Life Down Under: Easy, honest, practical...expensive

The welcoming Avenue pub is situated at Surfers Paradise in Gold Coast and is amidst a cluster of pubs not unlike the ‘beer belt’ region at Nairobi West in Nairobi. The Avenue Pub is fairly decent and has an international touch, but a bottle of beer will set you back the equivalent of Sh770. PHOTO | COURTESY |

What you need to know:

  • I always preach responsible drinking and I will always encourage my son to be a teetotaller.

I’m falling in love with Aussie life. Laid back, easy, honest and practical.

Out on a pub crawl with colleagues at Surfers’ Paradise on the Gold Coast coastline on Thursday night, I was struck by the simplicity and warmth of the Australians.

Pub after pub, I didn’t fail to make friends over a nice, chilled Australian “Crown” beer that boasts a 4.8 percent alcohol content and sells at 10 Australian dollars (Sh770).

Don’t get me wrong. I always preach responsible drinking and I will always encourage my son to be a teetotaller.

But pubs in Australia are extremely good places to bond, with the locals happy to meet foreigners and share experiences.

And the security is extremely good, with the bouncers at the door scanning each patron’s identity card (or passport for foreigners) before granting the reveller entry.

Meaning that if, God forbid, there’s an incident, then the club owner can account for all the patrons on the premises. Interestingly, there’s a police station located in the middle of a forest of pubs at Surfers Paradise from where a number of Queensland police officers launch their friendly patrols.

After scanning a few pubs and “gentlemen’s clubs”, we settle for “The Avenue”, a fairly decent bar with an international touch, judging from flags of various countries displayed at the entrance.

As we settle for a drink, a Kenyan living in Melbourne who travelled with family to Gold Coast for the games, joins our table.

He is evidently excited to see us and gives us interesting insights into life Down Under.

Life that’s not that cheap though.

He tells us his bills go up to 80 Australian dollars (Sh6,160) a week for fuel, 420 dollars (Sh32,340) a quarter (bills are charged after every three months) for power while about 240 dollars (Sh18,480) go towards settling the water charges for the period.

Which adds up to monthly charges of about Sh10,000 for electricity and Sh6,160 for water. “But equally,” he adds, “the income is good and there’s no job discrimination, because a toilet cleaner working overtime will be paid as much as 35 dollars (Sh2,695) an hour, which is basically the same rate a nurse is paid.”

Pubs here have different operating licenses, with some allowed to operate until 2am, while others run until 3am or 4am.

“Some have licenses to operate only on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays,” our Kenyan friend adds as we order another round of “Crown” beers. Cheers mate!