The overseas under 30s have a right to stay in Aus for a year as part of a reciprocal intergovernment deals with most European countries. Our Aussie under 30s avail of this deal by doing the "European Tour" for a year and working cash jobs to make that possible. So dont knock the foreign backpackers here because they are doing the same thing as what our youth is doing in Europe
Aussie baristas are in high demand in European holiday hot spots and its always good to hear the Aussie accent when one orders a cappuccino. We wre pleasantly surprised that both our Berlin & Paris tour guides were Aussies. In fact our Berlin tour guide was an architecture student from our suburb who was taking a European gap year.
While visiting Ireland we were taking a short cut from Cashel to Blarney and our GPS led us down a small country roads in the evening . As we went west, the road become narrower until it was little more than a car width. As we eased our way around a corner, we were confronted by a wall of Fresian cows on there way to being milked. We pulled into at a gap to let the cows past. The cows were followed by a young man with a dog. We asked him if we were on the right road to Blarney and he replied with an Aussie accent: "no worries...just keep going 3 kilometres , take a left and you'll see the entrance sign on the right"
We asked him where he was from and he said Toowoomba.
