Life In Australia

It looks like there are plenty of opportunities in Brisbane right now for anyone seeking to start up a childcare centre.

The newspapers are warning that even though the Federal Government has begun subsidising childcare, wage rises for carers this year will more than wipe out the subsidy. Fees per child in childcare centres are now around $210 per week.

Apparently it’s so hard to get places for children in inner-Brisbane parents are being forced to use more expensive nanny-agencies instead. In inner Brisbane, childcare centres charge $50 per day.

It sounds like there may be a good opportunity for anyone with experience in childcare to start a childcare centre here. Perhaps even a migration business plan?

The Bureau of Meteorology says last year was the hottest ever in Australia. I believe them.

The heat we can cope with (almost). This is Australia. We came for the blue skies and the heat. What’s harder to cope with is the lack of rainfall. Water is life and without it we’re finished.

Queensland had 25 percent less rain than usual last year. The dams that store water for Brisbane are two thirds empty, hence the water restrictions I’ve been writing about in the last few days. More rain would be really welcome.

Most other states also got less rain than usual, but not as bad as Queensland.

Long term, I’m sure Queensland will be okay. It’s subtropical and usually gets plenty of summer rain. Unless there’s a truly tremendous shift in climate, that shouldn’t change.

The funny things I read. I was comparing life expectancy in Australia with the UK and a few other countries on this Australian Govt. page.

Our son was born in Australia, so according to this table, by emigrating we have gifted him an extra two years of life compared with if he’d been born in the UK. He can expect to live to 77.9 years in Australia compared to 75.8 in the UK.

He also gains 2 years of healthy life in Australia. He can expect to be healthy for 70.9 years in Australia compared with 69.1 years in the UK.

Why? My guess is it comes down to 3 main reasons:

1. Australians eat a better diet.
2. Australians get out and about more.
3. In our experience, a much greater proportion of Australians are more upbeat about lives. I’m sure being miserable takes at least a few months off your life expectancy.

My honest guess is that it’s probably a better diet that leads to most of Australia’s gain.

In the worst drought in Brisbane’s history, it looks like my fellow citizens have been saving enough water to delay the start of level 3 water restrictions. We’ve now been spared until mid-March at the earliest.

Normally we get rain on summer afternoons - often dramatic lightning storms - but we’re not getting them this year. The water levels in the dams that feed Brisbane are falling.

Brisbane City Council had told us the city needed to cut water consumption to 920 megalitres a day. We’ve done better than that, cutting to 860 megalitres a day. We’ve been rewarded by the delay of increasingly severe water restrictions. I just hope we get a bit of decent rain between now and March.

Other Poms sometimes ask me if it’s safe to drink the water here. Well, of course it is. Not that it tastes very nice. A lot of people buy filters - not to make the water safe for drinking - but just to make it nice for drinking. Or they buy bottled water in the supermarkets.

A tip for the frugally minded is to do what I do - boil up tap-water for five or ten minutes, leave it to cool to room temperature, then put it in the fridge to make it nice and cool for drinking. It should taste pretty good.

At this time of year I drink as much water in a day as I did in a week before we emigrated.

Unlike most of the UK, the water here isn’t fluoridated so it’s important to make sure your kids brush their teeth if you want to prevent tooth-decay.

Immigration stats released in the last week show that Western Australia (Perth) is the most popular state for British immigration to Australia, followed by our very own Queensland. The numbers for 12 months were,

My take on the numbers is that a lot of Poms are choosing smaller cities for quality of life reasons while less than you might expect are heading for Australia’s big two - Sydney (New South Wales) and Melbourne (Victoria).