand market here with dozens of buy and sell websites and facebook pages, through which I myself was forced to buy several household items -- including my fridge -- although I can't shake the feeling that someone may have died in it....

Thank god for Target and K Mart, or I'd have to resort to second hand tea-towels...

And just as we Irish scrambled to gain a foothold on the property ladder a decade ago, so too are the Australians in the thrall of the elusive 'home ownership' at present, and there is an estate agent on every street flogging over-priced, prefabricated and air-conditioned, tin-roofed shoe boxes, doomed to be worth half what they were bought for a decade hence if my feeble grasp on macro-economics is anything to go by (and it isn't).

The Body Beautiful....

The Aussies are curiously health obsessed I've noticed, and there are dozens of health and beauty magazines available covering everything from diet to positive thinking, and you'll find a gym or yoga studio on every corner.  It seems to have paid off; the youth here are uniformly slim and good-looking -- like a tanned, sun-bleached haired master race -- and cellulite doesn't seem to exist, which is curious since only the very young or the very thin seem to avoid it in Ireland, and sometimes not even then. It must be something to do with the cold weather, repressed catholic guilt, and the prolific tights-wearing among the Irish female population. It seems, as I suspected all along, that the nuns were wrong: baring your legs is not a sin, but covering them up most certainly is.

Hot pants - the answer to the scourge of cellulite in Ireland?

And skin cancer is a big obsession here too, with clinics devoted to the treatment of it dotted all over the place. Workers wear sun hats with helmets atop and long sleeves, and children are obliged to wear hats and sunscreen to school. And yet, every now and then you will spot a withered, mahogany-brown, sun-worshipper -- impervious to the warnings -- browner than any Caucasian has a right to be; like a walking, talking melanomic time-bomb.

And finally....

Tomorrow is Saint Valentine's day and I fear for DH. You see I'm not certain that the petrol stations here in Australia actually sell flowers (and where on earth else would you find them?); add in the fact that there is no Lidl or Aldi for the obligatory 'luxury' chocs, he's really going to struggle to make the day special for me (a day which celebrates a match-making priest who suffered an horrific but ultimately unsuccessful stoning followed by an efficacious beheading as a result of his enthusiasm for the sacrament of matrimony) although if he actually asked for my opinion, a chance to pluck my eyebrows uninterrupted or an offer to take over bum-wiping duties for a week (five-year-old boy still refuses to do it himself....sigh), would make my day very special indeed. I can after all, buy my own chocs.

And so concludes today's flimsy anthropological analysis; I'm off now to see if I can find some hot pants that don't require I take out a small mortgage to buy, or Alice's shrinking potion to fit in to....

I guess I'm not in Kansas anymore....

I'll be honest, for my first few days in Australia I languished in the dungeons of despair and felt as if I'd landed in one, giant, flat, characterless suburb, punctuated by the occasional functional shopping centre or empty park -- the UAE with a better finish. And with nakedness.  Lots of nakedness.  It's curious; proper clothing seems to have been entirely dispensed with here, even shoes in many cases; and people walk around in shorts so tiny they barely cover their underwear; which I doubt they wear -- it's probably too much trouble...

This, in my book, is definitely preferable to the 'please don't offend by showing any actual skin' brigade who so militantly patrolled the chat forums and malls of the UAE to ensure that the disrespectful were promptly put in their place (some statistics: I was asked on four occasions to cover up during my three years in the UAE -- twice by local, be-hijabed women; twice by older, middle-aged, grey, English women).

And the Boden frocks and skirts which I so rebelliously flaunted, sans cardigan, as I went about my business in Al Hamra, now serve as an invisibility cloak here in Oz, where I look about as sexy as Dame Edna.  Actually I sort of miss all the intrusive male attention I received in the UAE; here in Oz I simply fade into the background in comparison to all the honey-limbed hotties as they stroll around, barefooted and lithe.  

"Ah, middle age; I've been expecting you....."

Certainly there are similarities with the UAE: this is a relatively young country (Western Australia in particular) struggling to establish itself -- just as Um Al Quawain or Ras Al Khaimah would laughingly refer to themselves as cities, so too will you see 'City of Wanneroo' or 'City of Joondalup' signs as you drive through these areas  -- protesting too much of their city status -- which really aren't cities at all, just vast areas, filled with roads and Lego-brick houses; besides, I thought a city could only claim such status if it could boast a cathedral? Or did I make that up....

Suffice to say I wasn't exactly diggin' the place, which led to some deeply unpleasant self-analysis: If I hate it here, and I was less than enchanted with the UAE by the time I left, surely there is a common denominator here -- ME! 

Then something happened.  Firstly, I recovered from jet-lag; secondly, and more importantly, we drove up into the Perth hills one hot, lazy, sunny afternoon, and explored the beautiful and evocatively named villages of Kalamunda, Gooseberry Hill, Helena Valley, Swan Valley, Darlington; and I suddenly realised I could live here -- up in the hills among the woods and wineries -- and we found a house on legs, tucked away behind the trees, shortly afterwards.


Of course within days it was clear that I hadn't really thought it through and was now sharing a living space with a multitude of creatures -- most of which had  more than two legs and were not in my legal custody -- and WHICH CAN ACTUALLY KILL YOU; meaning I can't really go outside or do anything more than make a run for the car with the baby under my arm whenever I'm forced to leave the house.

But the fact remains, the hills and indeed foothills  (the chocolate-box pretty Guildford with its federation architecture could be easily mistaken for any small, old worldy English town) of Perth are breathtakingly beautiful.

Each morning I wake to a mild hangover (the wine is irresistibly good and cheap), the eerily human-sounding squawk of the ravens and the chattering merriment of the kookaburra's from the surrounding trees, and I truly feel I'm in among the natives (although we're pretty sure the neighbours, upon whom we've never laid eyes,  are possibly in the possession of a couple of chainsaws and a cadaver or two in the basement). And although I know there are at least twenty creatures within spitting distance who would happily kill me for sport, I am content to be living in such an unusual and beautiful environment -- at least for now....

But there's something strange about going through culture-shock in a culture which has been largely based around the culture from which you've come and in fact I've met as many Brits and Scots (not as many Irish as I had imagined) as I have Aussies here and the place is peppered with 'ye olde English sweet shoppe' and such like, as ex-pats clamber for a taste of home, happy to experience it through nostalgia rather than returning to the drizzle and hoodie-wearing thugs.

Oddly enough, the Australians have more in common with the Brits and Irish than I realised -- despite their laid back demeanor, they are incredibly polite and any minor collision at a door or in a shop queue is as likely to result in a barrage of 'sorry's' as a Hugh Grant movie marathon, complete with an Elton John soundtrack....

And they use their cars as a form of self-expression with personalised number plates such as 'COCK5' and 'POOPIE' (I kid you not), or the dubious phenomenon of 'My Family' stickers, where each family member, or pet, is represented by their own character stuck onto the back window of the car.  I of course immediately went out and purchased some of these although I did have the passing doubt that I might be inadvertently advertising the gender and general age-group of my kids to any potential paedophiles out there.... ah what the hell, they're cute, I'll risk it!

DH got the surfer dad sticker only because the handyman dad  was out of stock....