Apparently, Qantas and Air Canada have some sort of agreement where you can connect with one another allowing our checked baggage to transit through to our next flight although they are not connecting flights in one ticket purchase.

My observations of Australia:

-Cairns is pronounced “caines”

-Brisbane is prounounced “brisbeen”

-Melbourne is pronounced “melbin”

-Shell gas station is called Coles here

-Sportsgirl is like Zara but less variety and more expensive

-Woolsworth is the main supermarket chain here

-It’s weird but no matter what eye colour or hair colour the parents, majority of the kids, babies I’ve seen here are blond hair, blue-eyed

-Tons of tall people everywhere

-Ugg boots are ugly anywhere; what’s worse, a guy sporting ankle high ugg boots with shorts

-There are 8 digits for landlines and 10 digits for mobile in Australia while in New Zealand there are no area codes and only 7 digits

-The ambulance doesn’t have backwards letter to see forwards in mirrors; they spell things differently as in cheep instead of cheap, yoghurt instead of yogurt and tyres instead of tires

-Different laws for parameters of a koala depending on state – the more north – Cairns – you are allowed to carry a koala (they are much smaller); Melbourne – you must stay 10 meters away at all times – touch a koala and get fined and potentially injured

-They use tons of roundabouts instead of traffic lights

-They paint LOOK on the ground before crossing the street for safety

Sydney

– Sydney reminds me of Toronto but has a better balance of city / nature.

-There is a huge population of Cantonese speaking people in Sydney & Melbourne.

-When people speak cantonese, they lose their accent (sound like normal canto I hear back home and on television) but once they start speaking in english – aussie accent. Not all the time though (I have heard someone with a really thick aussie accent speaking canto and it was interesting)

-Very easy to get around using public transit.

Cairns

-Huge population of Japanese in Cairns

-Cairns is tropical and HUMID

-O Zone layer is very thin – Apply and re-apply sunscreen

Melbourne

-Melbourne looks like downtown Toronto

-Melbourne also experiences all 4 seasons in the span of 1 day

-Free inter-city tram

-Federation Square – FREE WIFI!

• – I could picture myself living in Australia one day