it's big

After a year in New Zealand, you lose track of the scale of things elsewhere. Australia has pounded back into my brain a scope closer to my US experience.
There are real cities here, cities you can walk around in for 20 minutes and still be in the city. There are things a day's drive from each other, and there are roads wide and straight rather than twisting and narrow. There are also legal speed limits in excess of 100 kilometers an hour (I was giddy with joy the first time I saw a sign for 110 on a four-lane road outside of Melbourne. Finally, the chance to drive as people were meant to drive. Quickly.)

All that I'm enjoying. I'd forgotten how much I loved being in the middle of a large city, just feeling the bustle going on around me. Even in Auckland, the heart of the CBD was only about two blocks wide. In Wellington, I could walk from one end of the city to the other in about 30 minutes. Sydney is on a proper American scale - alone, it has more people than New Zealand.

There is a downside. New Zealand was a small enough market for some of the American consumerism to pass it over as not worth bothering with. Australia seems to have embraced American-style chains and consumerism. I feel a bit like I returned home, with all the American brands I'm seeing for the first time in a year.

In a lot of ways, Australia (especially the cities) may as well be the States. But the cities we've seen so far - Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane - all have a pleasant bit of character too many US cities lack. Mostly it's about water. Melbourne and Brisbane are built around rivers and Sydney has its harbor. The water softens the harshness of the city landscape.