The “real” Australia

Not having heard from me for a little while after my last post, you might have started to wonder if I have not been eaten alive by a poisonous snake or a massive spider. Either that, or you have just completely forgotten about my existence, without me reminding you of it once in a while. Either way, I haven’t yet come closer to any deadly creatures, than to the other side of the window, so I’m doing alright.

Now, what is the outback and what is it like? The outback is pretty much everything in between the coastlines of Australia and it consists, at least as far as I’ve seen, for 90% of orange sand. Yep, that’s all there is to it. Now I just forgot to mention that most of Australia’s deadly creatures seem to fancy this part of the country (with the possible exception of sharks and jellyfish, who would not be very happy in a sandy habitat). On the way here, starting from Sydney there was a funny thing going on along the side of the roads. You can literally see the trees shrinking and becoming less dense, until they slowly evolve into patches of grass every few metres. Being on the way to a sheep station, it made me wonder what the sheep eat. Turns out they just have to go looking for bits of grass that have not been eaten by other sheep yet, that explains why those properties are so big!

Besides thousands of sheep, the outback has got a few people living in it. When I say a few, I mean this in a literal sense. People in the outback are either indigenous Australians or typical Australians with a sunburnt skin, wearing large hats with a brim, who have no liking at all for the present education system, because with everybody going to uni and ending up in an office, there is no one left to do the “real” work. Anyway, those are the Australians that would be used in a comic, people with a love for barbeques and an accent so thick that it makes you nod every once in a while to pretend that you understand what they’re saying, while actually you are wondering if they even speak English. They are also the people who have an even worse knowledge of where in the world a country named “the Netherlands” might be, because the next day I would be from Finland, or Denmark.Let alone that they can imagine a country being as small as Holland. No one would believe that the time it takes to get from here to Broken Hill (for groceries), would be enough to drive through my country from North to South, with time to spare. Last but not least I caused a bit of a shock when I told my neighbours – the people who live 40 km up the road – that I was a vegetarian. The poor people had never had such a big shock in their lives and looked at me as if I just added a new word to the dictionary.

Having said all of that, I don’t mean that they’re not friendly. Not at all. Like most Australians I have met they are very friendly social people. How can you be social when you live in such an isolated environment? Well, these people don’t worry about driving a 100km on a dirt road to go see their friends, or a good 40 to go out for dinner and play Bingo in the nearest town. The highlight of the week.

Also, all these people have boats and motorbikes and are all happy to share with each other, or with a stranger Dutch girl from Norway that eats no meat for that matter. This resulted in heaps of fun knee boarding on the lake and my very first motorbike lesson (given to me by an 11-year old…)!

Yep. Except for the two dead sheep hanging in the cool room, so far, so good.