amw

Here, here! Being born in Australia I'm supposed to be patriotic, but I don't see that much to be patriotic about. Our government is fucked up, our laws are fucked up (especially with these bullshit workplace reforms!), and like you said, everything is expensive and we get paid too little. I really wish I lived in the UK; if I did I could already be a DJ! Equipment over there is dirt cheap! But once you add delivery to Aus and convert GBP to AUD, you've lost the saving pretty much. Still, it's a little bit cheaper and I order quite a bit from there.

Really the only good thing about Australia is the (relative) freedom, prosperity and peace.

Calm blue ocean... Hehe. I think that historically one of the big positives of Australia is that it was far more affordable to buy a nice house with land here than most other places in the world. Even that doesn't seem to be very true any more, with an average house in one of the main cities going for a half million. If you want the nice house with space you need to move out to the bush - and that means we're no different from America on that front either. Blah to that.

Still, i guess we should be thankful we're not living in Iraq or Afghanistan or Israel or some other miserable warzone. Australia's a pretty neat country overall, it just bugs the hell out of me how much stuff i KNOW exists and how cheap i KNOW it is and then KNOWING companies here are gouging you on it just because they can. It doesn't fly in this day and age, where everyone around the world has access to the internet. Region coding on DVDs and showing TV shows over here months (or years!) after their release in the States is yet another thing that shits me. Sigh.

I'd recommend buying gear from the US over England. The exchange rate is a lot more favorable, plus freight is less too. If you get large/expensive items sent USPS (rather than FedEx or UPS) they won't get hit by import duty unless they're listed at being over $1000 or so. USPS GlobalExpress (tracked) is the one to ask for.

With DJ gear you might want to watch out for the 110v/220v thing, though. I think a lot of it (turntables in particular) is mains powered, so you'd need some stupid big (expensive) transformer from Dick Smith. Unless you wanna be a modern DJ who uses MP3s - no motors in those decks, so small adapters can probably do the lot.

it doesn't seem like it was that long ago everyone was ordering from Aussie companies because it was so cheap.

Bizarre. Someone else mentioned that to me the other day too and i'm trying to figure out what the hell could've been cheaper over here. It doesn't feel like anything has been since i moved here in 97. I'm thinking maybe you always want the exact shit that's cheaper elsewhere just coz. Hmm.

this would have been like 98-99. I think it was mostly due to the exchange rate. The Aussie dollar sucked total ass then.

Hmm, now that you mention it, yeah. That was a very gay period in my life.

Actually my sister was saying the other day she gets a fair bit of US traffic to her eBay store, so i guess it's still true for some things.

again, a comment with no bearing on the entry. but i'm an idiot and tired and don't know how to leave one any other way.
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