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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.
OK I wasn't sure if you knew every state had its own tourism dept as you had mentioned they were mostly private. And the US has not adapted all international common signage. True a blue i would be nice if unversally adopted, I've seen it in some places. But at least in the US they tend to stay open much later than in Oz.
Seeing a country by bus.. poor Tri. This is why I would never do a bus tour of any country or go on any group tour period. I like to mingle with the locals and figure things out. Turkey was the only country where I joined a tour. I did not feel that I was able to see how people actually lived until I got back to Istanbul and had a week to myself before catching a flight back to Kennedy. Come back and explore on your own!
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.
Yes, there's this definite reserve in Australians, like they're standing back warily wondering what you're going to do to them That's how my husband described it, like they were afraid of him. Once you get over that hump though, then no problem.
Interesting difference in moving to a new neighbourhood ... in all cases of neighbours coming over to introduce themselves to us when we first moved into the three different places we've lived in, they were all foreigners: English, Scots, South Africans, American, Kiwi. When we lived in Canada, you moved in, you had everybody around you come around and introduce themselves, sometimes bringing something like a casserole because they reckoned you were too busy unpacking to have time to cook.
All interesting points CC... I love the beach culture in Oz and the fact that most major cities (aside from Canberra) have access to decent beaches that you can swim or surf most months of the year (albeit sometimes with a wetsuit in the case of Melbourne or Hobart and the use of stinger suits up north)... but still.... it rocks
Jeebus. I just paid 99 cents a pound at my local supermarket.
Time to come back to NA.
A while back they were close to $20 a kilo! It was because the vast majority of our banana crops were decimated by Cyclone Yasi a year or so ago. For some reason that I haven't the energy to research, our government restricts the import of bananas from other countries.
ETA: The reason I haven't the energy to research banana imports, is that I'm watching the V8s at Philip Island. Given your screen-name, Wanneroo, I thought you'd be interested in that little snippet. It's a great race!
OK I wasn't sure if you knew every state had its own tourism dept as you had mentioned they were mostly private. And the US has not adapted all international common signage. True a blue i would be nice if unversally adopted, I've seen it in some places. But at least in the US they tend to stay open much later than in Oz.
Seeing a country by bus.. poor Tri. This is why I would never do a bus tour of any country or go on any group tour period. I like to mingle with the locals and figure things out. Turkey was the only country where I joined a tour. I did not feel that I was able to see how people actually lived until I got back to Istanbul and had a week to myself before catching a flight back to Kennedy. Come back and explore on your own!
Depends on the tour and who it is with, but they can have their advantages, especially going to a country for the 1st time.
But I find with many tours, especially a cross USA tour, you are hitting the well beaten path of well known places like LA, Vegas, Graceland, The Grand Canyon, NYC, etc and you are not really getting out and mingling with the locals and experiencing their local culture. It's probably like a lot of Americans that in Australia hit a few landmarks in Sydney, see the great barrier reef and Ayers Rock and declared they have "seen" Australia.
Good start but there is more to it.
I always tried on my trips down under to do a bit of the touristy stuff, but mostly to escape off that well trodden tourist path and see regular towns and regular people, places like Coonabarabran or Orange.
$10.99/kilo for bananas is highway robbery! but then again I'm not surprised.... I remember Oz to be extremely expensive the last time I visited and that was almost 8 years or so ago now.
Location: The western periphery of Terra Australis
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Originally Posted by Vichel
Yes, there's this definite reserve in Australians, like they're standing back warily wondering what you're going to do to them That's how my husband described it, like they were afraid of him. Once you get over that hump though, then no problem.
Interesting difference in moving to a new neighbourhood ... in all cases of neighbours coming over to introduce themselves to us when we first moved into the three different places we've lived in, they were all foreigners: English, Scots, South Africans, American, Kiwi. When we lived in Canada, you moved in, you had everybody around you come around and introduce themselves, sometimes bringing something like a casserole because they reckoned you were too busy unpacking to have time to cook.
Yes I can't imagine the average Australian doing that...In over 20 years of living here we barely have any contact with the neighbours.
Location: The western periphery of Terra Australis
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Originally Posted by minibrings
OK I wasn't sure if you knew every state had its own tourism dept as you had mentioned they were mostly private. And the US has not adapted all international common signage. True a blue i would be nice if unversally adopted, I've seen it in some places. But at least in the US they tend to stay open much later than in Oz.
Seeing a country by bus.. poor Tri. This is why I would never do a bus tour of any country or go on any group tour period. I like to mingle with the locals and figure things out. Turkey was the only country where I joined a tour. I did not feel that I was able to see how people actually lived until I got back to Istanbul and had a week to myself before catching a flight back to Kennedy. Come back and explore on your own!
I definitely will, no doubt about it! I did do some exploring on my own in LA, NY and Boston, so at least I did some independent travel. I had no complaints about the tour, but ideally I would like to spend more time in marvellous destinations like New Orleans or rural Virginia. It gave me a bit of a taste of each place, so now I know which places I'd like to spend more time, and which places I can skip in the future.
It certainly makes sense for tourist bureau's to open later, but so far in the US it seems they only open half to one hour later anyway than here. After hours backpackers and hotels can often give you basic info.
$10.99/kilo for bananas is highway robbery! but then again I'm not surprised.... I remember Oz to be extremely expensive the last time I visited and that was almost 8 years or so ago now.
It's gotten even worse since then. Bananas are unusually high due to cyclone damage earlier this year. I don't know who eats bananas these days but they're always in the stores and were even more expensive earlier in the year. They don't import to protect our farmers - because we grow bananas, importing them can introduce diseases to our crops. It's different if you don't grow bananas and import them as there's no local crop to put at risk.
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That's how my husband described it, like they were afraid of him. Once you get over that hump though, then no problem. 
It's a great race!
