One of the things we had to think about coming out here was the cost of living – the received wisdom is that it’s cheaper to live, that the standard of living is higher. To be honest, the closer we got to flying out, the more concerned we were getting that this really wasn’t the case..
So, here we are two months after arriving – we are paying bills and just getting on with normal life rather than the really unusual ‘is this still a holiday’ feeling. How has it panned out? The exchange rate is currently 2.05 AUD to 1 GBP, so basically, take the prices I am mentioning here and divide them by two, you are pretty much on the money.
Well, there’s the obvious ones – Petrol is cheap cheap. We pay between 1.40 and 1.50 for a litre of fuel, which is insanely low – although, you wouldn’t think so to hear the local press. They are moaning about this as if it was the end of the world. Public transport is not too bad. I spend 3.83 each way on the train each morning: which gets me about the same distance as going from Wishaw to Glasgow Central.
Electricity is about $126 a month – and as you know, we are not light users, what with the computers. We don’t have a gas bill yet, so we have yet to see what the Hot Tub costs to run!
Eating out is expensive – and very, very poor. We have had two hugely dissappointing chinese meals, both with gristley meat, dry chillis added, and bizzare selection of odd veg – cauliflower and broccoli? in a kung po chicken? blech. The indian food is even worse – Angad and Naveen, the two indian guys in the office reckon that it’s just not possible to get a decent indian meal in Western Australia… still, getting back to the point, a pretty poor indian meal (not even as good as you would get from the 3-in-1 on a friday night) set me back about $55, a similarly poor chinese meal was $46.
The exception is steakhouses – they are pretty darn good and seem to be very cheap: The ‘Hog’s Breath’ in Joondalup cost about $40 for plates that were quite a challenge to finish – and tasty too.
Pizza Hut is interesting for the differences – the pizzas are much smaller for one! the ‘large’ Australian pizza is about the same as the medium UK one: they don’t do one as large (except as special promos). They are cheap though – we got Three large pizzas for $13 and ate them over two nights!
There’s a fish and chip shop in the local shopping area, and they do portions that could , in all seriousness, cause a heart attack in one sitting. two ‘scoops’ of chips for $4, which is about 30cm by 30cm when wrapped up… a fish supper (that’s a ‘barramundi’ or ‘red snapper’ supper, of course, not cod or haddock!) is about $12.
We did a big shop today (one of our famous batch cooking sessions to fill up the freezer), and that’s a good chance to show what the prices are like for just normal ‘stuff’. We get our veg from a farmer’s market rather than Woolworths or Coles (asda/tesco in everything but name)…
That lot cost $31 – including $2 for the 2L apple juice and about $4 for the eggs (which are free range – they don’t seem to do any other kind). One thing that’s a little eerie, and I need to point out – the fruit/veg really is that colour – there’s no paint/photoshop trickery here.. The stuff just seems more bright, crunchy.. almost more ‘real’. That’s one thing – we are eating dramatically more wholesome food here in australia – the fruit and veg is delicious, and just seems to taste better.
I guess I should doff my cap to Iain Lawson at this point and admit defeat – it seems that my defence of Tesco etc was misguided!! C’moan the fairmers!
in fact, when we popped to the farmers market today, a wholesale butchers has opened in the next unit so we are using that too. it’s a little like costco’s butchers department in it’s scale, but that’s all it does.
Em and Anna are probably the ones who will get this (being Costco meat junkies like us!) but this lot came to about $160 – which includes $31 for a side (yes, a whole side) of lamb, and those giant packs of chicken ($9 a kilo) The mince is premium lean stuff, and costs about $4 a kilo.
Soft drinks are about $3.50 for a 2L bottle of diet coke – the harder stuff varies a lot: beer is cheap, whisky is, how shall we say it.. not. I found a shop selling Bruichladdich ($79 a bottle) and Bowmore 12 year old ($75 a bottle).
so… basically, yes – the staples of life are a bit cheaper. Our problem came from the fact that we lived out in the boonies, lived very cheaply from low cost supermarkets etc, and wore clothe supplied by George and Matalan… so we started from a fairly low base. I suspect that anyone who lived a slightly more upmarket life in the UK would be finding Perth quite a bit cheaper.
Righty, time to get the next bacth of mega-bolognese on the go…
