A North-American tourist's perspective of Australia

It seems that Australia receives a very large number of tourists from North America, as evidenced by the fact that the streets in downtown Sydney have warnings painted on them to remind them that traffic runs in the opposite direction there. That's not the only striking difference I noticed while down there. The trains in Sydney have harsh penalties ($100) for things like putting your feet on the seat. On the Caltrain all they do is tell you to take your feet off the seat and on the TTC nobody even does that.
One of the things that I love to explore about other cultures is the cuisine. And so, in addition to kangaroo, I tried some other classic Aussie food like Vegemite (tasted oddly like chicken stock), macadamia nuts (pleasant but not a very strong flavour) and Lamington's fingers (hard to describe but delicious in the same fashion as chocolate Tim-bits). Interestingly, it is not customary to tip at restaurants and the bill is usually paid at the counter rather than having it brought to the table. Also, most grocery stores (in Canberra, at least) have an optional checkout counter with no candies on display so that parents shopping with kids can avoid the otherwise inevitable requests for candy.
The most fascinating parallel between Canada and Australia that I observed was that both countries have treated their indigenous people in a similar fashion, starting with dismissing them as subhuman and progressing through hostile population replacement and cultural decimation via brainwashing before eventually coming around and respecting their traditions. I was amused to discover that both Canberra and Toronto mean the same thing (in the language of their respective indigenous people): meeting place. Canberra definitely has the edge when it comes to bus shelters though; theirs are like little round huts. It's a really beautiful city on the whole, reminding me of both Ottawa's green belt and the lush greenery that abounds in Silicon Valley.
Another peculiarity I happened to notice is that the derivative of the Church of England in Australia is called the Uniting Church (as opposed to United like in Canada). I was much less surprised to find that most water closets in Australia have 2 modes, one of which uses half as much water as the other. I'd heard about this being used in Israel years ago because of their perpetual drought so I guess it makes sense to apply that technology in what is known as "the dry continent" too.
Finally, Australians have a penchant for abbreviating words, usually by appending "ies" to the first syllable. It sounds strange at first but is very easy to pick up.