Supersize Me!

American retail colossus Costco opened recently in Canberra.Sadly it seemed to be a major event in Canberra’s calendar – everyone we know is currently starting conversations with; ‘Have you been to Costco yet?”. A smattering of American friends we have (from Audrey and Eli’s playgroup) are overjoyed that the US chain has finally come to Australia – with Canberra the country’s third store.

We paid a visit on Saturday after swimming lessons. It’s a weird experience paying to go in a shop ($60 for an annual membership). Apparently (according to the Canberra Times) 8,000 people have already signed up – so a cool half a million dollars just for opening your doors.

It’s a strange shopping ‘experience’. A shop as big as a small town, basically laid out no-frills and ‘big-boxes’. Essentially if you’re looking for a 15 inch meat pizza and 5 kilos of strawberry ice cream washed down with 10 litres of Coke then this is the place for you – big boxes of chocolates sit next to Levis 501 jeans and children's toys. Coles supermarket's biggest packed of crisps (175g) topped by Costco’s giant sack (500g) an obese person’s heaven.

We wandered round for a bit before we decided to purchase anything. There’s an array of sampling tables (which we all gorged on), tempting you to buy everything from dried fruit to cheese to meatballs. There’s a really awful bakery section with huuuge cupcakes with fake cream piled on top. (12 for $10). A few years ago I visited a similarly gigantic Walmart in Texas which sold bullets and guns – a line (fortunately) unavailable here.

Some of the aspects of the store were amusing – a guy cooking steak had a large bi-lingual sign on the front of his burner which read “Hot/Caliente” (it was clearly intended to cater for America’s Hispanic population, who unsurprisingly absent from Canberra) definitely a "lost in translation" moment (unless all of the shoppers are Dora the Explorer fans)

At one point a fat guy walked past us sporting a t-shirt which read ‘real men don’t eat salad’ I wish I had taken a picture of him as he personified the store he was in.

Does it add anything positive to Australia? Probably not? Is it somewhere to go to buy a zillion toilet rolls for $20 probably so.

Afterwards we went to Rodney's Garden Centre - a short stones throw away from Costco and had a nice lunch in their garden (where we took these pictures).

Eli and a metal dogAudrey shows off her 'pink hair' and Wolves tracksuit bottoms which have suddenly become very short

Eli and his two friends