lisitsa

Oh my, its good to be back on these bikeforums, and its good to be going back to Australia in a month.

I am a 19 year old boy who spends all his days in Australia riding around town, to the mall, to here and there and everywhere. Me and my trusty sora-geared road bike go everywhere in the melbourne south eastern suburbs. Problem is I've been away on a GAP year in Israel after finishing VCE. This is a country with a lot happening, but it is a country where no one rides bicycles, and more importantly no one single road was designed for bicycles. It is a country dominated by cars, and for the last 7 months of my 10 month trip, my one wish, my greatest desire is to hop on my trusty bike and ride around in the suburbs.

I know I'm preaching to the converted, but Australia is a wonderful place, and it took me a year-long trip to another country to realise this. Australia is a place where people truly live for play. Maybe its that we're so far dislocated from the rest of the world and its major problems. In fairness, Israel is surrounded by hostile arab states. From what I've seen in comparison, Australians work much less hours, they spend a lot of time outdoors and love their sport, and they are on the whole more relaxed and more patient.

This post has probably been a bit random and all over the place, but I just wanted to tell about how I feel about Australia after 9 months in a foreign country, it is definitely the lucky country.

Johnny_Monkey

The 'Lucky Country' doesn't mean what you think it does.

Odin

Yeah, lucky to have stumbled to its feet instead of fallen on its arse...

Good on you for getting out and experiencing different places. Most head straight for London.

Rowan

Agreed on the first point... and an arse fall is still not out of the question.

London was never my first choice as an overseas destination. I was surprised when I finally got there that it was OK, but the cost of living was so exorbitant that anyone contemplating moving there had better have a good bank balance.

The one thing London and Europe and in fact most other parts of that part of the world and Asia is a cultural heritage. Australia has studiously destroyed or dismantled pre-European heritage, and while we can easily "live" post-European history, it still doesn't measure up to pubs and castles built eons ago.

Anyway, welcome back to Australia. It's the wide open spaces and sparseness of population that really sets Australia apart from everywhere else I have been.

HyperHorse

So what was the first thing you did upon returning to our southern shores?