Australia in hindsight

In hindsight it's always easy to look at decisions you made and know what you would have done different but that's not really how life goes now is it. One of my favourite quotes by this guy that was in some band puts exactly into words what I mean...

Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans

I would probably have done things a bit different during my 6,5 months of travelling, like saving more money upfront or getting my driving license, however I have no regrets because the decisions I made have let me to meet some great people from a vast variety of cultures and have a lot of adventures. Travelling is great fun and it broadens ones perspective of the world. Sure you can take a look at almost every place in the world these days by just the click of a button and you won't be the first human to reach your destination but that's not important at all. Travelling is about your experiences not the ones somebody else had. I recommend everybody to do it and see more of the world with your own eyes that just their backyard.

During my time in Australia I did experience things you wouldn't on a typical holiday. Like for instance what keeps the Australians busy in their daily lives, music from local bands and even television shows worth a watch but also what farmers think about and the political climate.

Water or rather rain is always of concern for farmers in every country but even more so in Australia and especially in the wheat belt. As Australia is the world’s driest inhabited continent rain is of great importance. The dams normally get filled during the winter and relied upon in the summer. However if there isn't enough water to go around the Auzzies turn to seawater desalination. They have several desalination plants near the major cities of Brisbane, Perth and Sydney. With Adelaide and Melbourne following in their footsteps. One of the downsides of this being the power consumption which is up to 50 % of the cost of desalination. As Australia uses mostly brown coal (Watch this youtube clip about the Hazelwood Power Station in Victoria) to generate energy which of course is a major impact on the environment as it produces vast amount of CO² and uses the very water the Australians need. Although there was a discussion about nuclear power plants, of which there are none at the moment, but with the nuclear disaster in Japan this is year that's pretty much of the table. I think that nuclear power might not be THE solution to our energy problems but coal definitely isn't. Water is also of great influence on how many people Australia can support, currently it has a population of about 22 million people. With a lot of immigrants coming to Australia, either legal or illegal, how many people can the country or rather continent support?

But lets not dwell to much on these kind of things and get to the fun part. The last two items in this post are about TV shows and music. The first I mostly discovered in Perth when I had lots of time to watch TV. Although I normally don't watch any TV at all it was fun to watch some programs to get a better understanding of Australia and of course learn a lot of slang words (sparky is electrician for instance).

TV shows

Music

Sources