After 4 months spent in Griffith, working in the winery and the airport and living at the hostel with my new international ‘family’ I decided to start travelling again. The season in Griffith started to slow down and work opportunities with it. So I planned the last legs of my adventure and for a few days now have been travelling again. I was joined by my Italian friend Valentina from the hostel in Griffith and we visited Melbourne. It was really weird to come back to the city. After 4 months in the countryside (although it was a decent sized city) it’s the first time that I got overwhelmed by the city when we arrived in Melbourne. The crowds, buildings and pace…. The different atmosphere in regards to people. In Griffith at the hostel everybody would be talking to everybody but in the city people come and go much faster so it’s a lot more impersonal and kind of harder to meet people.
I’m very happy to have a travel friend with me for the first weeks of my travel because after living in our little community at the hostel in Griffith I didn’t realise I’d miss the ‘group’ effect. Being able to chit chat with anyone passing by because you just run into each other constantly… So at least on top of having a really nice and funny travel friend, I also have someone sharing the same experience and with whom to speak about it.
Melbourne is a very nice city, somehow feeling much better than Sydney. We tried a visit at the beach but the temperatures made us go very quick. Autumn is making its way in Australia and in the South it’s getting colder. Although not winter cold, but after not needing anything more than a jumper at night for the past 6 months I was kind of taken by surprise.
Right now, 21st April, I’m back to Sydney and definitely think that I made the best decision going to Griffith and leaving Sydney at the time I did. Coming back to Sydney I realised I really didn’t click with this place. Whilst it can probably be a very nice place once you are settled with a good job and a house in the suburb, it’s definitely not the best place for backpackers, and work holiday visa holders.
Australia in general has been for me a very mixed experience, full of indecisions and contradictions. First of all finding a job which has usually not been that hard for me became the first challenge when I got in Oz, and somehow it turned out I was not looking in the right place or for the right jobs. Secondly my whole idea of the country itself has been challenged. I also was very surprised to discover the Australian ‘character’ and ‘non-culture’. I don’t mean to be rude or offend but the following is the opinion I shaped for myself and by no means does it mean that I will keep this image forever but for now this is how I see it. The country has no history, very little cultural heritage and the country being so big and empty but still quite isolated from the rest of the world there is not much influence from the outside world. And when there is, I’m not sure if it’s relative to countryside people or in cities as well but it seems really heavily rejected. I have never met more racist people than in Australia. Specifically towards Indians and even aborigines. This is the most shocking of the things I realised here because when you apply for the visa online the government has put together a whole document you must read before applying and they go on about equal rights and brotherhood between ethnies… well this is the most hypocritical piece I have read in my life. I don’t want to make it a general statement because I have seen very little of the country but this is truly what I have experienced wherever I went. Even as a white person, I was classified as a backpacker. People passing by car near the hostel in Griffith would be staring, sometimes honking at us… maybe it was just a lack of education but we were made to feel like zoo animals. And funny enough, when I arrived to Melbourne at the station’s toilets with my backpack on I got the curiosity of a woman who just came by to ask me where I’d come from and what I’d been doing there… just this… Australia has opened its doors to backpackers for years now but its people are still not used to it, except employers in the countryside who take great advantage of offering wages way below legal levels for shitty jobs no Australian past 15 years old would agree to do and surely not for that amount of money. And guess what, if there were no backpackers to do these shitty jobs, farmers would ruin their harvest!! But most backpackers are after the holy grail of getting a second year visa and for this they need a paper signed off by farmers with at least a total 88 days of rural work. This is a whole business altogether for farmers and they take advantage of it in many cases.
I have also felt that Australians don’t seem any curious about the rest of the world anyway… they are very relaxed for everything, almost unmotivated about life in general. Even in Griffith where a lot of people have Italian origins, they usually don’t know much about their heritage. Sometimes they have travelled once to Europe to meet relatives, some speak Italian or a dialect but in general they don’t know much. The relaxed and unmotivated ways also applies to the work life as well. When I worked at the winery the atmosphere was very strange… people not worrying about anything until last minute…communication was as well very bad in that company, different ‘departments’ not working together but actually constantly blaming each other, and everything was very disorganised. For this reason I actually enjoyed a lot more doing manual work at the airport for much less money. Just because the people at the airport were so lovely and actually enjoyed chatting to each other and although relaxed were a bunch of people working a little bit harder.
Australia is the country where I didn’t meet many Australians and certainly learned a lot of Italian, being surrounded by the Italian family at the hostel. It’s also the place where I was surrounded by younger people. This was kind of a first in my life, in my trip. Usually, at school, at work or so far during my trip I have always been one of the youngest. So I’m not sure if I’m just getting old or if Australia is a destination for younger travellers, but I’ve learned to live with people in their early twenties. The difference is not massive but at times I felt like the older sister. It’s true that when you’re in your early twenties you’re still wondering about starting your adult life, what and where to study, if you’re going to succeed, how likely it’ll be to find a job afterwards, if you’ll like it or not…
All these existential questions, added to the questions of friendship and socializing, being socially accepted for who you are and accepting critics from other people who are not your family or close friends…actually strangers. Wow, I’m actually so glad to be the age I am right now and having all this stuff behind me. Having built confidence in life and knowing that whatever happens you can just adapt to a situation and however challenging, you can do pretty much what you choose to do.
In a way the Australian experience was quite challenging and this could be the positive ‘lesson’ I can remember. Of course the first memory I’ll keep is about the great people I met. Staying in the same place for 4 months made me feel at home and friendships created during that time are of course stronger than before in my trip since we shared more time together. It was quite hard to leave but quite exciting as well.
And now for the exciting part, I’m off to Bali tomorrow!!! I’ll be staying there for a week and still travelling with Valentina. This will be the last week with her before I carry on just by myself when I’ll fly to Singapore.
The other big news is that whilst planning my new trip through South East Asia, I was confronted to the question of buying my return ticket home. I could have bought a ticket back to Australia to make more money but since I didn’t really click with this country I didn’t see why I’d be back here and so soon… so tadadadadadadadadadaaaaaaa…. I’ll be back to Europe in July!!! I’m actually very excited about it as I have a ticket to be back to Lyon and I have missed home regularly and sometimes greatly during my trip. I’m not sure what I’ll do once I’m back and how I’ll react about being back in a well-known element but I’m positive about it.
In the next few weeks I’ll experience a total change and I’m going to feel in another world when going through South East Asia. It was one thing to travel in Latin America last year as countries usually have a bit of European heritage, but now I’m going to be challenged by totally unknown languages that I cannot understand one little bit and go through countries where culture, religions have nothing in common with Europe… So the adventure is going to become more intense and I’ll keep the blog updated about my discoveries!!!!
