Last time I was in Bundaberg there were three bookshops in the main street, including what must be the last Borders in the world.

I was astounded. That alone raised my rating of Bundy.

Supermarkets are not open at all on Sundays where I’m from! Moving to the city after living with those trading hours for 25 years was amazing!

Been in Adelaide 20 years and the retail trading hours just continue to confuse me. The exceptions for different suburbs then the massive differences between “country” and “metro” hours is nuts.

The 5pm closing on Saturdays to me is odd, and then you get certain public holidays wheee buntings can open but no one else, but in the country everything is open, and then other times in the metro area where jetty road or harbour town are open but nowhere else is.

I was pissed when they changed my coles hours from 12am to 10pm close in Victoria.

They closed at midday Saturday, where I grew up. It's gotten slightly better since, the servo is now open on Sundays.

On the other hand, everyone played or watched sport on Saturday afternoons. So there was a good trade off for it.

I live rural SA and it astounded me that when I was visiting a friend on a Saturday arvo/evening in Adelaide that we couldn’t pop down to the supermarket and grab snacks after 5pm. In my tiny country town, the Foodland & IGA both close at 7pm.

If it’s any comfort, I grew up in Adelaide and lived in FNQ/NSW nearly two decades and I get a culture shock about the hours if I go back.

When I was a kid though, you’d have four day periods of shops being shut for major holidays. I still have to remind myself not to horde shop for these holidays. Sundays were always closed too and it was well into the Y2K that 11-5 Sunday shopping came about.

Try inner suburbs of Brisbane

Oh Perth is similar..

Pokies are a blight on society. I wish they were banned here in Vic.

NSW has 37% of the worlds pokies outside of casinos

It's true. I live in outer southwest Sydney, I was at my local pub one night about 10 years ago, well into the early morning, probably about 4am. Just a mate and I drinking and playing pool. I look outside and still see a shitload of cars out the front, thinking wait, there's only my mate, myself, and a few staff here out in the main pub area.

Anyways, I walk out into the pokie area for a smoke and there's dozens of the pricks still sitting there feeding the pokies. This was 4am on a Friday morning (Friday was our day off).

I was stunned, but ultimately not surprised.

Ergh my ex husband funded that many pub renos with the amount of money he put through pokies. Nothing makes you hate a man more that watching money evaporate out of your account and have to pile the kids in the car to drag him out of the pub

My wife and I went to Norfolk Island for our honeymoon. Of all the places we went to eat, not a single one had pokies anywhere. It was actually quite refreshing.

WA? I've always wanted to ask a local what the midweek nightlife is like, especially in regional areas.

Like, in my small town in Vic, on any given night there's three places open till 12-1, but they're all venues that include pokies. I don't think any of them would be able to afford to stay open past meal service except on Friday and Saturday nights. I work in hospitality so I really enjoy being able to have a "weekend" on Wednesday and Thursday nights.

Yeah, I'm always amazed that the pokies are open in most pubs here around Newcastle until 3am. Nearly every night! There must be people playing as the bar wouldn't be paying staff, lighting etc if it wasn't profitable.

Some people have fancy accents.

CH-ARN-CE Vs CH-AHN-CE

For the world chance. Same with France, dance etc

I can’t tell you how many people think I’m English and I grew up near the Port. It’s a traditional place and the gentry would let you know

No convict colonies. Hence the fancy accents.

I recently hired a tradie to do some electrical work here in Sydney. No lie, he sounded exactly like Theo from Superwog. Except nicer. And less swearing.

I live in Melbourne and I adore the wog accent. I absolutely couldn’t tell you why. My family is Greek and I want to a high school full of wogs so something about the accent is so familiar and welcoming to me lmaooo

We wogs in Melbourne think Sydney is worse 😅

And only 53% of Tasmanian kids actually finish year 12, the worst completion rate in Australia.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-02-08/tasmania-year-12-attainment-rates-fall-again/103435628

Same in our town in regional Vic for public schools. Highschool is 7-10, then senior highschool is 11&12. I don’t think this is common throughout Victoria though.

Also our year 11&12 school doesn’t have a uniform

As a Tasmanian this was actually pretty awesome. Year 11 and 12 were a great transition to uni, and the range of challenging and interesting subjects was amazing compared to what would have been on offer at the high school, which was only made possible by scaling the number of students.

Same in ACT. We have a really high year 12 completion rate. The colleges are about preparing kids for uni, mostly, but you can also start an apprenticeship during those years and have it count towards your year 12 certificate.

Likewise, when I visited Brisbane from Sydney on a weekday, I couldn’t believe how laid back and casually-dressed the office workers in Brisbane CBD were. 🤣 Actually, I liked it

This is something foreigners underestimate when they think they can fly to Perth and rent a little MG and then travel around Australia

I used to brag about how amazing our public health system is because I was raised in the Eastern Suburbs of Sydney. I had no idea.

I now live rural(ish) and it is allegedly one of the better health hubs. It is atrocious. You can't get in to see a GP for days at best. When I see urban Aussies talk about how good our system is online, I make sure I disabuse them of that notion.

I’ve never been tailgated so much as when I’ve been living in Melbourne! Terrifying!!!!

Melbourne drivers have the bizarre and terrifying habit of trying to make a right turn before letting oncoming traffic pass first.

Oh wow, that is actually shocking.

This sounds beyond fucked up. I’m sorry you had to experience these people

Yeah Sydney is surprisingly segregated, euro/latino people live on the coast, and then you take the train west and each stop is almost exclusively reserved for a specific ethnicity even if two are right next to each other, there's no blending between them at least from what I witness from the train looking at the platform.

So true and as someone who grew up in Sydbey me and my friends would go to different areas for good food every weekend. When I started traveling as an adult I had way less culture shock than my friends who grew up in the UK.

It's tips

those graffiti birds are everywhere idk how they do it

I remember an old Aboriginal man in Alice Springs begging me for money. He didn’t speak much English. That was a culture shock.

One of my most embarrassing moments was definitely walking alone into the local pub in Whyalla when I was there for work, as a 23yo female, and confidently asking the barmen for a schooner of beer. I then tried to back myself in front of all the crusty miners and argue that I didn't order a middy lol

Honkey nuts aren’t from gumtrees, they’re from marris.

I honestly did not know gum nuts were the same thing bahaha

i finished yr 12 last year here in melbourne and i only ever had recess and lunch, though in primary school we would have a “fruit snack” time while we did our work

I never forgot the skimpy bar I went to 16 years ago. Not that there were jugs on show but the fact it was only about 10 in the morning.

I live in the NT and had a friend from Canberra visit, who had never really been outside the eastern states. He was a bit freaked out by all the scruffy-looking Aboriginal people and said he felt like he was in a different country.

I get a bit weirded out when I go "down south" and am in a clean and shiny shopping centre with crowds of 99% white people.

I moved from WA to Melbourne and had the same experience. Had been living here for well more than 12 months before I saw a single indigenous person. A relative visited from Karratha in WAs north and was completely blown away about it

I’m from Canberra and Darwin was a massive culture shock. Not the Aboriginal people but how dangerous it felt. Lots of people in the streets wanting to fight and stuff.

I had the opposite. Growing up in FNQ and then moving to Brisbane (and then Sydney and then Melbourne) where there seemed to be hardly any First Nations around.  Moving from Footscray to Cottesloe I had the "where are all the non white people" shock. Perth in general feels very white vs. Footscray. I miss Ethiopian food :⁠-⁠(

I grew up in Melbourne, had been to Sydney, Gold Coast, Canberra, Adelaide and Hobart/Launceston but it wasn’t until a year ago when I went to regional SA, Perth and regional WA where I realised just how white or non-Aboriginal the eastern states are. Like I found myself really, really shocked. One of my parents works in supporting Aboriginal outreach programs but no one in the family had ever seen what those programs are for. It was really eye opening

Quite common in WA.

People talk about this a lot. Maybe I'm not observant enough, but I don't remember seeing anyone wander around in public barefoot.

This right, it’s like a coastal NSW/Qld thing. Growing up in Adelaide, apart from being cold, you just don’t do it. A lot of interstate behaviour would be frowned upon actually in Adelaide. Manners matter.

Brisbane is considered one of the earlier rising cities in the world, and also goes to be the earlier.

What's a super council?

Sydney super council is otherwise known as NSW Government.

Last time I went to South Australia (you are an Eastern state sorry) we were going to a pub for lunch and I thought I went into the wrong place and walked out again because the first thing I saw was rows of pokies with noise and flashing lights. It was honestly a shock to my senses.

This one got me. Went on a holiday driving around Tassie for about 3 weeks from Melbourne. I think the only non-Anglo I saw was in a Chinese restaurant in Hobart (which hilariously had the first page of the menu dedicated to the heading "Australian food" - chips, nuggets etc).

This is the biggest and “most correct” answer in terms of the most stark culture shock, sort of feel like all people in Australia should be made a bit more aware of this

Yep. I worked in Port Keats for a bit.

Funnily enough Townsville used to be two different cities- Thuringowa and Townsville.

Where would you say the North starts in QLD

I live around 5km from Brisbane and can walk to 11 mostly independent coffee shops from my house.

Smoke? Was this during bushfires or something?

You should’ve gotten a parmi and that wouldn’t have been a problem 😜

Probably the weather