Life in Australia

Australian Cuisine and Some Foods I’ve Managed to Avoid thumbnail

Those of you who are regular readers of Australia and New Zealand magazine will know that I no longer write a monthly article for them. My final piece for them, which appeared back in February 2018, was about Australian cuisine. Just to be clear though, before we push on, I’m no foodie and I can’t [...]

Moving to New Zealand Instead of Australia thumbnail

As you probably know, there is a great deal of rivalry between Australians and New Zealanders. It’s mainly in sport, which is most obvious with the Bledisloe Cup; the annual rugby league battle between the Wallabies and the All Blacks. Australia normally comes off second best in that one, to much gnashing of teeth here [...]

Magazine

It shocks me that I have been writing posts on this blog for over 11 years now, and I’ve never written one specifically about RSL’s. Never too late, as they say. I wrote this article some time ago, late in 2017, and it appeared in Australia and New Zealand magazine for their winter addition of [...]

Feeling Tense? Wash Away Your Brexit Anxiety in under Four Minutes thumbnail

On 23 June, 2016, the UK voted to leave the EU. Me, I was lapping up the sun in Airlie Beach as I enjoyed a Queensland coastal road trip. On 29th of March, 2017, Prime Minister Theresa May triggered Article 50, giving the government two years to prepare for the UK’s departure from the EU. [...]

EFTPOS – The Australian Cashless Culture thumbnail

“Can you lend me a fiver?” “Do you take EFTPOS?” Whenever I asked to borrow a fiver in England, I never once received that response. I won’t here in Australia either, because nobody refers to anything as a fiver. Anyway, here’s an article I wrote for Australia and New Zealand magazine which appeared in their [...]

Faulty Goods and Australian Consumer Law: Meet the ACCC thumbnail

In the 10 years that we’ve lived in Australia, we’ve bought quite a bit of stuff. Furniture, electrical goods, white goods, beds, houses, cars, all sorts of stuff. As anybody who buys stuff knows, sometimes things go wrong. Of all the stuff we’ve bought, things have gone wrong on several occasions, and by and large [...]

English Premier League (EPL) in Australia thumbnail

Yes, let’s talk about my favourite subject, football. I wrote this article for Australia and New Zealand magazine some time ago, in fact it would probably have been around June 2017 and it appeared in August 2017 in their magazine. Right at the start of the new football season. Of course, the season is nearly [...]

Amazon in Australia – 3 Months Post Launch thumbnail

It would have been some time in 2016 when Amazon announced it would be coming to Australia to sell physical products in addition to the already available digital books. 2017 was filled with rumours of an impending launch throughout the year. The rumours weren’t just about the launch though, there was much talk about the [...]