2:00 in the morning, 2:00 in the afternoon, or literally anytime in between, Epicurean—with its ridiculously-labeled menu items (The “HoyaSaxa.com,” for instance. Why “.com”? Why not just “The Hoya Saxa”?)—will be there waiting. Thanks to the herculean efforts of the staff, Georgetown’s ace-in-the-hole establishment is open really, really late for the convenience of students at the university so that we can order pretty much whatever we want, whenever we want. Oftentimes we go to bed with the last bits of quesadilla cheese still clinging to our teeth, or a receipt from Wingo’s on our dresser, or big blue and white pizza boxes from Pizza Movers strewn across the living room floor, and just to complete the picture we may also wake up, bleary eyed, around midday the next morning in true “I Love College” fashion. Late night food is alive and well in Washington, D.C. and across the United States, and let me tell you, we’ve got it good.
For an American with a penchant for eating way, way too much food late at night, the unspoken Australian motto of early to bed, early to rise came as my first real culture shock. The truth is that Aussie university students don’t just turn in earlier—in fact, the entire continent’s schedule is actually shifted forward a few hours. The University of New South Wales (UNSW) campus gym, for example, is not deserted at 6:00 a.m., not reserved for only the most dedicated as it might be in the United States. Strangely enough, it’s full.
In Australia, the semi-nocturnal habit of a significant portion of U.S. college students (read: guys)—that age old weekend cycle of falling asleep sometime close to 4 a.m., waking up mid-to-late afternoon, and immediately going out to grab carb-heavy breakfast food—is entirely foreign. Instead, Aussie university kids live much closer to a normal adult routine. A staggering proportion of students commutes well over an hour to school, early in the morning via buses, trains, ferries, or a combination of the three. Many classes start at 8:00 a.m., and the minute they’re over on a Friday afternoon, the Aussies get the jump on weekends early—so early that most of ‘em are back in their rooms by midnight. Craziest of all for a Georgetown undergrad used to hearing (almost every day) at least one fellow student’s all-nighter horror story, the latest the library stays open here is 10:00 p.m.. (That’s right—it closes. Closes.)
But this is just the tip of the iceberg. The dining hall, for instance, is vacated by 7:00 p.m., the burners wiped clean, the last plates run through the dishwashers. The latest-running causal restaurants in Kensington (the suburb in which UNSW is located) close around 8:00 or 9:00 p.m. Past this point there are only a handful of options. Forget about 24/7 all-day-breakfast diners or NYC-style food truck vendors parked out on the city streets after everyone else has flipped the open signs around. Even bar food wraps up before midnight. Past 8:00 p.m. options are limited, and when you suddenly realize, after spending a lifetime using public transport to reach center-Sydney nightlife, that the last grub you managed to consume before heading out was the dining hall’s classic white rice with mysterious curry combo, a dilemma presents itself.
But for natives of Sydney, this span of time (that is, from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m. the next morning) is the domain of one establishment alone, situated every few blocks in the suburbs of Kensington and beyond and affectionately known as Macca’s. This is of course McDonald’s, the quintessential fast-food restaurant infamously subjected to director Morgan Spurlock’s investigation in Super Size Me, a monolithic franchise arguably one of the most recognizable symbols of America’s obesity epidemic, often frowned upon, often scoffed at. But in Australia, McDonald’s is not McDonald’s but Macca’s, an entirely different entity, universally loved and in many ways inevitable. It’s a familiar part of almost every weekend night, the establishment most UNSW students end up at at some point. It’s also the premier rest-stop destination. Road-tripping across wide swaths of rural Australia, there are no Cracker Barrels, no Chick-fil-As, no swanky “Chesapeake Houses” with a dozen different vendors inside. There are, well...there are Macca’s, and stopping at one to get a $10 cheeseburger or breakfast wrap is a luxury, a treat.
Don’t read this to mean nightlife in Sydney is dead. Bars and taverns dot the city just as they do anywhere else, and club-hopping is still very much alive when it’s dark out. What’s interesting is Australia’s emphasis on getting home safe and sound at a reasonable hour, early enough to ensure you’ll be in good shape for a formidable urban commute, or a hiking day-trip, or a Bondi Beach surf session the next morning. In other words a full day of doing rugged, usually physically demanding ‘Straya things. Will you end up at Macca’s at some point during the night? Most likely. Will it be your only option? Probably. But do the Aussies love it? Definitely.
Gabriel Spadaccini graduated from Georgetown College in 2017 with a double major in music and English. He studied abroad at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia during the spring 2016 semester and blogged for the Junior Year Abroad Network.
