Has the typical Aussie gone all the way metric? Or will he still refer in ordinary speech to miles and gallons and pounds?
And if a typical Jack-Ozzie says it’s five kilometers to Euclid Street…does he say “kilometers” or some abbreviation? Clicks or kays or some’at?
Is there a generational effect, with old guys holding out but youngsters adapting?
Mostly just dumb curiosity, but also for a story I’m trying to write.
Almost completely.
There may be a couple of older holdouts, but certainly my parents (65 and 67) and their friends and contemporaties use metric exclusively.
You might hear ‘miles’ in the odd Australian song though, but most likely because it scans and rhymes better than the alternative.
Generally either “k’s” or “kilometres” to describe a distance, never “clicks” in my experience. In everyday life we are completely metric with some exceptions. I still think of my height in feet and inches and TV sizes are typically given in inches with cm in brackets. If someone was to say they got a 106 cm TV I wouldn’t really have a clear concept of how big their TV is.
I was born after the switch to metric so almost exclusively use it. Only major exception is height (for people), because for some reason the metric system just hasn’t caught on in that regard. It’s not uncommon for certain other things to use the old way as well. Like Richard Pearse said, TVs use inches when describing size. I was at a Pizza place a while ago which described its Pizza sizes using inches.
I’ll also use miles when describing something that’s a long way away. “It’s miles away” sounds better than “kilometres” away.
36-24-36 has a better feel it than 90-60-90.
(or 914-610-914!)
TVs and monitors are described in inches even here in Finland, and we’ve been metric forever by now. I think its inches for them everywhere in the world.
Thank you all! Nifty stuff. Ignorance is being fought!
Hospitals tell you the weight of your newborn in grams, but the nurses will helpfully convert that to lbs and oz. You’ll probably tell people the baby is 7lb 4oz and 51cm.
Phones and tablet screens are measured in inches too. No one brags about the cool 12.7cm screen on their phone.
Is beer measured (or colloquially described) in pints?
(That’s the true measure of how completely ‘metric’ a culture is.)
No, we have weird non-metric, non-imperial measures that differ from state to state
In Victoria it’s a glass (about 300ml, IIRC), a pot (somewhat bigger) or a jug (a couple of litres - for sharing, obviously 
). NSW has schooners … after that I get a bit lost.
Milk was probably the last thing to come in pints, and the old glass pint-bottles were phased out some time in the late 70s.
You have no idea what you’ve asked there, Mangetout.
Okay, here we go.
The teeny tiny little 115ml is a small in Tassie, a foursie in Victoria and a shetland in WA. If you actually order one of these and you’re not someone’s nanna, you’ll be laughed out of town.
140ml (almost as tiny) is a pony in most states.
You can get a 170ml glass of beer by asking for a six in Tasmania or WA, or a small glass in Victoria.
200ml is a seven in most states, a butcher in SA, and a glass in Victoria or WA.
285ml is a middy in NSW or WA, a pot in Qld and Victoria, a schooner in SA.
425ml is a schooner in NSW, Qld, Victoria and WA, and a pint in SA.
570ml is a pint in most places, and an imperial pint in SA.
On the metric thing, I am forever 5’4", but metric in most other things.
Wow! Now there’s a nation that takes its beer seriously!
(Cue Slim Dusty: “The Pub With No Beer.”)
(Looks like I picked the wrong day to stop drinking.)