Australian cell phone forty dollars, mailing postcards home to the states twelve dollars, lunch on campus ten dollars, having the experience of a lifetime priceless…sort of.
Before I came to Australia, the students who had studied there the year before had a panel where they talked to next group about places to go and things to see. The group of eight told us everything on their personal Australia must-do lists from which bars were the best and the spring break trip called One Fish Two Fish (more on this later!) to shopping for souvenirs at Queen Victoria market and going to the beach in St. Kilda. It sounded like it would be the adventure of a lifetime (and so far it has been) but the thing they kept coming back to was how expensive everything was compared to prices in the United States. When they talked about how much money they spent I was convinced I could spend less that but after only a week here I can already see that the number they gave us has the potential to become reality for me.
One night just after midnight some of the other students on our trip and I climbed into the back of a green and yellow 13 Cab after hitting up Melbourne’s only Ice Bar (which is part of the university’s orientation by the way). The night in the city had been the best by far but the night bus doesn’t run on weekdays so now we had hunt down a cab to take us on the forty minute drive back to our residence halls. We’d been trying to chase down a cab for what felt like a long time before we finally succeeded in hailing this one.
“That’ll be about seventy dollars.” The cab driver said. That’s right, it would cost us seventy dollars to get back to campus after our night out. This was my first time taking a cab in Melbourne and I definitely hadn’t expected that price.
We hadn’t even left the city yet (you have to prepay here) and all I could think was oh my god. Seriously? That was so much money and it was only one way. Being a college student in Baltimore (not mention living in a small town back home) had not prepared me for cab fares that high. I mean in Baltimore you can get to the airport across the city for thirty dollars max and you’d be hard pressed to find any cabs at all wandering the streets of Wrentham (my hometown) where the biggest tourist attraction is an outlet mall. So even though the bigger cabs, called maxi taxis, are harder to find I was thankful there were enough of us leaving the city to put eight people in each cab and the fare would be divided among us.
It ended up costing us just over eight dollars each which still seemed a little on the expensive side to me. After hearing the price and attempting to smother our shock we each fished through the rainbow of brightly colored bills in our wallets and pulled eight dollars (which by the way is a purple bill and two coins: a one dollar coin and a two dollar coin to be exact). The money here is so pretty and each of the bills is a different color, none of which are green like the United States money we’re used to seeing in our wallets. The closest comparison I can make is to say it looks almost like Monopoly money (not to say that even remotely lessens the sticker shock we’ve been getting from looking at prices here).
From seventy dollar cabs to seventeen dollar drinks, everything is more expensive than it is stateside (alcohol, food, you name it). The only cheap thing we’ve found in our first week here is the thirty cent soft serve cones from Maccas (McDonalds to non-Australians) which are starting to look like a viable meal option. For those of you who are thinking that we’re not looking hard enough for good deals you’re talking about a group of girls who scoured the aisles of Kmart choosing one plate over another all to save a dollar. Thats right one measly dollar. Trust me it adds up quickly.
With a minimum wage of just under sixteen dollars an hour and one of the lowest crime rates around, Melbourne is considered one of the most livable cities in the world but to anyone who’s not used to the city life the prices are sure to shock you. After only a week here, I’ve learned that even eating a meal at Maccas will cost me a least seven dollars and cooking my own food in the small hall kitchen is probably the cheapest alternative. One thing is for sure, if you’re living in Australia for an extended amount of time you should look into getting a job. I sure am.
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| Australian money! |
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