Australia in a nutshell

This is a different kind of story. Not about what I have done, but how I have experienced certain parts of the Australian culture. So let's begin.

On the free campsites you meet a lot of "Grey nomads". These are people that have a retirement plan that involves buying a camper or caravan and then just living from free campsite to free campsite. Most of them are very friendly and helpful, but it is impressive how much you see them. I can understand it though; It seems a much better way to retire by travelling around in a house on wheels than to stay in the same place until you die (to put it bluntly).

Bogens; these are the Australian rednecks. They usually live on the country side. They love driving their dirtbikes and for wheel drives on the most messed up roads just for fun and often accompanied by a number of beers or bundaberg rum and coke's. They are very friendly but typical kind of people. You can have a laugh with them, but I assume you better stay on their good side. They tend to not care too much about rules and just do their own thing, and if that thing is risky or stupid is their own risk (like for example having your kid on your lap while driving your dirtbike without a helmet...). They seem to hate kangaroo's the most and sometimes even purposely try to hit them with their car. I heard some even take road kill for the meat, though I haven't seen this myself yet.

The Aboriginals are of course the original occupiers of this country. They are very nice in general, but seem to have a big problem with alcohol. I'm really not trying to generalise, but most of them I've seen have a big drinking problem. They apparently get some "guilt money" from the Australian state for taking their country, but I think since "the white man" have completely changed their way of living they have a hard time adapting to our culture. Then getting free money, still having some anger against the new culture and alcohol to buy everywhere seems to create a lot of problems. It is a difficult situation especially since most of them are really lovely people. Still there is quiet some racism in Australia against them, especially amongst the "Bogens".

Mainly because of the Aboriginals having a problem with their drink we come to the next topic: "Weird alcohol laws". Apart from the fact that all the alcohol is really expensive except for the "goon" (cheap carton boxed wine) there are some weird restriction here and there.
My first one was in Byron bay, where no shop was allowed to sell boxes bigger then 2 liters even though most of the goon is 4-5 liters and costs the same price. In Rockhampton I had to sign a piece of paper when buying a bag of goon because it was more than 4 liters.
By signing this piece of paper I agreed to not bring this alcohol into a specific aboriginal community about 500kms from there. Without singing I couldn't buy it.
In the working hostel we officially weren't allowed to have goon, even though the bottle shop that was in the same building sold it. This wasn't the only hostel I've seen with a "no goon policy".
In Townsville we weren't allowed to buy goon before 4 o'clock.
All of these rules only applied to goon. All the bottle shops are open from like 10 o' clock and any other type of alcohol can just be bought at any time. A lot of the bottle shops even have a drive through!
The german guys told me that in Catherine in the Northern territory there was a armed guard in front of the store and they had to tell him where they would stay exactly and would drink the alcohol before allowing them in.

Okay I'm getting sidetracked here. The next topic is us; the backpackers. Most of the Australians like us, though the french backpackers seem to have a bad name. Usually because they move in big groups, don't socialise a lot (probably because of their bad english) and tend to party and make more mess than other backpackers. Of course these aren't only the french ones, or all french ones, but this is what I heard and experienced myself as well. There is a lot of shit work that backpackers get talked into because of desperation. We seem to be a bit of the lower class citizen, though luckily most Australians are still nice, helpful and friendly.
It is actually bizar how much of the culture is determined by the backpackers.

Of course we have to talk about the deadly snakes, spiders and crocodiles. Everyone gets scared off by everyone before going here, but most Australians don't seem to care to much. I gotta say that I also don't care too much anymore because for the most part we aren't on their diner plate. So if you don't harass, corner or scare them they have no point in "wasting poison" on you. The only thing you have to be thoughtful of are the "salties" (salt water crocodiles). They actually eat people, so here in queensland especially it is not adviced to swim in the lakes, rivers and sea especially if you can't see the bodem.

The cars here are quiet different as well. You see tons of 4 wheel drives, big cars and huge trucks. The roads are also bigger and sometimes very rough so it makes sense. Still it is interesting to notice and I think coming back I will be surprised how small all the European cars are. When you see a road train in kinda blows your mind how huge those things are.

The driving distance. Oh boy this is a topic. I got used to driving a lot of distance. Anything that takes you less than an hour to drive is close. 20 to 30 km's feels like it's around the corner. my biggest trip was almost 2000 km's in 4 days. The backpackers where amazed, but the Australians mostly told me they do that in 2 days. Guess I'm not a real Australian just yet, neither would I want to be I guess.

For the rest I gotta say that it still feels very European here, just with a hotter climate. I gotta say that even though Australia has so much interesting things to see and lots of friendly people I miss the European culture as well. I'm looking forward to seeing Asia as well to get a real culture shock and for the rest I think I will appreciate my cold, busy, tiny Netherlands only more once I come home. I think I will have to get used to the busy traffic though, haha.