The staff of life

We of course mean bread.

Most of us eat bread on a daily basis.

I was pondering over the fact that everything in Sydney, Australia seems to cost double what it does in England. This includes items made overseas and imported into Australia. The Australian dollar is very strong and has been for a year or so, and this should make imports effectively cheaper. Some of the retailers must have massive margins and be making a fortune. They are relying on the fact that most Sydneysiders do not realise that they are being ripped off. I have been buying some non food items from the US Amazon site and it is still cheaper to do that and pay the significant delivery charges than source the items from a local store.
The store owners are complaining to the Australian authorities about people buying items over the internet. They are demanding that special taxes be applied. I guess they would complain as they must be laughing all the way to the bank at the moment and want to protect their goldmine.

So I decided to do an actual comparison of a loaf of sliced bread. I try to eat healthily to some extent so buy a quality wholemeal loaf.

Here are my results :-

Helgas traditional wholemeal sliced loaf. 750 grams. Obtained at my local IGA supermarket. $5:50

In UK
Warburtons wholemeal sliced bread. 800 grams. Available at Waitrose supermarket. £1.45

Current exchange rate is about 1.525 Australian dollars to the GB pound.
That would make the cost of the Warburtons loaf the equivalent of 2.21 AUD
So a slightly smaller Australian loaf is almost 2.5 times the price of a UK one.

The moral of the story is to double your cost of living budget if moving from England to Australia.

Peewit