I'll have a pound of mince, the Herald and two 9mm handguns please!

This was really weird. Having been brought up in the UK I'm not really all that comfortable with guns, and to be honest, you don't really hear a lot about gun crime in Sydney. However, I was in Coles today (the local supermarket) buying some innocent ingredients to make sweet chilli stir fry prawns (mmmm) and when I got up to the till there was three armed-to-the-teeth security guards.

They didn't work for the Police, there weren't involved with a hostage situation and they weren't even passing through to get some groceries on the way home from work. They were restocking the change machine. Three men with guns to replace a few dollar and 25c coins. I couldn't believe it. It's not like it was an ATM full of $50 notes. With the machine door open everyone could see inside it and that alone would have been deterrant enough to put most thieves off - the must have been all of £200 in the whole machine.

Honestly, it does bring it home that despite all its cosmopolitan charm, this place, every now and again, has the ability to show just how Wild West it can be. In some ways Australia is very much like the UK. However, if the UK and the USA had a baby and that baby went to live with it's father during it's teenage years then that baby would be Australia.