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Location: The western periphery of Terra Australis
24,544 posts, read 56,068,476 times
Reputation: 11862
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Quote:
Originally Posted by minibrings
Incorrect. The main tourist offices are run by states, just like in Oz. You also have local tourist boards, just like Oz. Every state has a tourism board website where you can order (free) brochures and maps, or they allow you to download. I just downloaded tourism books for several states to my ipad. There is also a national web site, just like Oz: Discover America Vacations, Hotels, Restaurants, Packages & More
And just like Oz, each state pretty pretty much runs the show from a local perspective. When you cross borders on the main interstate you will find welcome centers. If you had had a chance to had driven a car in the US you would have seen signage off the interstate as well as the roads into the main cities/towns. Just like, Oz NOT EVERY TOWN has a tourism office. The signage is either a green sign or brown sign. Some places DO use the blue i sign. We may not use the standard blue i symbol, but its not Australia, you can't expect everything in the US to work just like in Oz; when I lived in Oz, I did not expect things to be the same as in the US. thats the beauty of exploring other countries, you have to throw out what you expect to see, based on what you know and just go with the flow.
Yes I'm aware each state has it's own tourism department, but what I meant was anywhere you go in Australia it's easy to find visitor info centres marked with the 'i' sign. It just makes it easy to find.
Yes, it's probably because I wasn't driving around and everything was organised as part of the tour. I didn't expect every town to have a tourism office, but even in New York I only saw the Time's Square info centre which surprisingly had very little actual helpful information. The toilets proved useful, though.
We did the opposite move - from Melbourne to Toronto earlier this year.
Although we lived in Aus for over a decade, I found I was not unhappy to leave it.
1) High price of living and food
2) Serious urban decay
3) Ultimately quite boring after 11 years.
While we are still getting used to life in Canada, I found so many unique things here:
1) Open front yards where people greet each other and kids play sport in the street (never ONCE saw that in Melbourne or any other place in Aus). Saw a father and older teenage son throwing a ball in the street yesterday. Fantastic
2) Fully finished basements. Yes - they basically turn your house into a 3 storey home and you can chuck the kids down there with the PS3 and ignore them for the day
3) The amount of unique FREE stuff here. Every single weekend there is something or some festival going on. Majority of things are free entry (Air show, food festivals etc) or they have a minimal/token cost. It is substantially cheaper for a family to do fun things.
4) My grocery costs are less than 50% of what we were paying in Aus
5) We actually like getting the fruits and veg from all over the world and so what if the bananas come from Mexico - they taste fine and we only pay about $1.20kg.
6) Best of all - love hopping on a plane and being in downtown New York in 2-3 hours!
1) Open front yards where people greet each other and kids play sport in the street (never ONCE saw that in Melbourne or any other place in Aus). Saw a father and older teenage son throwing a ball in the street yesterday. Fantastic!
You lived in Australia for a decade and never saw anything like that
We did the opposite move - from Melbourne to Toronto earlier this year.
Although we lived in Aus for over a decade, I found I was not unhappy to leave it.
1) High price of living and food
2) Serious urban decay
3) Ultimately quite boring after 11 years.
While we are still getting used to life in Canada, I found so many unique things here: 1) Open front yards where people greet each other and kids play sport in the street (never ONCE saw that in Melbourne or any other place in Aus). Saw a father and older teenage son throwing a ball in the street yesterday. Fantastic 2) Fully finished basements. Yes - they basically turn your house into a 3 storey home and you can chuck the kids down there with the PS3 and ignore them for the day
3) The amount of unique FREE stuff here. Every single weekend there is something or some festival going on. Majority of things are free entry (Air show, food festivals etc) or they have a minimal/token cost. It is substantially cheaper for a family to do fun things.
4) My grocery costs are less than 50% of what we were paying in Aus
5) We actually like getting the fruits and veg from all over the world and so what if the bananas come from Mexico - they taste fine and we only pay about $1.20kg.
6) Best of all - love hopping on a plane and being in downtown New York in 2-3 hours!
Open front yards are the norm now in all new housing estates, and have been so for about 15 years I believe.
Front fences are a thing of the past in newer houses.
We are building a new house next year, and I don't think front fences are even allowed.
Only older houses in Sydney, Melbourne etc still have them - which there are still plenty of.
Houses are certainly different to North America, things like basements and attics - are quite rare.
I looked at a house earlier this year, and it was advertised as having a ""teenagers retreat"' - it turned out to be a dug cave out next to the garage, and stunk of lawnmower fuel!
It looked more like Josef Fritzl's dungeon than a retreat.
DanielSA1775, we lived in Melbourne SE suburbs (Carnegie) and in the 8 years we lived in our home, we never even saw most of the people who lived directly around us. Everyone was quick to drive into their garage and shut the door behind them. All the homes had a fenced-in front yard which just cut you off from your neighbour. As Derek40 points out however, the new estates have different planning rules which is great.
Over here in suburban Toronto, it is quite common for people to put benches, chairs and tables on their front porches, sit and have a coffee or read and just chat outside. The neighbours next to us and across from us do so regularly. Others open their garage doors, put plastic chairs in the garage and sit there until all hours, just having a talk and messing with power tools LOL.
Having a basement is fantastic - you must miss THAT bit, ColdCanadian??
What amazed us when we started looking for a house to buy was the the garage and the basement areas are NOT taken into account when describing how big the house is. We said we wanted a house that was about 2500sqft - and landed up with a 3800sqft home because the basement alone was about 900sqft and the garage was another approx 400sqft!!! It's like getting 3 floors for the price of 2, ha ha.
Oh, and many banks stay open until 10pm and also open on Sundays
I agree with Bekky, it's a very different vibe here as far as front yard people activity. You have to live in Canada to understand it and experience the difference. There's a much greater chance of kids playing out front in a Canadian neighbourhood, like a street hockey game or throwing a ball, than here. Same for neighbours just hanging out front. I've experienced it myself. It's just different. Canadians seem to be more openly friendly whereas many Aussies have an initial wariness and hold back introducing themselves to strangers. Non-Aussies can interpret that as unfriendliness.
Courts/cul-de-sacs might be an exception for front yard activity but any straight-through road is a different world. I've lived on both types of roads here. I think a lot of it has to do with the aggro drivers who have no respect for residential areas and use residential roads as their personal speedways. 50kph? lol! Just try going that here and you'll be aggressively tailgated, so don't even think about letting your kids anywhere out front, drivers won't slow down for anything. I hated the last road we lived on for that. Just the arrogance many drivers displayed to people trying to back out of their driveways, cross the road, or to kids riding their bikes. It wasn't a main thoroughfare of any sort either, just treated like one.
God, I miss basements! lol! In our last Canadian house there was a room where we all learned to rollerblade it was so big!
Bananas have now "dropped" down to $10.99/kilo here in Perth. I'm still not buying any as I hate being ripped off, screw 'em.
We're heading back to Canada ourselves soon. It's been great but it's not our cup of tea.
Location: The western periphery of Terra Australis
24,544 posts, read 56,068,476 times
Reputation: 11862
Quote:
Originally Posted by danielsa1775
You lived in Australia for a decade and never saw anything like that
I recall playing cricket or havinig a kick to kick on a quiet suburban street, but that was awhile ago...it's not the smartest thing in the world to do, but hey we were kids. It's definitely becoming less common, I think.
Location: The western periphery of Terra Australis
24,544 posts, read 56,068,476 times
Reputation: 11862
Quote:
Originally Posted by Vichel
I agree with Bekky, it's a very different vibe here as far as front yard people activity. You have to live in Canada to understand it and experience the difference. There's a much greater chance of kids playing out front in a Canadian neighbourhood, like a street hockey game or throwing a ball, than here. Same for neighbours just hanging out front. I've experienced it myself. It's just different. Canadians seem to be more openly friendly whereas many Aussies have an initial wariness and hold back introducing themselves to strangers. Non-Aussies can interpret that as unfriendliness.
Courts/cul-de-sacs might be an exception for front yard activity but any straight-through road is a different world. I've lived on both types of roads here. I think a lot of it has to do with the aggro drivers who have no respect for residential areas and use residential roads as their personal speedways. 50kph? lol! Just try going that here and you'll be aggressively tailgated, so don't even think about letting your kids anywhere out front, drivers won't slow down for anything. I hated the last road we lived on for that. Just the arrogance many drivers displayed to people trying to back out of their driveways, cross the road, or to kids riding their bikes. It wasn't a main thoroughfare of any sort either, just treated like one.
God, I miss basements! lol! In our last Canadian house there was a room where we all learned to rollerblade it was so big!
Bananas have now "dropped" down to $10.99/kilo here in Perth. I'm still not buying any as I hate being ripped off, screw 'em.
We're heading back to Canada ourselves soon. It's been great but it's not our cup of tea.
Interesting, so in that regard Canadians are more like Americans. I always thought Canadians had the same reserve, initial reluctance to engage as Aussies did. Of course you can't generalise any one group, but I agree it seems that Australians as a whole are so used to having their own private space they like to keep a distance between themselves and strangers.
^^ And you can expect to get tourist info even at 5:30pm.
I forgot things closed early in Oz. When I first moved to NH, I pulled at the state information center late in the evening and was surprised the desk was manned! They helped me find a room for me for the night and gave me written directions. I thought what a nice way to welcome a new resident.
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