Shopping with Amazon Australia

In short: Depending on what product you're after, it's not all bad.

I've compared a couple of items (ok, just 6), and even within that tiny sample, the results range from "that's ok" to "are you fucking kidding me":

Description	Amazon USA			Amazon Australia			Harvey Norman
	USD	AUD	AUD inc GST	AUD	Diff AUD	Diff %
Seagate Backup Plus 4TB Portable External Hard Drive USB 3.0	USD 100	AUD 136	AUD 150	AUD 149	- AUD 1	- 0.67 % %	AUD 219
AmazonBasics External Hard Disk case	USD 7	AUD 9	AUD 10	AUD 12	+ AUD 2	+ 20.00 % %	AUD 14 1
Sanddisk UltraFit USB drive 16 GB	USD 8	AUD 11	AUD 13	AUD 9	- AUD 4	- 30.77 %	AUD 12 1
Mpow Car phone mount	USD 16	AUD 22	AUD 25	AUD 57	+ AUD 32	+ 128.00 %	AUD 24 1
Filter B&W Neutral density 3.0 MRC 110M 77mm	USD 100	AUD 136	AUD 150	AUD 323	+ AUD 173	+ 115.33 %
Buyee media player	USD 35	AUD 46	AUD 53	AUD 43	- AUD 10	- 18.87 %

¹ Comparable product

Note 1: For convenience, all prices have been rounded: Amazon US up to the next full dollar, Amazon AUS down to the full dollar.

Note 2: I've ignored shipping; for low-price items that are only slightly cheaper in the US, this might reverse the result.

Also, Amazon Australia still only features approx 60 million products, compared to 570 million items on Amazon US; so it's still a matter of luck to even find what you're after on the local site.

So there you have it. It's not as bad as I expected, but there are still a few instances of blatant rip-offs for Australian buyers; especially now that Amazon US is no longer available to us.

The Grey Headed Flying Fox

The internet tells me the Grey Headed Flying Fox is one of the largest bats in Australia (Wikipeida, that old beacon of accuracy, even claims it's the biggest).

And as it turns out, there's a rather large colony at Parramatta Park. So, here are a couple of pictures: