Question about restaurants in Sydney

I'm just back from a visit to Sydney and I loved it. I found one
thing odd the while looking for nice sit-down type of restaurants
for dinner, I noticed that most of them were fairly empty (maybe one
or two couples sitting in a huge restaurant, even at 7pm or 8pm at
night). Is this typical? I realize it's winter in Sydney now, but I
was surprised by just how desolate a lot of the restaurants looked
(and I looked in several different areas). Even cafes weren't
brimming over with patrons. Maybe I'm just more accustomed to being
relatively crowded in Boston, but this killed some of the fun of
eating out for me.

Is it expected that you pay at the counter in restaurants? I noticed
that sometimes my waiter didn't bring a check to my table (or
sometimes, the check was brought, but never collected).

Hope these questions aren't too weird, I'm just curious about the
local customs...

-Emerick
--
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Emerick Rogul /\/ "how young are you, how old am i?
/\/ let's count the rings around my
eyes."
------------------------------------------------- 'i will dare', the
mats
--multiplaza.nl.nu--