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Waltzing Matilda

Just what is it that makes today's Australia so different, so appealing? It is rare that I can stroll into my local branch of Walkabout without hearing about someone who is off travelling round the world, with the unquestionable intention of calling in down-under at some point. Maybe the blame lies at the screen door of the badly acted soaps with plots as paper thin as the set framework; politically-correct melodramas in which the sun is always shining and where crucial errors in life have no long term consequences. I admit the concept of living in a warmer climate does have significant appeal when you take into account the 'summer' we just had, however I think there is a huge misconception that Australia is the land of opportunity, the place to escape tedious telesales work.

Australians can have no real objections to the onslaught of young Brits to their shores; they have masses of space (population density is a mere 2.5 people per square kilometre in Australia compared to a crowded 244 in the UK; source Wikipedia 2002 ), copious revenue-generating attractions, and plenty of fruit that needs picking by eager young tourists. It's a wonder that the British relatives who periodically wander into Neighbours (or any other show) aren't more convincing, as they could easily be cast from one of the glut of sightseers hanging around outside the set. In theory it would be a form of sub-conscious method acting on the part of the tourist; however this might bring some much needed credibility to the soap(s).

Taking time out to go travelling for fun is nothing new, Jules Verne had similar ideas for Phileas Fogg way back in 1873 in his novel Eighty Days Around The World , however it has now escalated to the point where it is practically a pre-requisite for being a cool Twenty-something today. Today the average round-the-world trip usually includes no more than a handful of the 200 plus countries in the world, and rarely involves any part of Africa in the initial expedition.

For many people the purpose of long-term travelling is to delay the inevitable onslaught of domestic life and its associated responsibilities. The prospect of living like a nomadic pauper in a partially developed country such as Thailand for a couple of months allows a person time to think what they want from life. In many ways it is like being a holiday rep without the associated perception of being an easy lay; you have no responsibilities to others, aside from perhaps texting mum once a week to tell her that you have not been kidnapped by rebels, or worse still maimed in a suicide bombing incident.

There are pockets of English travellers clustered in all the key stop off destinations to Australia ( Dubai , Bangkok , Singapore ) who spend hours speaking to other English travellers about how cheap the food in Kuala Lumpur is, and then proceed to email everyone they ever knew at school about it, even people they would ignore in the street. I have tried to read such messages and take a genuine interest in the travels of various friends in the past; however I mostly found myself reading what amounted to nothing more than a hitchhiker's guide to the internet cafés of the galaxy. In spite of sounding like I have a very negative attitude to travelling and an acute form of agoraphobia, I am extremely keen to experience other cultures and see the world first hand. My problem lies with the fact that the concept of travelling has lost its direction, it has become a fashion statement, a follow-my-leader activity organised by internet-based travel companies as opposed to a free-spirited journey into the unknown.

There is a wicked sense of irony in the fact that English people flock to Australia by the plane load. At one time they would have done anything to avoid the place, given that it functioned as a penal colony for British convicts from 1788-1852. At this time the British Empire no longer had a convenient place to send prisoners following the loss of its American colonies in 1783, and so decided to colonise Australia in 1786 with a view to sending all of our undesirables down there to bake in the sunshine. In all there were over 150,000 criminals 'transported' (the official name for the British system of exiling convicts as punishment) during this era. This raises serious questions about the Australian gene pool, and goes a long way to explaining the criminally bad standards of television that have been output from those shores.

The thing about today's Australia that is so different, so appealing, is the fact that it has much in common with today's Britain . It retains many of the familiar elements of home life, such as language, law and democracy, and yet has something new and different to offer at the same time. The course of history has seen Australia break away from Britain to the point where the two have developed a passionate rivalry, the Wallabies (Australians) and the Poms (British) love nothing better than hurling abuse at each other about their superior sporting ability, however (despite fierce protesting from both sides) we will always be very closely linked. In the wider scale of things, we are nothing more than two Royal siblings scrapping on the Palace lawn over a game of Croquet.

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