JUST CAN’T WAIT TO GET ON THE ROAD AGAIN

Australians are among the world’s great travellers. It’s a passion and rite of passage that shapes us. When the enforced holiday at home ends, we’ll be off like a shot

EVERY traveller has experienced it.

You’re in a far-flung bar, or a highbrow museum, or hiking some remote mountain in the middle of nowhere when suddenly you hear it … squashed vowels, an incriminating upwards inflection and a friendly, nasal tone.

It’s the literal mate-ing call of Australians, Earth’s most prolific travellers.

Despite our small population, there isn’t a corner of the world where you won’t find – or hear – an intrepid Aussie or two. Antarctica, the Himalayas, the Amazon, Siberia … I can think of a dozen people I personally know who have visited or lived in each location.

Forget the boxing kangaroo. A backpacking kangaroo would more accurately describe our national identity and cultural obsession.

We love our sunburnt country, even if it’s an adopted home for most. With all but our indigenous populations descended from immigrants, this is the land our families consciously chose as the best in the world.

Blue oceans, green hinterland, fresh air and open space, what’s not to love? But as much as we adore home, we also love to leave it, even if only temporarily.

Statistics prove that travel is a national obsession. One in three Aussies prefer to spend money on holidays over all other pursuits including dining and shopping, and two in three Australian workers browse and book holidays on company time, spending an average of 57 minutes a week planning holidays at work.

So what does it mean now that we are homebound? For Queenslanders, domestic travel is not yet firmly on the horizon, while international travel seems a lifetime away.

We know it is devastating for our tourism and hospitality industries and the national economy in general, but what does this home detention mean for our society? For our culture?

With the news that Qantas is cutting 6000 jobs – about 20 per cent of its workforce – and grounding at least 100 aircraft for up to a year or longer while reducing costs by $15 billion as part of its three-year virus recovery plan, our country’s collective itchy feet are unlikely to be scratched for years yet.

And even once restrictions are removed, it will be only the brave few prepared to travel beyond our borders to virus-ravaged countries.

As a nation heavily composed of immigrants, many of us will be experiencing some familial separation. My own mother turns 80 this year and I am not quite sure when she will see my brother and sister again, who both still reside in the USA.

Given Mum is in good health and my siblings would spend two weeks of any precious holiday time stuck in quarantine, it is likely to be years before our next family reunion. Fortunately Mum still has me, but I wonder how many older residents will suffer from loneliness and isolation as this travel ban continues.

Not that I’m arguing that we lift these sanctions. Clearly they are in the best interests of our health. But it is a social price that we need to understand many will be forced to pay.

Then there are the students and young adults who are losing their gap year travel opportunity, or who have had to indefinitely cancel their working holiday visa. These trips are a rite of passage for young Australians and their impact cannot be underestimated.

It is those months or years spent seeing the world, experiencing new and different cultures, which ultimately inform our adult opinions that shape Australia.

Our travel lust allows us to see first-hand, around the world, the nations and societies and rules and regulations that work – and those that don’t.

We meet people of different races and cultures and are welcomed into their homes, an experience that is gradually altering our behaviour towards other cultures back home.

Even as adults, we use our long-service leave or stitch together weeks of holidays to see those countries we missed, or to experience them in comfort and class instead of via bus, train and hostel.

Travelling is our favourite national pastime. It is part of the reason that as a country we look outwards rather than remaining self-obsessed like our American counterparts.

We can only hope that one day soon we can take to the skies again, for the sake of our tourism and hospitality industries, for the sake of our airlines and for the sake of our own society.

This is the holiday at home we had to have but when it’s over, let’s pack our bags and go exploring this wonderful world again.

See you somewhere out there, mate.