After making a similar list about South America while waiting for my flight to New Zealand, I made this my farewell-to-this-continent tradition. It gave me time to reflect on my experiences in different regions and to appreciate what I had liked and disliked before moving on to the next leg of the journey. So as I sat in the Perth airport waiting for my flight to Kuala Lumpur, I pulled out the trusty notebook and pen and made my two columns.
Lake Pukaki, NZ
Things I Will Miss About New Zealand and Australia
–South Island. Pretty much all of it.
-The fact that practically no wildlife in NZ is life-threatening
-Entertaining accents
-The Pacific Ocean and the beaches
-The price of lamb and fresh seafood
–Aussie Shiraz and NZ Sauvignon Blanc
-Koorie paintings
-Hamish and Andy radio podcasts
-Koalas
-“The Castle”
-The weather: almost always sunny and if it rained, almost always got a rainbow out of it
-People being able to tell the difference between Canadian and American accents
Deadly Black Widow/Redback Spider! (morguefile photo)
Things I Will Not Miss About New Zealand and Australia
-The fact that nearly everything in Australia is lethally venomous (spiders, snakes, jellyfish, scorpions, and believe it or not, platypus)
-Also, sharks
-Getting a headache from trying to make my brain compute that traffic keeps to the left, not the right
-Lack of breakfast cereal variety in NZ
-Water restrictions in Australia
-“Glassings”
-Non-insulated housing
-People referring to North America as “America”. Sigh.
Same Skies Above 
There is nothing like a really good Shiraz. Yum! But, I for sure can see why you would not miss the venemous bugs! That would scare the crap out of me.
There was no shortage of great Shiraz in Aus, that’s for sure 🙂
I’ve found that people in USA also refer to North America as America 😉
Very true. Though they never seem to include Mexico when they do so, even though it’s part of North America too 🙂
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