There's No Place Like Home

Distance Andrea...and cost! Ive been around Aus hmm..9 times. Through the middle twice. Once North to South, once East to West. Have never been to Tasmania because..i kind of forgot about the little bit hanging off the end.

I also think it may be a bit of a generation thing in the case of Aus. When i was a young person it was a right of passage to pile into a car with a few friends and do the big trip across the nullabor. I asked my sons if they wanted to go on a roadtrip and they looked at me in horror and said.....what? why would you spend three days driving? thats what planes are for!

The problem is you can fly to Canada and do a few months at a ski resort as a young 20s type at the same cost roughly as you can fly to and from perth to sydney and work in a ski resort.

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So, little wing, what is your favourite parts of Oz then? Have you blogged them?

p.s. love your slightly morbid-toned post....where would you like to expire. I unfortunately have a job that guarantees me death 1 year after retirement....I can only hope its on a beach somewhere. Reply to this

I've wondered the same thing about the United States. We've seen a LOT of our own country (more so than any other country - I feel quite well versed in ~90%!o(MISSING)f it) and our blogs reflect this. We met dozens of other international travelers camping, hiking, seeing the sites - but very few other Americans.

Several times we'd ask locals in town how to get from a to b, or what the scenery was like at globally renowned destinations (a la Grand Canyon) and people would say, "Oh I don't know. I've never been" even though they lived about 15 minutes away. Crazy!

I am adamant that traveling doesn't necessarily mean crossing a border, but I think the reason's people don't explore their home as much is two-fold:

a) Places like Australia, Canada, the US are soo large - for the distance traversed you could easily 'hit' dozens of countries in a different part of the world. If you base your "traveler boasting experience" on passport stamps or country counts, you're going to spend a lot of time seeing amazing things, but you won't rack up the numbers

b) it's not "exotic" or "ethnic" enough (language is the same, freeways are the same, Walmart is the same) and because of that people assume if they've seen one part, they've seen it all. I mean, that may be true if you don't deviate from the freeways, but ecologically and culturally any huge area of land will be diverse - the U.S certainly is. You have to try (although not that hard, really) to find experiences that "impress" people, because I can't go outside, snap a photo of any random street and have people say "Ahh... it's so different! I wish I could do/see that"

So I guess in sum, domestic travels seem to be less brag-worthy. I don't necessarily agree with this, but that is the general attitude I come across.

I thought cost might be a component (and to those who choose S.E Asia or S. America this may be true) but Europe and Australia are main destinations for American travelers, and it is both more expensive to get there and more expensive to travel around once you arrive then it would be here, so not sure about that.

As for my favorite part? I love the Pacific Northwest - fresh seafood, evergreens, snow-capped mountain peaks, hiking, local fruits and agriculture, boats and waterways, and even a temperate rainforest all wrapped around an urban city that embraces the outdoors as much as the outdoors tries to encroach upon it - I love this region of Canada too - B.C/Vancouver, although since it's in metric it gets to feel foreign 😉

And the National Park system - Yellowstone, Grand Canyon, even (believe it or not) the parks of South Dakota. I couldn't live there, but it's a very interesting place to visit.
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In response to: Msg #153452

I've thought long and hard about many of the points you've raised and tend to agree that the "traveller boasting experience" plays a part. Country counting has become a popular pastime of late it seems. But more than that I think the not "ethnic" or "exotic" enough aspect is very important and that old chestnut the grass is always greener on the other side is a factor that shouldn't be ignored either. Why do Aussie and Kiwi youth leave their respective beautiful backyards in droves every year to go and spend two years working in dreary London?

The weird psychological effect that borders and "countries" play on peoples’ minds also has a massive impact. I've often wondered that if many a nameless smaller country ceased to exist and were simply a part or province of a larger nation, how many tourists would take the time to visit these areas. And in the same vein imagine if Washington state were a separate country - I am certain tourism would go through the roof.

People often ask me what is my favourite country or travel destination ev-err! I don't like to answer this for two reasons; the first being that it is a ridiculous and unanswerable question, and secondly, because the answer is the United States of America. It freaks people out to hear that, leaving them confused and more than a little let-down. But I guess I am fortunate in the respect that I do not live there (and may I add, would not want to) and so I can view everything with all the excitement of a visiting tourist and an outsider.

And finishing off with Andreas original question - We are currently living in China, a country I have always loved visiting and exploring as a tourist. We have two months paid holiday in the summer and will we then be visiting our vast new backyard? No way! We just booked our tickets to Europe, first stop England, my homeland, I cannot tell you how excited I am – that is probably why I'm on here bragging about it;-)
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I grew up in a small country. I could have got the citizenship, but that would have required me to give up on my citizenship by birth. It's one thing to acquire a new citizenship...it's something to give up on your roots.

Even if the country I came from (meaning I was born in)...I used to have beers with the former prime minister...who became the head of EU...got to meet few time the current one, and the mayor of the capital, is just a friend from when I was a teenager....so why leave....

So if you ask me, yes I know my roots, and yes I know this little country pretty well, village after village...even...how weird, I don't even speak the native language...

I grew up less than a mile from the Belgian border, 10 miles from the French border, 30 miles from the German border...at the time, the center of Europe...so once you grow up in the middle, it's just easier to venture to the borders.

If I've travelled the world today, it's simply because I had the comfort of home if ever I was to fail. Time has gone, never came back (to settle), but each year bacjk to enjoy... the little country hasn't really grown, my world has.... Reply to this

Before I first engaged in extensive overseas travel in 1991, I deliberately made a point of exploring as much of Australia as possible. I had already seen a lot of the country prior, but mostly in South-East Australia, so I took my car and drove 20,000 kilometres around Australia, starting from the Gold Coast (near Brisbane) heading north to Carins, then down to Alice Springs and Uluru, up to Darwin, west to Broome, down to Perth and east across the Nullarbor and via Canberra prior to returning to the Gold Coast.

The main reason for this ambitious journey was that if people ask me "So, what is Australia like?" I could provided a knowledgeable reply. The major parts of the country missing from the list is the far southern parts of Western Australia, outback of South Australia (heading to the Northern Territory), Cape York and Tasmania.

My favourite part - undoubtedly the Northern Territory - and this is summarised in my observation, "If you haven't seen the Territory, then you haven't seen Australia".

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An ambassador should be knowledgeable when representing their nation

Reading about Andrea's, ElyseandPete's, Stephanie's and Shane's past and planned adventures around their vast lands really gets my juices flowing. I was thinking how great it would be for an outsider to travel as a tourist with a knowledgeable ambassador around their respective countries. I'm sure that both would gain immensely from the experience of seeing the world through the others eyes.

We could set up a community website.
A bit like couch-surfing without the couch 😱 Reply to this

In the US I have traveled to every state except Maine and Washington and I would have to say the most impressive destination I have been to hands down would be New York City followed by Southern Utah. And Texas is like a whole 'nother country as they say but I wouldn't visit it in summer....it's just too hot and humid. Texas is very nice from November through January though, especially San Antonio.


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Luckily my home country is rather small, so I have seen quite a bit of it. As for blogs, all my Intermezzo blogs have got my country in it, sometimes the whole blog is about it, sometimes a part of it.

As a student I travelled around the country to visit other student friends and party, as a young kid my parents decided to one summer show us our country, and now as a traveller whenever I am home I visit my friends who happen to be living on the other side of the country.

But having said that there are still loads of my country I haven't seen and feel I need to see. The islands up north are supposed to be really nice, and I have never been there for instance. And so there are many more places of interest I haven't seen in my country.

The good thing is I have time and I will eventually get to see them all. I still have this plan to extensively travel my home country.

Oh, my home country is Holland, perhaps handy to know, and if you think you can see it all in a week you would be mistaken. I figure I would need a month of very extensive travelling to see all the parts I haven't seen yet. It shall happen one day in the future. Reply to this

There's no place like home Planet Earth is our home

See, know, understand and share as much of it as you can whilst you can!

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