What we enjoy and welcome most about foreign travel are the differences, either in the environment itself, the landscape and the man-made structures, or else in the way people have reacted to those differences which over time have given rise to different behaviours and cultures. Today, most of those who live in Australia come from a heritage which is traceable to somewhere else, mostly the UK, which explains why the language and the culture is basically familiar to us. Yet there are things that are notably distinct, behavioural changes, which have proliferated over time and spread to all those who today call themselves Australian.
[What follows here is likely to be seen as biased, not least because we are visiting only a small part of this vast country.]
You don't have to spend long driving here to notice how many cars fit what we assume to be the Australian psyche, something centred around a scenario where as soon as you drive out of town you're in the 'outback', a world of dirt roads and swollen streams where the risk of wildlife jumping out in front of you requires solid lumps of iron known as 'bull bars' attached to the front of your vehicle to bump it aside. It seems that the most common private car is the 'ute', a 4-wheel drive truck equipped with enormous tyres and ideally a snorkel to enable it to cope with driving through deep water. These vehicles are everywhere, their powerful, roaring engines feeding the myth which everyone seems to believe. Because for most Australians it surely is a myth. The dirt roads were paved over years ago and the swollen streams are protected by warning signs as you pass over the bridges. Granted there are still places where kangaroos or other wildlife are quite likely to hop across the highway but for most short journeys this would not be a problem. In a modern world where the car is used for shopping, a trip to the beach or maybe going for a meal out, any small car would suffice but this would not fit in with how Australians seem to see their country. For them it is still big and dangerous, a kanga around every corner just waiting to impale itself on the bonnet, so the massive gas-guzzlers are everywhere and the roads, the car parks and the fuel stations are all sized to accommodate them.
Without difficulty we found the ultimate example to illustrate the many essential features of these vehicles: four doors, fat tyres with flared wheel arches, bull bars with an aerial sticking up at the front, twin snorkels, roll bar, twin spare wheels hanging on the back, roof rack with a tent or an awning, tow hitch, rear storage compartment, air conditioning and of course a roaring exhaust system. Missing any of these features and unless you live in an Australian city you'll likely feel socially inadequate, unable to hold your own against those you feel are better equipped than you.
None of this should be surprising really. On our motorway journey south from Scotland to Bristol we were constantly being overtaken by cars zooming past us in the outside lane, the majority of which were large SUVs, a remarkable number of these having personalised number plates. Something very similar drives the need to own such vehicles and to use them in this way. In London they are known as 'Chelsea Tractors'. In Brisbane itself, so it seemed, many of the utes have also been swapped for large SUVs with personalised number plates.
One other thing about foreign travel is that reality doesn't always line up with expectations; this is just the way of the world. When the trip to Australia was first proposed our thinking was that we'd be faced with temperatures well in excess of those we were leaving behind, and in this at least we were not to be disappointed. Along with this we had in mind that it would be very dry, our previous visit some years ago fitting this model and this also being the prevailing image of Australia portrayed to those of us who live on our side of the world.
Reality turned out to be rather different. One of the first wild walks we went on whilst we were staying with Kate's brother in Cooloola Cove took us to this creek. On our initial visit the water was darkly stained with tannins but flowing fairly gently. Two days later the water level was much higher and the fallen tree we had used before to manoeuvre ourselves across had been swept away downstream. Crossing it again was out of the question. Given the amount of rain falling every day from the moment we arrived this was hardly surprising but it turned out that even the locals were bewildered by the unusual rainfall. The ground around the house was saturated well before we arrived and the heavy showers that fell every day during the first weeks of our holiday added to this. Contrast this with the UK where the news is all about, well, the exceptional rainfall. Is something strange happening to our world?
The Australian heat, though, was well up to our expectations. Had we stayed at home we'd have been in six degrees of heat and lighting the stove every evening to keep ourselves cosy. In Oz we had twenty five degrees each day by ten in the morning, rising well above this most afternoons. We became acclimatised, to an extent, but it is difficult to imagine what Ozzy summer temperatures must feel like. Coping with the heat was what we did but it sapped our energy, our skin being permanently damp from perspiration. The nights gave us little relief unless we chose to use the bedroom air conditioning unit but both this and the enormous ceiling fan produced noise which disturbed our sleep. Well, that and the noises from the outside, the crickets and the frogs, plus the occasional ute driving past.
Then there was a bit of dolphin feeding at Tin Can Bay where these animals are so used to us that they come to the same place every day for breakfast.
