Down The Road: Exploring Backpacker and Independent Travel

Backpackers Front.
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Down the Road

Exploring Backpacker and Independent Travel
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Down the Road

Exploring Backpacker and Independent Travel
Brad West Editor
Richard Nile General Editor
API Network
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in association with
Australia Research Institute
Journal of Australian Studies
Published in 2005 by the API Network Australia Research Institute Curtin University of Technology GPO Box U1987 PERTH WA 6845 General Editor: Associate Editor: Cover design: Production: Richard Nile Emma Costantino Phil Cloran The Word-Herder
Copyright is vested in the author. Apart from any fair dealing permitted according to the provisions of the Copyright Act, reproduction by any process of any parts of any work may not be undertaken without written permission from the copyright holders of Down the Road. National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry: Down the road: exploring backpacker and independent travel Includes index 1. Backpacking 2. Travelers. I. West, Brad II. Curtin University of Technology. Australia Research Institute Series: Symposia (Curtin University of Technology. Australia Research Institute) 306.4819 ISBN 1920845143 Printed by Griffin Press at Netley, South Australia
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Contents
Introduction
BACKPACKING THE SACRED
Independent Travel and Civil Religious Pilgrimage: Backpackers at Gallipoli Brad West Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Backpackers at Uluru Tamara Young
BEYOND BACKPACKERS: THE OTHER INDEPENDENT TRAVELLERS
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Dollybirds of Passage: The Rise and Rise of the Independent Woman Traveller Penny Warner Smith Travelling the Electronic Superhighway: Independent Travellers and the Internet Kevin Markwell and Paul Stolk
BLURRED BOUNDARIES: DEPENDENCY AND INDEPENDENT TRAVEL
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Ambassador, Worker and Player: Independent Travellers Working in American Summer Camps Kevin Lyons I Heard it through the Grapevine: Understanding the Social Interactions of Backpackers Laurie Murphy
PROFILING THE INTERNATIONAL BACKPACKER
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Great Divides or Subtle Contours? Contrasting British, North American/Canadian and European Backpackers Philip Pearce
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Yellow Bible Tourism: Backpackers in Southeast Asia Jeff Jarvis Endnotes Contributors Index
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169 185 189
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Introduction
Brad West
This volume has its origins in the Backpackers and Independent Travel Conference, which was held at the Australian High Commission in London on 2 July 2001. Co-organised by the Menzies Centre for Australian Studies, Kings College London, and Monash University, the conference brought together representatives from academia, industry and government to explore the cultural and economic significance of backpacking and independent travel. One of the central discussion points that day was that while the tourism industry is increasingly using the terms backpacking and independent travel in marketing more flexible and alternative products, there is an ambiguity over how we should define, assess and understand them. Down the Road is an initial response to these issues by Australian scholars in the field. It attempts to both theorise the future directions of independent travel and set a platform for further research. Collectively, the chapters explore the various dimensions of independent travel, highlighting and challenging well-established, as well as more recent, stereotypes. In so doing, they illuminate some significant deficiencies in the existing literature. The volume is also a timely contribution to pressing questions about the immediate and long-term trends of international travel that have emerged emerged from a litany of disastrous events. These include the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the New York World Trade Center and Pentagon; the bombings of the Sari Club and Paddys Bar in Bali; wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the December 2004 tsunami catastrophe, which, according to the Red Cross, left more than 286,000 people dead, 7,900 missing and more than 1.6 million displaced across a dozen countries in south Asia and eastern Africa. These events have challenged
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assumptions about the inevitable growth of international travel and the globalisation process simply being one of diminishing borders and greater international stability. In noting the limitations of this evolutionary view of international travel, in the aftermath of such catastrophes and in the present crisis of the war on terrorism, it would be easy to overreact in prophesising doom and gloom. While social commentators, government and the tourism industry have focused on the downturn in international travel following these events, for our purposes of exploring the cultural and economic importance of travel, and particularly its new independent forms, we can consider this from another perspective. What is remarkable is the relatively minor decline in travel and tourism during this turbulent period. For example, the Bali bombings precipitated mass cancellations of travel to the island by Australian tourists, something that threatened its tourist economy. However, following the bombings we witnessed a surge in traffic to its competitor, Fiji. The fact that Fiji had only two years earlier suffered its own tourist downturn following a military coup reflects the fluid nature of tourism in the present age. There are also travellers who, despite government warnings and media speculation over Al Qaeda activity in locations such as Southeast Asia and Africa, continue to travel to these destinations. From scanning internet chat rooms and from my own discussions, many independent travellers visiting these regions do so with the relativist belief that that they are safer in such places than when driving their cars in Sydney, or that danger is dispersed throughout the world and such incidents could happen anywhere and anytime (something the events of 9/11 perhaps reinforce). From this perspective, what has been highlighted is not travel and tourisms fragility as an industry but its resilience as a cultural pursuit. This certainly is the case for independent travel. One effect of the short-term economic downturn in international tourism has been an additional focus by industry, governments and now scholars on independent travel and travellers as a valuable niche market and an interesting cultural group that are less likely to be put off their journeys by terrorists acts, natural disasters
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and criminal incidents. The continued travel by young Britons to Australia over the last decade despite highly publicised cases of backpacker murders is testament to this fact. Down the Road examines such cultural and economic issues. The book is arranged into four sections. Backpacking the sacred introduces the reader to the cultural importance of backpacking as an independent travel form and the stereotypes that in recent years have developed about the backpacker. In Between a Rock and a Hard Place Young considers whether international backpackers in Australia can be considered new travellers by examining their decision whether or not to climb Uluru. Following this discussion, West looks at Australian backpackers visiting the Gallipoli battlefields in Western Turkey as part of their tour of Europe. Moving beyond arguments about tourism as a sacred journey, he argues that pilgrimage is a ritual that can occur within the travel experience. Far from independent travel being considered peripheral, he argues that this rite significantly reorientates the way Australian military history is conceptualised. The section Beyond backpackers: the other independent travellers pushes our discussion further, to conceptualise a definition of independent travel that incorporates its various forms, not just that of backpacker travel, which has dominated literature on independent travel. Warner-Smith directs our attention to women as independent travellers in the historical and contemporary context. More than recovering lost voices, Warner-Smith persuasively argues that since the 1960s women have been at the forefront of attaining independent experiences overseas. Markwell and Stolks chapter Travelling the Electronic Superhighway examines the role of the internet in promoting independent travel. While this role is applicable to all independent travel forms, they point out that it is particularly important to groups that are required to travel independently from the tourism industry due to their otherness. A case study of the use of the internet by the gay and lesbian community illustrates its importance in facilitating a form of travel that has the potential to subvert the conventional organised tourism industry.
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The next section again challenges dominant notions of independent travel, though in a qualitatively different way. The two chapters in the third part of the book, Blurred boundaries: dependency and independent travel, takes independent travel out of its conceptual ideal and analyses the interconnections it has with organised and dependent tourism forms. In his chapter Ambassador, Worker, Player: Independent Travellers Working in American Summer Camps, Lyons demonstrates how young Australians use summer camps to facilitate independent travel and examines the resulting process of identity negotiation. It is argued that the data challenges the use of uni-dimensional typologies in tourism and independent travel research. Also considering the importance of experience in travel is Murphys chapter I Heard it through the Grapevine: Understanding the Social Interaction of Backpackers. While the stereotypical image of the independent traveller is frequently that of a loner, social interaction with fellow travellers is a prime factor in the attractiveness of backpacking. Understanding the micro-rituals involved in this social interaction provides us with a better understanding of the information-gathering and decision-making of backpacker travellers. It also demonstrates that in travel forms such as backpacking, where there is a preference for more communal lodging and longer stays, cross-cultural exchange and understanding is just as likely to come about through interaction between travellers as with the host community. The final part of the volume makes a break with the above chapters, which generally use qualitative methods in their studies of independent travel. The two chapters in Profiling the international backpacker use quantitative survey methodologies in an attempt to gain a broader cross-cultural understanding of backpacker travellers. As Pearce notes in his chapter, Great Divides or Subtle Contours? Contrasting British, North American/Canadian and European Backpackers, approaches to studying backpackers and independent travellers have been polarised. Researchers have either emphasised the economic contribution of tourism, relying on broad demographic definitions of backpackers in specified statistical categories, or
Introduction.qxp
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concentrated on the cultural significance of this new travel form, normally by investigating the interactions between travellers and the host community. Pearce, however, works in-between these concentrations, examining whether, as various theories of society would suggest, there is a rising homogeneity among tourists from different nations. In the final chapter, Yellow Bible Tourism: Backpackers in Southeast Asia, Jarvis also compiles a profile of international backpackers, considering their characteristics in light of backpackers who visit Australia. It is concluded that the backpacker profiles of both regions are similar and that, as had been found in relation to the Australian economy, contrary to local political belief, backpacking tourism is economically significant in Southeast Asia. This is principally due to backpackers long duration of stay and its various flow-on effects for developing other forms of tourism. The study also identifies a new independent travel type, that of the holiday backpacker who, as Jarvis argues, travels for a shorter duration than the traditional backpacker but who utilises the infrastructure developed for longer-term travellers. The chapters in this book contain previously unpublished work by established and early career academics in the interdisciplinary field of tourism studies. The chapters are at the forefront of research, though they have been written with undergraduate and postgraduate students in addition to colleagues in mind. The publication will also be of interest to executives in the tourism industry and related industries. While the contributors are all institutionally located in Australian universities, the book has an international scope, including analysis of foreign travellers and sites, and Australia as a focal point for considering broader issues for the growing scholarly interest in backpacking and independent travel.
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PART I.qxp
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BACKPACKING THE SACRED
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Independent Travel and Civil Religious Pilgrimage: Backpackers at the Gallipoli Battlefields
Brad West
This chapter analyses the burgeoning activity of Australian backpackers touring the Gallipoli battlefields of the first world war in Turkey as an avenue through which to explore the contemporary interconnections between international independent travel and national identity. While academic literature on global tourism has concentrated on hedonistic experiences of cultures and places alien to guests national history and identity, tourism can also be an avenue through which travellers can access sites sacred to their own national history and rethink their relationship with the Other. In this chapter the activity of visiting such hallowed ground is referred to as international civil religious pilgrimage. While independent travellers are not usually associated with national rituals, in the case of the Gallipoli battlefields in Turkey, backpackers first started visiting them en masse in the early 1990s and continue to constitute the vast majority of visitors. Drawing on a variety of data, including field interviews and participant observation, it is argued that from their tour of the battlefields Australian backpackers attain a renewed sense of nationalism while simultaneously accepting and gaining empathy for the Turkish perspective on the campaign. Central to this cosmopolitan nationalist sentiment is the dynamics of pilgrimage. Additional contributing factors that are pivotal to the backpacking and independent tourist
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aesthetic include the search for authenticity in foreign culture, lengthy periods of time abroad, avoidance of conventional tourist destinations and voluntary adoption of a frugal lifestyle.
On sacred ground
The Gallipoli campaign of the first world war in what is now modern Turkey emerged from an ambitious Allied plan to take the Dardanelles, the strategic strip of water separating Asia from Europe, opening up a vital supply line to embattled Russia and breaking the stalemate on the Western Front. Following a failed British naval campaign, the decision was made to proceed with an army-led invasion of the peninsula, with the aim of silencing the Turkish guns and allowing for the safe passage of the battleships through the Narrows and on to Constantinople. After offshore reconnaissance in early April, the invasion would finally take place at dawn on 25 April 1915. The experienced British 29th Division of 12,500 men would lead the main assault at Cape Helles to the south, a French contingent of approximately 4,000 were to make a diversionary landing across the Straits, and a 35,000-strong voluntary Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (Anzac) were to support these by threatening the northern flank. The role of the Anzacs in this campaign has been close to the centre of Australian national identity ever since the first landings. Indeed, it has been argued that the sanctifying of Gallipoli had begun before the first gun was fired. Since Gallipoli was the first major battle for Australian troops after Federation in 1900, it constituted an anticipated baptism of fire on the world stage.1 Certainly, by the first anniversary of the landing, Gallipoli was entrenched within the national consciousness as a patriotic high-water mark for Australians.2 It seemed to matter little that the campaign failed in its mission to secure the Dardanelles. After nine months the soldiers were bogged in trench warfare; having made their way less than a mile from the shore, they were ordered to evacuate. Despite Gallipolis position at the core of Australian identity, for much of the second half of the twentieth century a question mark
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Independent Travel and Civil Religious Pilgrimage
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hovered over its future status. As veterans of the battle become fewer, many predicted that the tradition would end with the death of the last veteran. However, far from declining in prominence, over the last ten years, and now with the death of the final soldier who fought at Gallipoli, it has resurged in popularity. On Anzac Day the crowds of people attending the dawn service and veteran marches have been growing, approximately doubling in the last decade. The death of the final veterans has also spawned books, television series and public ceremony. Such is the renewal of interest that social commentators, politicians and academics have often been left wanting in attributing reasons for the change, though most, from both sides of the political spectrum, have related it to a return to conservative patriotic values. At the core of the debate over the renewed role of Anzac is the growing number of young Australians visiting, on their own initiative, the Gallipoli battlefields in Turkey. On any day of the year, the great majority of tourists on the battlefields will be young Australian and New Zealand budget travellers aged 1835, better known in Australia as backpackers (see Young in this volume). According to a recent document prepared by the Turkish Government, in 1995 11,200 Australians and New Zealanders visited the battlefields.3 From the records of one local tour guide, approximately 70 per cent of these visitors are Australians.4 Australians and New Zealanders make up close to 80 per cent of all foreign visitors to the area.5 Not counted within these figures are the growing numbers of Australians and New Zealanders who attend Anzac Day services on the Gallipoli peninsula. In 1996 there were thought to be 4,000 visitors;6 for the eighty-fifth anniversary of the battle in the year 2000 there were reported to be between 10,000 and 15,000.7 According to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, this makes Gallipoli the most visited of all the European war cemeteries. The Australian Prime Minister, John Howard, while travelling to Anzac Day services at Gallipoli, suggested that the large numbers of Australians backpackers visiting the battlefields indicated that todays youth were not as cynical about history as the youth of thirty years ago.8 In 1998, his parliamentary colleague David Smith also alluded to
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the conservative nature of the Australian backpacker. At the Constitutional Convention, Smith made a case for retaining the Union Jack on the Australian flag by citing the fact that many of our young people visiting Australian war graves overseas, in search of Australias story and national identity in ever-increasing numbers, carry the flag on their backpacks.9 It is, however, not only the political right that has derived such conclusions. The left have also tended to concur with these observations, albeit from a standpoint of criticism. For example, during the eighty-fifth anniversary of the Gallipoli campaign, the social commentator Anne Coombs wrote in the Sydney Morning Herald:
What is going on in a country when thousands of its young people make a pilgrimage to a remote foreign shore, a place of human slaughter Hundreds of thousands of young men were persuaded to fight for Britains Empire Now a new generation is being deluded, encouraged to commemorate those futile deaths instead of examining what caused them. Expressing awe when they should be expressing outrage.10
Using interviews with Australian backpackers as the principal data source, this chapter will argue that these casual observations about the conservativeness of Australian backpackers demonstrate an inherent misunderstanding of their motivation for travelling to Gallipoli and the meanings they derive from their tour of the battlefields. While backpacking and overseas pilgrimages of nationalism frequently lead to a renewed attachment to the nation, they equally challenge and alter the symbols and myths on which that attachment has traditionally been based. The Gallipoli pilgrimage results in a patriotic experience for backpackers by the creation of a new dialogic11 mythology that incorporates an appreciative understanding of the Turkish peoples and their role in the war. It does not reflect, as has been suggested, a return to the safety of an insular pre-multicultural Australia. Through an examination of the effect of international civil religious pilgrimage on national collective memory, it was found that nationalism and cosmopolitanism could be invigorated simultaneously. In the case of Gallipoli, this was made possible through Australian and Turkish collective memories combining to establish a new metanarrative.
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Pilgrimage and independent travel
For Australian backpackers travelling through Turkey, the inclination to visit Gallipoli seems natural, given the legends they heard about the site while growing up. However, in travelling to this place sacred to their nation, they are participating in a ritual unique to the social conditions of the late twentieth century: what I term international civil religious pilgrimage. That is, travel to sites that are sacred to the nation but which lie outside the sovereign territory of that nation-state. En masse, this generation is the first to see the battlefields since the Australians evacuated in November 1915. As such, we have a situation where independent travel becomes central not only to predictions of how the removal of physical isolation will shape the traditional meanings of Gallipoli but also to how as pilgrims these independent travellers will affect the dominant interpretation of history. Pilgrimage, I argue, is a key activity within international independent travel and an avenue through which it can be theorised. However, it is important to outline what is meant by pilgrimage, as there are various meanings and uses of this term. For tourism scholars, the traditional relevance of this activity was its historical position as an important pre-modern travel form in the evolution of tourism. In recent years, though, the definition, dynamics and history of pilgrimage have become of interest to various scholars in theorising contemporary travel, tourism and society. For example, within a binary opposition, Zygmunt Bauman sees pilgrimage as being in direct contrast to tourism, the latter representing displacement and fragmentation in postmodern society. According to Bauman, where the religious pilgrim searched for transcendence through the sacrifice of being outside their known environment, the contemporary tourist feels in exile when not travelling. They are like the vagabond who wanders with little purpose or motivation other than to attain freedom and avoid commitment.12 In this scenario, home becomes a mix of shelter and prison, a transitory place in which to recharge batteries before the next journey.13
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Where Bauman and other theorists see the pilgrim and tourist as representing two ends of a sacredsecular continuum, the majority of recent literature on this topic has argued that there is less difference than we think.14 This work has emphasised the continuing relevance of pilgrimages historical role and function as a religious journey. For example, Judith Adler in her article Travel as Performed Art argues:
Mass tourism differs from medieval pilgrimage or the 17th-century voyage dItalie no more than a Hollywood movie differs from an icon or a painting by LeBrun and, like the movie, may profitably be approached as a discrete, industrialised manifestation of an art with an enduring history.15
Drawing on historical and anthropological accounts, these tourism scholars have argued that religious pilgrimage is similar to contemporary tourism, as it is frequently playful, commercial and even grotesque.16 Quoting the anthropologists Victor and Edith Turner, Michael Schudson in an influential review essay states:
the serious meaning of a pilgrimage was often covered over by the barnacles of a tourist trade. Pilgrim ways in the Middle Ages were lined with way stations that displayed sensational relics, many of which, like the trinkets of tourism in a later age, assumed the values originally attached to the place to which the pilgrimage was made Adultery was rumored to be common at pilgrim shrines. Pilgrimage tended to lose its penitential quality and to become worldly and fashionable.17
From this perspective, organised tourist activities as diverse and seemingly crass as honeymooning at Niagara Falls, visiting Walt Disney World and chartering yachts have been considered within the genre of sacred journeys.18 A central problem with this perspective is that in assimilating tourism with pilgrimage, two distinct social phenomena are being reduced into one. The two share various characteristics and certainly coexist, now as well as in the past. However, pilgrimage is differentiated from tourism by the way in which its destination produces feelings of awe and reverence.19 Tourism and travel are more banal activities. This is not to deny tourisms own sacredness or to support those who view
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it as confirming the disenchantment of the world thesis.20 Tourism may be temporally and spatially out of the ordinary, but it typically involves journeys to places of interest or fascination in other cultures, rather than a journey to sites sacred to ones own culture. As such, it is not the activity of travel that defines pilgrimage but the emotional relationship between the actor, society and place. As Erik Cohen has outlined:
When the center is markedly excentric, located in the sociocultural as well as geographical periphery of the pilgrims society The tourist component of such pilgrimages will increase in significance [the traveller] can be categorized as a pilgrim-tourist (Cohen 1991). When the individuals destination, however, is not a pilgrimage center of his religion (or by extension, of his socioculture), but belongs to the realm of another religion, culture, or society, the individual travelling to it can be classified as a traveler-tourist.21
By defining pilgrimage as the act of travelling to a site that is sacred to the pilgrims community, but which lies outside of their immediate environment, we can expand the ritual of pilgrimage from the institutional religious sphere and open it up to sites of civil religion. Civil religion, coined by Jean-Jacques Rousseau and developed by Emile Durkheim,22 can be broadly defined as the sum of ideas, symbols, myths, values and discourses that, over time, become understood as distinct and sacred characteristics of the nation. International civil religious pilgrimage, then, is the journey to a site abroad that is sacred due to its connection to the nationalism of the travellers country. It is the location of the sacred site outside of the local authoritative structures of home, and the new privileged relationship with the sacred that this allows, that accounts for what Victor Turner terms the inherent liminoid characteristics of pilgrimage. When conceptualised in these terms, far from independent travel being antithetical to the rite of pilgrimage, it has a high resonance with it. While international civil religious pilgrimage is in many ways distinct from traditional religious pilgrimage, as we will see in the
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Gallipoli case study, some of its defining characteristics are those inherent within the ritual of pilgrimage. According to Turner, pilgrimage is essentially a liminoid phenomenon,23 referring to:
genres found in modern industrial leisure that develop most characteristically outside the central economic and political processes, along their margins, on their interfaces, in their tacit dimensions they are plural, fragmentary (from the point of view of the total inventory of liminoid thoughts, words and deeds), experimental, idiosyncrastic, quirky, subversive, utopian 24
He argued that even when considering historical cases, there is something inveterately popularist, anarchical, even anticlerical, about pilgrimages in their very essence.25 At different times in history, pilgrimage has been associated with popular nationalism, peasant revolt and millenarianism. Certain pilgrimage forms, though, are more likely than others to disrupt the social order. A pilgrimage is more liminoid when its destination is a place located a long distance from the pilgrims community, where institutional controls are weakened; when pilgrims come from various cultural backgrounds; and when participation is temporarily dispersed and the pilgrim has the freedom to get physically close to the sacred object or site. We can also refer to this type as high-level pilgrimage.26 At the other end of the continuum are low-level pilgrimages. This pilgrimage is to a place located relatively close to the pilgrims home, frequented mainly by people from their community; the pilgrimage can only be fulfilled on a specific date; and pilgrims are kept at a distance and in a particular relation to the sacred. Any pilgrimage may contain some of these characteristics and not others. Those that independent travellers encounter are, on the whole, at the high level of the spectrum, as such travellers are more likely to journey to the periphery, seek fluid tourist gazes and are more open to non-traditional rites and alternative interpretations. As will be outlined below, Australian backpackers tours of Gallipoli are characteristic of the high-level pilgrimage. In high-level pilgrimage, the distance of the sacred site brings about a weakening of institutional controls for the pilgrim and allows for a
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closer and more personal contact with the sacred. This differs from orthodox rituals where the sacred is only experienced either through, or under the guidance of, the institutional or religious hierarchy. In these cases, the elite not only regulate access to the sacred but also reinforce authority by their proximity to it. In contrast, the pilgrims goal may extend beyond being in the presence of the holy object; it frequently includes the desire to touch the object, walk around it and perhaps take a relic home. Without institutional controls, the pilgrims find themselves able to go backstage27 and experience the sacred in its entirety, not simply from one dimension. The pilgrim feels that they are attaining an experience that is pure, raw and unstructured. Pilgrimage, however, is not simply a ritual of release that allows actors temporary access to a normally protected sacred. Distant pilgrimages are typically to far holier places than local shrines. It is an experience above that offered by the institutional authority. By travelling to these sacred sites, the pilgrim is participating in a ritual that not all members of their society, even high-status ones, have partaken in or fulfilled recently. It is from this fact that the pilgrim experiences status elevation upon their return home. While wealth and status certainly afford elites the ability to undertake distant pilgrimages, they also discourage involvement by increasing ties and commitment to home. This has particularly been the case with distant pilgrimages, which typically have an anti-materialist character that involves the temporary abandoning of worldly possessions. In distant pilgrimages, such as the medieval European journey to Jerusalem, some aristocrats did travel in comfort, but to do so would bring about criticism of their worthiness to enter Gods kingdom on earth as well as in heaven, not to mention the attention of the many thieves who lined the overland pilgrimage route.28 Pilgrimage also helps to challenge local and regional affiliations, creating and sustaining broader fields of identification. It encourages interconnections and relationships between interpretations of place, allowing the Other to become central to what is said and thought about the sacred site. After all, in pilgrimage two distinct cultures are forced into a discourse with each other, and experiences and
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expectations are brought into juxtaposition. For example, Malcolm Xs participation on the Hajj brought about a cultural collision that resulted in a radical reconceptualisation of his militant liberation ideologies. Consider his newfound cosmopolitan philosophies as outlined in a letter written from Saudi Arabia following his participation in the Hajj on 20 April 1964:
You may be shocked by these words coming from me. But on this pilgrimage, what I have seen and experienced has forced me to rearrange much of my thought-patterns previously held and to toss aside some of my previous conclusions During the past eleven days here in the Muslim world, I have eaten from the same plate, drunk from the same glass, and slept in the same bed (or on the same rug) while praying to the same God with fellow Muslims, whose eyes were the bluest of blue, whose hair was the blondest of blond, and whose skin was the whitest of white. And in the words and in the actions and in the deeds of the white Muslims, I felt the same sincerity that I had felt among the black African Muslims of Nigeria, Sudan, and Ghana. We were truly all the same (brothers) because their belief in one God had removed the white from their minds, the white from their behavior, and the white from their attitude.29
As will be demonstrated in the case study of Australian backpackers visiting the Gallipoli battlefields, pilgrimage creates a discourse between competing narratives of the sacred. To appreciate this duality and develop a conceptual scheme for understanding the impact of pilgrimage on how societies understand themselves, I will draw upon Mikhail Bakhtins concept of the dialogic.30 Dialogism refers to an essential quality of language, the mixing of intentions of the speaker and listener, with utterances being positioned in relation to the existence of one another. In dialogic relations, every word is directed toward an answer and cannot escape the profound influence of the answering word that it anticipates; it is a fundamental force, one that participates in the formulation of discourse.31 As will be expanded upon below, Bakhtins dialogicism highlights the interconnections between place and the Other, and how this becomes central to what is said and thought about the sacred site.
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Grounding Gallipoli
As backpacking has a perceived role as a kind of finishing school, not only with backpackers but also increasingly with their parents and employers, the desire to leave their country for extended periods is not associated with being unpatriotic. This positive perception is certainly enhanced by reports of increasing numbers of backpackers visiting Australias sacred sites abroad, although the decision to make such a pilgrimage is less pious than we might think. In the case of backpackers who visit Gallipoli outside of Anzac Day, the ritual we will concentrate on in this chapter and the experience that accounts for the majority of visitors, it is more likely that they are visiting as part of a larger itinerary, or only decided to visit Gallipoli (and in some cases only realised that Gallipoli is located in Turkey) once they were in the country or after they started to plan their trip. Importantly, the majority of those who deliberately planned a visit to Gallipoli as part of their grand tour did so following the advice of, and on the basis of wordof-mouth recommendations from, their friends and fellow Australian travellers:
Yeah, everyone says, oh, youve got to go to Gallipoli. Gallipoli, it is a big pilgrimage really, isnt it. Yeah, and youre in the country so you might as well pop up and have a look. (Angie, age 25, news camera operator) Turkey as a country is an attractive place to visit and then you are there and you suddenly realise, oh, Im only a couple of hundred kilometres away from Gallipoli, and thats when you start thats when I started thinking of coming to Gallipoli. (Nick, age 28, management consultant) We wanted to go to Turkey for a number of reasons. First of all, my wife teaches a lot of Turkish adults, teaches them English, and they talked about how nice Turkey was, and people I work with said Turkey was fantastic. So because of that and because it was cheap and we are going overseas for six months, so we needed to go to some cheap places as well. So not specifically for Gallipoli, but we thought it was something that we would definitely do while we are here. (John, age 31, postgraduate university student)
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Such motivations for travel to Gallipoli, though, do not prevent the tour of the battlefields resulting in a significantly enhanced connection with the Gallipoli legend and, as a result, a renewed sense of being Australian. Where Gallipoli may have formed a minor part of a larger travel itinerary, following the tour it often takes on major subjective proportions:
I almost felt last night that if I had only come to Turkey for that one reason, or if I had only come to this side of Europe for that one reason, it would have been worth it. Its that special. (Lizzy, age 35, receptionist)
Unlike the national rituals that scholars are more familiar with analysing, the power of the Gallipoli pilgrimage in most part is not a result of social gathering and common action; instead, it derives from its participants being able to locate the Anzac legend in geographic place. In a literal as well as metaphorical sense, the Gallipoli mythology is grounded for Australian pilgrims. This is evidenced by travellers frequent reports of the most emotional places being those areas of the battlefield most well known in Australian collective memory: Anzac Cove, the Nek, Lone Pine and the Anzac trenches. Consider the quotation below as an illustration of the uniqueness of this national commemorative form:
I must admit walking over that, Ali told us the grassed area there of the Nek, in front of the trenches was where they fell and we were over one side and he said the grass is where they fell and when I walked past the grass, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. It was really, probably the most emotional part of the day for me was that and being in those trenches where they jumped out. (Bernie, age 31, electrician)
It is not only the natural surrounds that create a high level of emotion at these sites. The cemeteries marking renowned Australian battles also promote heightened states. Here the backpackers feel they are receiving a privileged memorial viewing of the Gallipoli legend, something that was denied to the majority of grieving relatives at the
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end of the first world war, and is still only seen by a small percentage of their elders. Unlike the Anzac memorials in Australia, which had to serve as substitutes for individual soldiers graves,32 or the ambiguity of the unknown Australian soldier memorial,33 the rows of engraved headstones enhance the portrayal of the soldiers as individuals. The numerous headstones and their diversity of names, ages and messages from relatives makes them less removed figures for the backpackers. In contrast to the Gallipoli veterans who once formed a central part of Anzac Day commemorations, the dead at Gallipoli are frozen in time. There are enough details here to greatly enhance the empathy felt by the visitor, with backpackers drawing similarities between the characteristics of the soldiers and their own lives. This is particularly the case with the graves of young soldiers:
I felt emotional at Lone Pine because we were reading the memorial plaques, things like that. Because they are really personal messages. These arent just soldiers, they were brothers of, you know, brothers and sisters, and they had sons, and I think that makes you go: Oh, these are real people, they are not just numbers. (Angie, age 25, news camera operator) I do miss home and I think thats partly, thats the thing that got me today as well, so many Australian, young Australian blokes and women who died here, and they are not even, they never, they never got back home. So far away, even their remains are here and that sense of distance and loss is just huge. I mean, I feel it when I am homesick about being so far away I mean, if I died somewhere overseas I would really hope that my remains could at least go back from where they came from. (Sarah, age 28, registered nurse)
The above quotations evidence not only the fostering of generational connections through pilgrimage but also the ability of relatively ordinary historical figures to be seen as national heroes. Current approaches to collective memory have highlighted its role in democratising and modernising the great men of history;34 however, this model frequently does not fit colonial nations. In these cases national heroic narratives born in the twentieth century are based to a greater degree in the modern logics of egalitarianism and anti-
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authoritarianism.35 This more anomalous mythology certainly contributes to establishing a sense of resonance for independent travellers, alternative interpretations of Gallipoli, and a basis for incorporating the Turkish perspective into Australias collective memory.36 The locating of the Gallipoli legend in place provides Australian pilgrims with greater appreciation of its status. The backpackers believe they have seen Gallipoli in its pure state, through undarkened glass.37 The embodied experience and direct contact with the sacred has brought a reality to Gallipoli that was absent from participation in larger, distant, more imaginary Anzac rituals:38
Its made it, its made it more real. Its now like a place, and there are people and, you know, families that were affected and things like that. Its not just a ceremony anymore and a day in April sort of thing. (Jacky, age 26, accountant).
For pilgrims to Gallipoli, the experience is likely to be enduring and may have a wider impact on other Australians. School teachers in the interview sample, for example, committed themselves to telling their students of the experience next Anzac Day. For those who had previously participated in attending Anzac Day services, there was frequently a renewed dedication to attend these rites. In the majority of cases, though, the outcome of this experience lies in telling others of their experience and thinking back to what they learned when Gallipoli is mentioned either on Anzac Day or in general public discourse. For evidence of the former, consider the previously established role of reports from friends and other backpackers in creating motivation for visiting Gallipoli. In respect to future contemplation of the pilgrimage experience, consider Marks comments below:
And even going as so far as back teaching again. The passion you have got now is much greater and I think I could portray information better now than I could before. (Helen, age 25, primary school teacher) Before [visiting Gallipoli for the first time] I never really participated [in Anzac Days], and I must admit since I have never really participated, but
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visiting it has changed the way I think about Anzac Day and the Anzac spirit. In a sense I think it has actually changed my life in a certain sort of way. Not that I have had a major revelation or anything, but just seeing it and understanding it just adds something to, I guess, your character and to the way you identify with Australia and its history I found myself remembering it more often. As the news came up when the last digger died I could see myself recalling back, basically every time you hear reference to Anzac or Gallipoli you think back to the time you did the tour and visited. Its something that just doesnt come about on Anzac Day, it just happens much more frequently now. (Mark, age 27, public servant)
In all these ways, this independent travel pilgrimage promotes a general shift to a more active mental commemoration with Gallipoli in Australia among a generation that were generally distanced from its traditional state-based and veteran-dominated commemorative form. The invigoration of the Gallipoli legend for these pilgrims, however, does not simply result in a reinforcement of traditional mythology. As pilgrimage locates collective memory in a spatial terrain that differs from where the majority of population reside, there is an inevitable disjunction between perceptions and reality. This is particularly so in cases where pilgrimage has been blocked for a significant period.
Our friend the enemy
In the above section we saw that while many Australian backpackers previously had a low engagement with Gallipoli, their patriotism was invigorated when visiting the battlefield and Allied graves. Now we look at the other side of the coin, the promotion of cosmopolitanism within the Gallipoli pilgrimage. In contrast to the general assumptions about nationalism, its invigoration among backpackers occurred without a denigration of the host culture. Indeed, nationalism rose in combination with a previously unthought-of appreciation and empathy for the Turkish perspective. In the context of independent travel, international civil religious pilgrimage would seem to be a key process in the breakdown of outside enemy stereotypes, as travellers in this context will frequently
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examine their national mythology at a time when, as tourists, they are trying to appreciate the culture of their former foe. In the Gallipoli pilgrimage, this process is enhanced by the travellers self-identification as a backpacker, not a tourist. Central to this is the role of the Turkish tour guide who, in addition to telling the Anzac legend, will propagate his own nations perspective on Gallipoli. Consider the representative quotation below, where the backpacker has significantly moved away from interpreting the Turks within an enemy stereotype:
I mean, before that Id probably just considered that they were the enemy at the time and we were here to fight and thats all there was to it. But the fact that they were just defending, basically we were told that they were picked from farms in the local areas and that they were defending their families [first] and country second. Yeah, I mean, I definitely bear no malice as far as the Turks go. (Scott, age 26, journalist)
One of the core factors in the willingness of backpackers to overwhelmingly reconsider the Turks role in the war is their experience of Turkish culture before travelling to Gallipoli. As many backpackers decide to travel to Turkey first and Gallipoli second, it is not surprising that stories of Turkish heroics are warmly accepted as part of the search for authenticity and the desire to vicariously experience the host culture:
Ive got a lot more respect for them now and from hearing what Ali told us yesterday and a few of the stories. Just being in Turkey, the people are so friendly anyway, and I think that one statue where the Turkish soldier, there is a statue of a Turkish soldier who actually waved the white flag and walked out and picked up a wounded English captain, I think, and took him back to the trenches. I thought that was just, thats more or less what Turkish people are like, you know. They are just really beautiful people. That was an incredible act of courage by one particular man, but that sort of, you know thats how I feel about the people, thats how they would feel anyway, you know. They are sort of that way inclined. (Bernie, age 31, electrician)
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While the Gallipoli pilgrimage promotes a more empathetic construction of the Turkish peoples, it should be noted that it also establishes them as the former enemy. This is a result of the Turkish peoples being marginalised within Australias collective memory of the campaign. For the majority of backpackers, then, the challenge is not so much to come to terms with a breakdown of firmly held Turkish stereotypes but to realise and try to fit the Turks own mythology about Gallipoli within the symbolic boundaries of the Anzac legend. For Australian backpackers, hearing the Turkish perspective on Gallipoli is an essential element of the authenticity of their pilgrimage. Just as standing on the sacred ground seemed to be the missing piece of the puzzle in understanding Gallipoli, so too finding out about the Turkish side gives Australian travellers a greater sense of involvement with the campaign. In many ways, the local Turkish tour guide replaces the Australian Gallipoli veteran in enabling the traveller to gain an authentic insiders understanding of the campaign. As a result, for the first time, many Australians are considering Gallipoli not principally from the Allied side of the front line. They feel relieved to be interpreting Gallipoli dialogically in relation to their foes. Reflexively, they find it remarkable that they had not previously considered the Turks to be an essential part of the Anzac legend:
I think two things [were] perhaps best summed up by the guide, he being Turkish. I am very impressed by the warmth of the Turkish people towards Australians and the mutual respect, and I think that his presentation of the tour really brought out to us the fact that there is two sides to this rather than one. And that was just a huge eye-opener for me, it really improved my knowledge so much. (Jeff, age 33, finance officer)
Narrative challenges and alliances
While the quotation above talks of excitement at seeing evidence of the Anzac legend and hearing the Turkish perspective, I do not wish to imply that they exist without tension or, at times, contradiction. For example, many backpackers are surprised by the national death tolls.
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While the reporting of Australias death toll at Gallipoli has often been contrasted with that of other Australian battles, it has infrequently been compared with that of other nations who fought at Gallipoli. Australians have overwhelmingly focused their attention on the fights they participated in around the Anzac Cove area and have had limited interest in other battles that occurred in other parts of the peninsula. During the Gallipoli tour, which frequently has a small number of tourists from countries other than Australia and New Zealand, the guide clearly states national death tolls for all the nations involved in the total campaign. For example, consider a quotation from the tour speech of the guide TJ:
About officially 86,000 Turks died, unofficially 253,000 Turks died. Some days the Turks lost more than the Anzacs lost in the entire campaign. And 21,000 of these from disease, 21,000. And 28,000 British and Indian, 10,000 French, 8,700 Australians and almost 2,700 New Zealanders.
Where Australia has commemorated itself as the principal, if not sole, martyr at Gallipoli, many backpackers find this myth hard to sustain, particularly in light of the reported Turkish death toll. While some will forget the exact figures, the impression of Australias fallen being just under ten times less than that of the Turkish is remembered. This is emphasised by the conspiracy-like difference between the official and unofficial count in the number of Turkish fatalities:
Another thing that I found interesting was that I knew that a lot of Australians had been killed just especially from the movie Gallipoli but I didnt realise it was almost equal the amount of Turks which died. (Joy, age 28, secretary)
Another key factor in Australia rescuing victory from defeat at Gallipoli has been the insurmountable odds they overcame to gain a foothold on the steep cliffs of Anzac Cove. In the Australian portrayal little has been noted about the Turkish defenders, apart from that they vastly outnumbered the Anzac troops and had strategic firing positions. The tour guides, however, tell this event from the Turkish as well as the Anzac perspective. Ali from Hasslefree Tours, for example,
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states that the Anzacs landed in a safe part of the beach where there were few Turkish soldiers. It is perhaps due to the debunking potential of this comment that it seems not to have registered with the interviewed backpackers from his tour. What is perceived clearly are the heroic stories of Ataturk and local Turkish soldiers who were fighting to protect their homes, farms and families. In successfully repelling the British Navy and then the advance of the Allied forces at Gallipoli, the guide portrays the Turkish soldiers as saviours of Istanbuls treasures, many of which the backpackers had admired only days earlier. On hearing this interpretation, many Australian backpackers realise for the first time that Australians were the invaders at Gallipoli:
Yeah, I think thats the big thing, it brings home that they were defending their motherland, sort of thing. When you are in Australia and you hear about it at Anzac Day, its Australia took on Turkey and Germany at Gallipoli, but it doesnt really sink in that they were defending from an invasion, but now you can see it first hand and you know they gathered as many locals as they could and fought very hard and died to protect their families and their homeland. (Mark, age 27, public servant)
As the pilgrimage occurs within a larger travel itinerary in which backpackers want to experience the local culture, the Turkish perspective on Gallipoli is also accepted, even where it seemingly contradicts the Anzac legend. Up to the present, Australia has dealt negatively with the Turkish perspective, generally by ignoring, rather than condemning, their former foes. Due to the growth in international, particularly independent, travel and other globalising forces, this approach is becoming less realistic. Australian mythology will need to transform, either by condemning the Turkish perspective or somehow incorporating it into the Australian legend.39 Is it possible for Australian backpackers to reconstruct their interpretation of Gallipoli so the Turkish perspective is not in conflict with their own national narrative? The collective memory of industrialised nations is not a fixed entity but changes in relation to internal and external
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pressures. If Gallipoli is going to remain sacred, the Turkish perspective will have to be included in some substantial way. Links will need to be made between the past and the present so that Gallipoli can continue to play a role in the myth of origin for Australians. This transformation is, in fact, what occurs with the Gallipoli pilgrimage. Neither the Australian or Turkish interpretation is abandoned; rather, they combine to form one cultural pattern. For evidence of this, consider the italicised quotations below, where the Turkish and Anzac interpretations of Gallipoli are thought of as highly similar by backpackers:
I have the upmost respect for them. You pretty much feel the same way about them as you do the Australians. You feel sorrow for them and the lives that they lost, just as much as you do the Australians. The upmost respect for them, they were fighting for their land. (Geoff, age 29, public servant) What really surprised me I think was the whole attitude of the Turkish people now and then, and the fact that they were almost drawn into the war, not against their own will but by a political accident as well. And that they were fighting for no apparent reason either! It all just seems so pointless after hearing what both sides were fighting a war that wasnt truly their problem to begin with, you know (Lizzy, age 35, receptionist) I didnt think much of the other side because you always think of your own side The thing that struck me yesterday, that truce for, you know, six or eight hours they picked up their men and carried them off and then the next thing theyre shooting each other again. you know how they, when the Anzacs left they left them food and all sorts of stuff, so yeah, there was respect on both sides. So it has definitely changed my opinion and I see them more as one now you know, rather than Anzacs and Turks. (Narelle, age 25, primary school teacher)
How has Australias Gallipoli mythology integrated a cosmopolitan understanding of their former enemy? More than the extension of a latent appreciation of a former foe is required for Australian and Turkish interpretations of Gallipoli to be understood as part of one
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bigger picture. Similarities need to be drawn between the Australian involvement in the campaign and that of Turkey. On the surface, these are difficult to conceive. Australia was an Anglo-colonial nation, part of an invasion force, and the Turks were defending their homeland and heritage. Compatible narratives in the politics of memory, however, which have been developed and spread through the Gallipoli pilgrimage, have meant that both Turkeys and Australias understanding of the campaign has been developed within an antiauthoritarian genre. For example, one of the most emotional sites for Australian backpackers is a Turkish monument to the Allies, unveiled in 1985 (a plaque to the memory of Ataturk was unveiled in Canberra on the same date) with Ataturks translated speech to Allied pilgrims in 1934. It reads:
Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives you are now lying in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side here in this country of ours You, the mothers, who sent their sons from far away countries, wipe away your tears; your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace. After having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well.40
As is evident in Ataturks memorialised message, Turkey, like Australia, has not demonised their foes at Gallipoli as part of their commemoration. As a contemporary illustration of this, consider the message the Turkish prime minister sent to Australia for its centennial of Federation in 2001:
On the occasion of the Centenary of Federation, I would like to extend our heartfelt congratulations and best wishes for the prosperity of the Australian nation. Our special bond, emanating from Gallipoli, constitutes the very special foundation of our national identities 41
It is more than international diplomacy that is being expressed here. There is a dialogical celebration of shared history. The statement, like those made by the tour guides, is premised on Australia reciprocating the collective memory of the two nations as innocent martyrs. Turkish
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understanding of Australias involvement in the invasion of their country emerges from an appreciation that both Turkey and Australia are reliant on upholding a certain anti-authoritarian history of Gallipoli, where victory is rescued from defeat. For Australia, this is defeat at Gallipoli and the need to emphasise their competence. For Turkey, it is defeat in the war and the need to maintain the credibility of their independence from Germany. In the Gallipoli case, this was achieved by the tour guides concentrating on and developing some reported and documented compassionate and friendly acts in the latter part of the campaign. In particular, stories of the exchange of gifts successfully worked to evidence the emotional relationship between the Anzac and Turkish soldiers:42
I think the thing I found most amazing, which I didnt realise before, was the incredible good feeling between the Turks and the Anzacs. To carrying the British soldier or the Anzac, whatever, I just thought that was phenomenal. I couldnt believe that there wasnt there wasnt that hatred between them. Because I just assumed in war that you kill each other, you hate the enemys guts, you know, and that you know I think was the most amazing thing about coming here and checking it all out is all the memorials to each other and dedications to each other, and I thought, that just completely floored me, I couldnt believe it. Because I was not aware of that before I came. (Sheree, age 27, freelance journalist)
As the Gallipoli pilgrimage is currently at the beginning of an increased interaction between Australian and Turkish traditions, it would be unrealistic to state that the collective memories of the two countries, while largely coming together within one narrative, do not exist in tension with each other. I have not argued that the nationalist and cosmopolitan interpretations are one and the same but that in the case of Gallipoli they coexist, and that the Gallipoli backpacking pilgrimage is a key component in establishing this dialogic discourse.
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Conclusion
Contrary to popular perceptions, the independent travel rite of Australian backpackers touring the Gallipoli battlefields illustrates a dynamic and inclusive commemoration of national war mythology. Far from it symbolising a return to pre-multicultural nationalism, the growth in the Gallipoli pilgrimage represents the expansion of international independent travel where growing numbers of young Australians are being exposed to foreign cultures and places. Such travel is central to the development of a new dialogic interpretation of Gallipoli that provides empathy for the Turkish perspective and their role in the war. This touring of a site that is sacred to the nation, but which lies outside of the sovereign territory of the travellers nationstate, is referred to as international civil religious pilgrimage. Unlike national rituals such as marches on memorial days, which have up to now been the core of social research on commemorations of nationalism, the moral density of pilgrimage is principally brought about by spatial experience, rather than by mass and simultaneous participation in ritual. It occurs outside of the collective clock, with its power for participants being that they are select and fortunate representatives of their communities. Independent travellers play a central role in the development of such rites, as their search for authenticity on the periphery and mode of tourism allows them to encounter the Other culturally as well as spatially.
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Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Backpackers at Uluru

Tamara Young
For years climbing the rock was considered a highlight of a trip to the Centre. Its important to note, however, that climbing Uluru goes against Aboriginal spiritual beliefs, and the Anangu would prefer if you didnt Although the number of visitors to Uluru has risen steadily over the years, the number actually climbing the rock is declining, while sales of the ideologically sound I didnt Climb Ayers Rock T-shirts are on the rise. (Lonely Planet: Up Front, Outback, Down Under)1
Uluru (formerly Ayers Rock)2 in Central Australia is one of Australias best-known icons and internationally renowned tourist attractions. Situated within the Uluru Kata Tjuta National Park, Uluru is promoted as a must-see site to both national and international tourists, with the park attracting around half a million visitors each year.3 As highlighted in the above quotation from the travel guidebook Lonely Planet, the key source of conflict relating to tourism at Uluru is the popular tourist activity of climbing the Rock. Partaking in the 1.6 kilometre climb to the summit goes against the wishes of the Anangu, the local Indigenous people, who are the traditional owners of the land. This chapter focuses on the experiences of backpackers at Uluru, examining their attitudes, dilemmas and actions in deciding whether or not they should undertake the climb. The discussion is contextualised within debates over the new tourism thesis, and argues that backpacker travellers now increasingly demonstrate cultural awareness and cultural sensitivity when visiting such sites.4
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Backpackers and new tourism
Young, independent, budget travellers in Australia are most commonly referred to as backpackers. Following Laurie Loker-Murphy and Philip Pearce, I define backpackers as young tourists, travelling on a budget for an extended holiday, with a preference for inexpensive accommodation. These travellers place an emphasis on meeting other people, such as locals and other travellers, have an independently organised and flexible itinerary, and are on a quest for informal and participatory activities.5 Backpackers in Australia comprise one-tenth of all international visitors,6 and since the mid-1990s this segment of tourists has been recognised by the Australian Government and related tourism organisations as economically important, resulting in a variety of government and academic initiatives to promote this market. For example, there was an escalating recognition of this group by Australian Government tourism organisations, which began to see backpackers as a distinct market segment, particularly in terms of expenditure and visitor nights. Mark Hampton points out that backpacker tourism has largely been ignored by government agencies, with the exception of Australian Government initiatives,7 and from the mid-1990s a number of government reports focused on backpacker travellers to Australia. In 1995, the Australian Tourist Commission identified the importance of, and opportunities provided by, the Australian independent travel market.8 In the same year, the Commonwealth Department of Tourism published the National Backpacker Tourism Strategy.9 In addition, a number of reports and conference proceedings have been published by the Bureau of Tourism Research10 and Statebased tourist commissions.11 In the Bureau of Tourism Researchs annual publication of the International Visitor Survey, three tables are dedicated solely to providing statistics on backpacker visitors, including the States and Territories visited, backpacker visitor nights, and average expenditure. An increasing body of academic literature focused on backpackers has also emerged. Interestingly, a large amount of the research pertaining to backpacker tourism emanates from
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research conducted in Australia.12 While such studies have highlighted the economic importance of backpackers to the Australian and global tourism industry and economy, the cultural dynamics and social significance of these travellers and this type of travel has been neglected. When cultural identity has been addressed in studies of backpackers, they have tended to rely on dated and foreign traveller typologies that associate backpackers with travel to peripheral and exotic nations, rather than to developed countries such as Australia. Links have been suggested between backpackers and other independent traveller types, such as explorers and drifters,13 wanderers,14 long-term budget travellers,15 independent travellers,16 and non-package Western tourists,17 but little empirical evidence has been presented to confirm the similarities. By analysing backpackers decision-making processes regarding whether or not to climb Uluru, this chapter considers whether the backpacker phenomenon18 in Australia can be thought of as a form of new tourism, an exemplar of contemporary independent travel. New tourists19 reject the central tenets of mass tourism, but have a diversity of preferences, particularly in terms of seeking alternative sites and attractions, and exploring personal identities.20 According to Ian Munt, the international, independent tourists of the new middle classes demonstrate a cultural and social reaction to the crassness which they perceive as tourism, and their craving for social and spatial distinction from the golden hordes.21 As it is thought that backpackers search for experiences and contact with what they perceive to be an authentic Other, we would expect them to have a growing interest in, and appreciation of, indigenous cultures and traditions, with travel providing an opportunity for learning and educational experiences. Following such work, we could hypothesise that an increasing respect for indigenous cultures, as a critique of mainstream culture, would mark backpackers and backpacking as characteristic of new travellers and postmodern travel.22 There are reasons though why we should be wary of closely aligning backpacking with new tourism without empirical analysis. In earlier academic literature on the sociology of tourism, independent
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travel was viewed as being undertaken by tourists who shunned the tourism establishment and placed an emphasis on getting off the beaten track, away from the institutionalised tourists who holiday in environmental bubbles.23 The backpacking experience in Australia, however, has become an institutionalised form of travel, and backpackers tend to travel well-worn paths; yet, at the same time, they continue to separate themselves from commercial, mass tourists. There is a proliferation of budget accommodation in the form of backpacker and youth hostels throughout Australia, a large number of backpacker adventure tours priced for the budget-conscious traveller, and a variety of travel guidebooks dedicated to informing independent travellers about Australia. Indeed, it could be argued that the backpacker experience in Australia has been institutionalised through the production of guidebooks. For example, the first edition of the Lonely Planet series guide to Australia was published in 1977 and has been updated frequently, with the twelth edition released in 2004. Having outlined literature on backpackers in Australia and the possibilities and problems in contextualising backpackers as new tourists, I will now consider the case study of Uluru. The contradictory narratives of Uluru in dominant societal discourses are discussed, followed by an examination of the ways these narratives are represented in popular travel guidebooks. Following this, the influence of these narratives on backpackers decisions on whether to climb Uluru is explored.
The journey to the centre: contradictory narratives of Uluru
No matter how many pictures youve seen, nothing will prepare you for your first view of Uluru. Even from a distance, across the rich red plains of The Centre, the power of its ancient spirit will overwhelm you. Once you stand at its base, touch it and explore the mysteries of its perimeter, you will understand why its not only a treasured icon to local Aboriginal people, but also one of the great wonders of the world. (Northern Territory Regional Tourism Association)24
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I think what makes it quite an amazing place to go is this sort of mystique, and the fact that its part of the Aboriginal Dreamtime history and everything. (Natalie)
Tourist sites, such as Uluru, can be spaces where national, political, cultural and spiritual identities are expressed and imagined, and these various layers of meanings can result in contradictory and competing narratives of place.25 For example, in addition to being an internationally renowned tourist destination, Uluru and its surrounding areas are of deep cultural significance to the Anangu, who have lived in the area for at least 22,000 years.26 Until the mid-1980s, Uluru was known only as Ayers Rock to non-Indigenous people. In October 1985, the Labor Government granted native title to the national park during handback, transferring the ownership to the traditional Indigenous custodians of the land, the Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara, collectively known as the Anangu. With the inclusion of the nearby rock formations of Kata Tjuta (otherwise known as the Olgas), the land, which was originally gazetted as a tourist and wildlife reserve called the Ayers Rock Mt Olga National Park in 1958, was renamed the Uluru Kata Tjuta National Park.27 Following the handback to the traditional owners, Uluru Kata Tjuta was subsequently leased back to Parks Australia for ninety-nine years, and the park is now jointly managed by the Indigenous owners and Parks Australia. The international value of the park is evidenced by its inclusion on the World Heritage List in 1987 in recognition of its natural value, with the heritage listing updated in 1994 to include recognition of the sites living cultural heritage, thereby acknowledging the relationship between Indigenous people and the natural environment.28 The Uluru Kata Tjuta Board of Management has a majority representation of traditional owners, and Indigenous culture is a primary consideration in the management of the natural and cultural heritage of the Park and in its interpretation.29 The late Indigenous activist Burnum Burnum states in his Guide to Aboriginal Australia that the current management of Uluru by its traditional
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owners is an example of Indigenous people taking responsibility for the symbols left to them since the Dreamtime, whereby Uluru is a living record of many hundreds of Dreamtime events and a living reminder of Dreamtime struggles.30 In addition to its cultural significance to the Indigenous people of Central Australia, Uluru is also an icon of Australian nationalism. As the quintessential image of the Australian outback, the symbolic centre of the Australian nation,31 Uluru is incorporated into the national identity of settler Australia, exemplifying the myth of the outback.32 The power of this symbolism is illustrated by the metaphoric terms used to describe Uluru such as the Red Centre or Heart of Australia.33 Ann McGrath argues that the outback myth provides Australians with a distant past that is related to the uniqueness of the Australian outback and its authenticity as ancient Indigenous Australianowned land.34 It is also this uniqueness, or strangeness, that contributes to Ulurus significance as an international tourist attraction. McGrath elucidates this by arguing:
In their imaginations, the outback is where white Australians negotiated their present. As a highly flexible mythological site and signifier, it easily incorporates new historical traditions By going there and seeing it, by witnessing living Aborigines in their own country, by breathing in the unpolluted air of the outback, such travellers enact rituals of colonial sanctification.35
Thus, Uluru is also seen as sacred to white Australia,36 it is the sacred centre of settler cosmology.37 Arguably, the appropriation of Uluru into national consciousness as a spiritual centre results in a transformation of meaning for Indigenous Australians, who are left with no unique cultural focus,38 including the loss of identification of themselves with their country.39 Additionally, while settler Australians legitimate their claim to Indigenous land and rely on the outback to provide a distant past, tourism media promote Uluru as magical, mystical, sacred and spiritual in a way that depends on connotations of a timeless Indigenous culture.40
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Uluru has only a very recent history as a tourist spectacle and white sacred site. Tourism to the area began in the 1950s, at which time travel to Central Australia became more accessible and appealing. Since that time, national and international tourists have increasingly visited Uluru in what has been described as a type of pilgrimage.41 Between 1960 and 1970 there was a steady growth in visitation to Uluru, and it was during this time that motels and campsites were developed at the base of the Rock. From the 1970s onward, there was a rapid acceleration in visitor numbers to the area, and today some half a million tourists visit the Uluru Kata Tjuta National Park each year.42 In response to the poor management of early mass tourism to the area, such as the development of hotels and camping grounds at the base of the Rock, which resulted in the destruction of the environment and the defiling of Indigenous cave paintings and sacred sites, a government taskforce decided upon the development of a new tourist town, to be located twenty kilometres away from Uluru. In 1984, the town of Yulara, which houses the Ayers Rock Resort, was opened.43 Yulara is now the only place where tourists can stay near the national park, and the resort offers a range of accommodation types, from a five-star hotel to a backpacker lodge and campsites. The average length of stay at Yulara is less than two nights,44 with many tourists visiting the Uluru Kata Tjuta National Park for less than a day on a package tour. Due to the brief duration of stay of most visitors, the tourism experience at Uluru is usually reduced to activities that can be undertaken in a short period of time, with watching the sun rise and set over Uluru from strategically situated viewing areas and climbing the Rock being the most popular activities undertaken.45 Climbing Uluru has long been promoted by the tourism industry, with the 1.6 kilometre climb seen as the driving imperative for many tourists who visit the Rock.46 Terry Brown identifies the popularity of the climb, claiming that during peak season around 1,500 tourists climb Uluru each day.47 Although no definite figures are available on how many tourists undertake the climb, estimates suggest that approximately half of all visitors do so.48
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For many years climbing Uluru was considered to be the highlight of a trip to the Centre; however, since the handover in 1985 the Indigenous owners have requested that tourists do not climb, claiming that it is painful to see tourists climbing on the Rock.49 The Anangu do not understand the compulsion of tourists to conquer Uluru, and they consider the climb to be culturally inappropriate and insensitive behaviour, and a sign of disrespect.50 Burnum Burnum has described the act of climbing as a form of racism, and stated that undertaking the climb is disrespectful of Indigenous heritage.51 For the Anangu, Uluru and Kata Tjuta are culturally and spiritually significant places, and each contains a number of individual sacred sites. In 2001 the Uluru climb emerged again as an issue of conflict as a result of the traditional owners closing the climb for twenty days as a mark of respect for the death of a senior custodian of the land. Although the Anangu have long requested that tourists do not climb, they had never before enforced a ban. The response to the closure was heated. For instance, the then Northern Territory chief minister was reported by the media as saying that the closure of the climb would send enormous shockwaves through the whole of the tourism industry. He was further quoted as saying that both national and international tourists to the area expect, and pay for, a certain experience, and that they can sue if they dont receive that experience.52 The narratives of Uluru are therefore ultimately contradictory, with the dominant discourses being both touristic and Indigenous. A number of contested notions relating to the meanings of Uluru can be identified. These views are based on binary oppositions, predominantly that of the sacredness of Uluru to the local Indigenous owners contrasted against the commercial interests of the tourism industry. This view results in the opposing ideologies of the Rock as an Indigenous site of cultural and spiritual significance versus the notion that the Rock belongs to everybody. Based on this, visitors experiences at Uluru, and their attitudes toward climbing it, are marked by the dominant ideals of respect versus conquest. The following section examines a third intermediating narrative that may have a more direct influence over backpackers decision to climb Uluru: the
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discourses on Uluru in popular travel guidebooks. Although guidebooks are deliberately planned to satisfy diverse budgets [they tend] to be more appealing to the low-budget independent traveller.53
Mediating Uluru
Travel guidebooks are an important and frequently used information source for backpackers.54 In my fieldwork, the vast majority of backpackers were using a guidebook in their travels, the most popular being the Lonely Planet: Up Front, Outback, Down Under.55 The Lonely Planet was the travelling companion to over three-quarters of the backpackers interviewed. Other popular travel guidebooks were the Lets Go: Australia,56 and Australia: The Rough Guide,57 which are published in the United States and the United Kingdom respectively (the table below indicates the particular guidebooks that were used by the thirteen backpackers who are this focus of the chapter). Each of these guidebooks is close to 1,000 pages in length, divided into sections for each State in Australia, and contain a separate section covering issues relating to Indigenous Australians, including information regarding their history and cultures. The Lonely Planet also has a twenty-four-page glossy colour section dedicated to photos and descriptions of Indigenous art. Guidebooks play an integral role in the tourism process, as they are markers that construct a place or attraction for tourists, and they describe and define what the place represents. Additionally, they can be seen to mediate tourists relationships with the destination, and their relationships with the host population.58 Guidebooks, therefore, create expectations and influence the ways in which people see and understand places and peoples. Arguably, if the attraction does not match up to the representation, tourists will leave feeling disappointed. In contrast to the colourful imagery and language of tourism brochures, guidebooks are written in an informal narrative style; they provide detailed information and function as a surrogate tourism guide.59 Such guidebooks are the dominant form of tourism media that influence and educate backpackers about Australia and Indigenous
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peoples and cultures (although predominantly they are used for information about where to stay, transportation, and what to see and do at particular locations). The backpackers indicated that they also gain knowledge of Australian destinations and of Indigenous Australia through word-of-mouth communication from other travellers and tour guides, and through information at Indigenous cultural centres. Some travellers stated that they had read their guide from cover to cover and had learned about the history of Indigenous Australia, facts about Indigenous art, and other facts about land rights and reconciliation. A few also admitted that although they were aware of the sections relating to Indigenous people, they had not read them. In relation to using a guidebook for Uluru, one traveller noted:
The section on Uluru talks a hell of a lot about Aboriginal cultures because it is there as an informative thing rather just than to tell you where to go and what to do, you know, its telling you a bit about the history about the place. (Rob)
The guidebooks define the importance of Uluru as Australias biggest drawcard,60 the single most visited site in Australia,61 and one of Australias primary tourist meccas,62 where the hype is big63 but the hype is worth it.64 In addition to providing geological details of mighty65 Uluru as a natural wonder66 and the largest single rock in the world,67 each of the guidebooks informs readers of the cultural significance of Uluru to the local Indigenous people, and of the handback and leaseback arrangements of the national park. Uluru is described as an area of deep cultural significance to the local Anangu Aboriginal people,68 who for 22,000 years have revered Uluru as a sacred site of the Dreaming.69 In each of the guidebooks particular attention is paid to the issue of the climb. It is interesting to note the different views and representations cited in the guidebooks. The Lonely Planet highlights the issue of climbing
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Uluru in a separate text box identifying the primary concerns of Indigenous people as divulged above. Indeed, as one backpacker stated:
Its obviously very pro-Aboriginal, the Lonely Planet guide, which is quite interesting you know, the way its talking about not climbing the Rock, you read that and you obviously think, right, the editors or the writers of this book believe that you should not climb the Rock. (Natalie)
The Lets Go guide presents a view similar to that of the Lonely Planet, although it is not set out separately and is therefore unlikely to stand out to the casual reader. While it identifies the spiritual importance of the path, and the emphatic request that tourists not make the climb, this guide also states that hundreds of tourists undertake the climb each day. This information is followed with the statement that the climb is no easy task and that there are plaques commemorating the people who have died on the climb. Significantly, though, Not climbing Ayers Rock is listed in the Unforgettable Moments section at the beginning of the Lets Go.70 In contrast to the representations in the Lonely Planet and the Lets Go, the Rough Guide seemingly promotes the climb. The authors do identify that Indigenous Australians request that visitors do not climb; however, they also describe the act of climbing as a triumphant achievement, advertising that it takes less than an hour to climb to the summit.71 The reader is told that 70 per cent of visitors come to conquer the summit,72 and not making the climb is discussed in terms of a way to avoid tourists rather than respecting the wishes and beliefs of the Anangu. The climb is described as the greatest exertion you will undertake in Australia, the base walk being the less strenuous option.73 In the remainder of this chapter I focus on the Uluru climb as the tourist activity that perpetuates contradictory discourses and meanings of Uluru. In particular, I examine the backpackers dilemmas and attitudes and, ultimately, their actions in deciding whether or not to climb the Rock.
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To climb or not to climb? Backpackers at Uluru
How do backpackers respond to the contradictory nature of the narratives of Uluru? In order to address this question, I draw from a larger qualitative study in which semi-structured, in-depth interviews were conducted with thirty backpackers in the Northern Territory and Northern Queensland during AugustNovember 2000. The importance of a visit to Uluru in the itinerary of these backpackers is demonstrated by the fact that 90 per cent had travelled, or were planning to travel, to Uluru. For the purpose of this chapter, I focus on the experiences of the thirteen backpackers who had already visited Uluru in their travels. The seventeen backpackers who had not yet been to Uluru are not included in the group discussed, as their perceptions and expectations of their behaviour at Uluru could possibly change and be challenged as a result of their travel experiences. The backpackers interviewed were asked to discuss their views about climbing the Rock. Their responses provide some interesting insights into the meanings they attach to Uluru, particularly in relation to their interpretations and understandings of Aboriginality. The table opposite lists the thirteen backpackers who had been to Uluru, their gender, age, and country of origin. Also indicated is the guidebook they used, whether they had visited Uluru as part of an organised tour, and whether or not they had undertaken the climb. Of the thirteen backpackers who had been to Uluru, the majority (ten) had not climbed, with only three deciding to climb the Rock. Although this small group cannot be considered as representative of all backpackers to Australia, it does demonstrate that in this case the backpackers overwhelmingly chose not to climb. This figure differs greatly from that cited by Bob McKercher and Hilary du Cros, who stated in 1998 that 90 per cent of all tourists (not just backpackers) to Uluru go specifically to climb the Rock.74 It should be noted that the backpackers interviewed who were planning to go to Uluru also overwhelmingly stated that they would not climb the Rock when they got there. The table shows that in my study no link can be made between the backpackers nationality and their decision to climb, and
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Table 1: Backpacker behaviour at Uluru

Name Age Gender Country of origin Annie Saskia Andre Rachel Isobel 24 23 22 28 24 Female Female Male Female Female Female Female Male Female Male Male Male Female England Holland Holland England Ireland England Germany Switzerland England Holland England Holland Scotland Guidebook used Lonely Planet Lonely Planet Lonely Planet Lonely Planet Lonely Planet Lonely Planet Lonely Planet Lonely Planet Rough Guide Rough Guide Lonely Planet Lonely Planet Lonely Planet and Lets Go Organised Climb? tour? No No No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No No No No No No No No Yes Yes Yes
Natalie 28 Helena 23 Pierre Peter James Johan Sara 23 25 21 31 21 Melissa 27
also that no relationship can be made between the guidebook used and the decision to climb. The table does, however, indicate that the five backpackers who did self-guided tours of the Rock had not climbed, and the three that had climbed had all visited Uluru on an organised tour. All of the backpackers who had visited the National Park had spent time in the Uluru Kata Tjuta Aboriginal Cultural Centre, which opened in 1995 and is located one kilometre away from the Rock. Interpretative signage at the Cultural Centre quotes statements in seven different languages as made by traditional owners, such as: Thats a really important, sacred thing that you are climbing You shouldnt climb. Its not the proper thing.75
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The most common reason the backpackers gave for not climbing was respect for Indigenous Australians based on their knowledge that Uluru is a sacred site. For example, Annie, Saskia, Melissa, Isobel and Peter stated that they did not climb because they wanted to respect the wishes of the Indigenous people and their cultural beliefs. Their cultural sensitivity is highlighted by the use of words such as respect and appreciation. Consider, for example, the following responses:
I didnt climb it out of respect for them [the Aboriginal people]. (Annie) I didnt actually particularly want to climb it, and also, if they dont want you to climb it then you know there doesnt seem to be an awful lot you can do when youre a tourist travelling around to show an appreciation of the culture and support them. So if thats just one thing, one small thing you can do, then why not? (Melissa) I didnt climb it because I think people should respect like traditions. Like the Aboriginal people dont climb so why should we? It is their land It was amazing in itself just to walk around, you dont need to be at the top of it to appreciate that You should respect that they are their sites Those kind of things should be respected. (Isobel)
Andre, Rachel and Natalie expressed their knowledge that the site is sacred to Indigenous Australians and it was this knowledge that influenced their decision not to climb:
I didnt want to climb the Rock, I expected to go and see other things. I read before that that they dont like it if you climb their sacred place I was surprised that so many do it. I thought maybe just a few, you know, but no, whole lines. (Andre)
Helena went further to state that respect for Indigenous Australians goes past the fact that Uluru is a sacred place by her acknowledgement of the fact that the Indigenous people also ask tourists not to climb because they do not want visitors to be hurt on the Rock:
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I did not climb, I didnt want to They dont want anyone to climb the Rock because its dangerous [and] they dont want anyone dying up there as well I first thought it would be because its sacred but then, you know, I just learnt that its not about that, they just, you know, they just worried about the people mainly. (Helena)
For Pierre though, the reason he did not climb was not because of his knowledge that Indigenous people request that tourists not do so. He was disappointed that he was not able to climb due to poor weather conditions. He does mention respecting Uluru, but he believes that to respect the Rock it should be climbed, without mention of respect for the Indigenous owners:
It was closed because it was too windy. But I said yeah, I did want to climb. And then we went to the Rock and the others they did the base walk and then the ranger came and said no forget it, its too windy I always say I would more respect the Rock when I climb, and yeah, probably some tourists they say No, I dont climb, I have some respect. (Pierre)
Of the three backpackers who had climbed Uluru, they all acknowledged that they were aware that it was against the beliefs of the Anangu to climb, but despite that, they had made the decision to do so. James was very definite that he had wanted to climb the Rock and that its importance to the Indigenous community should not prevent his participation:
The reason I climbed the Rock was because I dont agree with what the Aboriginals believe Im a scientist and I look at the Rock and I think of it as an incredible geological phenomenon, but I dont believe that emu men climbed up, the mala men or whatever it was. (James)
However, both Sara and Johan pointed out that making the decision to climb was not an easy one, and having done the climb they were still unsure of whether they had made the right decision. If faced with the
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dilemma of climbing again, they both indicated that they would not climb Uluru. Sara in particular felt, in hindsight, that she had made the wrong decision, her dilemma evident in the following comment:
I did climb it I really was in two minds whether to do it or not. I mean, when I went to Ayers Rock I was like, you know, should I or shouldnt I? I dont know. But suddenly I thought God, I shouldnt have climbed it. Because I mean they dont want you [to] Theyd rather you didnt climb it and it isnt right. And I dont know why I did climb it. (Sara)
Johans decision to climb was also intrinsically controversial, with his decision being influenced by the fact that his tour guide had encouraged him and the tour group, stating that she, herself, had climbed:
Id read it already that theyd rather not have you climbing it I hadnt decided whether I was going to do it or not. Then the guide herself said that shed climbed it [So] I made up my mind like that ok, Im just going to climb I will not climb it again because there is probably some truth in it that its a sacred place and stuff. So if youve done that once, which was a magnificent thing to do, I really enjoyed it, apart from the excitement and stuff, but its a really weird thing to do. We didnt have time to do the base walk, so I havent done the base walk, for instance, and so next time, or the times after it that I come here, Ill just do the base walk. (Johan)
Interestingly, the three backpackers who did undertake the climb had visited Uluru on an organised tour, perhaps indicating that their decision to climb was strongly influenced by the tour operators and guides, who provide travellers with the opportunity to climb the Rock. Often, organised tours visit the Cultural Centre following an optional sunrise climb, thereby presenting travellers with the opportunity to understand the Anangus wishes not to climb Uluru after they have, in many instances, already climbed the Rock. The backpackers who visited Uluru were often critical of mass tourism at the site, and this is addressed in the following section.
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Authenticity and the backpacker experience at Uluru
For backpackers, the authenticity of places and experiences is of great importance. As Luke Desforges argues, young independent travellers are not only concerned that the places they visit are authentic, but that their experiences of them are as well.76 As backpackers search for cultural knowledge and contact with the authentic Other,77 the authenticity of the travel experience is often marked by the absence of the tourism industry, and thus by as little commodification of the relationship between traveller and the Other as possible.78 For the backpackers in this study, the two main concerns in relation to the authenticity of their experience were that their experience was to an extent spoilt by mass tourism, and that there was a lack of opportunities for contact with Indigenous people. So while it has been suggested that backpackers are culturally sensitive, they continue to hold stereotypical expectations about the experiences they would like to have. Importantly, however, some of these stereotypes are debunked and challenged throughout the travel experience. In an attempt to separate themselves from the perceived commercialisation of mass tourism, the backpackers berated other tourists for encroaching on their experiences and making them less authentic, with most of the backpackers including both those who climbed and those who did not climb commenting on their undesired contact with the commercial side of tourism at Uluru. Often they described the experience at Uluru as touristy, differentiating themselves from the tourists as those who will undertake the climb. For example:
A lot of people come here, get out of their car, climb the Rock, go for a sunset, go back, you know, thats it. You know, whats that? What have you done here? Why did you go there? I really, I cant understand that, thats, Yeah lets see the colours of the Rock, lets see the colours changing in the Rock Whats the point in that, I dont, I dont understand that. (Saskia) I actually had a fight with one of the guys in the car, he definitely wanted to climb the Rock I said why, you know, why is it so important for you?
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They ask you not to do it. And he just wanted to do it He did it and he was so proud that he conquered the Rock, that he stood on the top. (Andre)
The backpackers also discussed how tourists and commercialism spoilt their experience at Uluru:
And then the buses came in and a whole Japanese group with a Japanese tour guide and, you know, I thought no, I just dont want to be here, this is too commercial, same as the sunset viewing, the sunrise viewing. And I made pictures, I took pictures of people standing there taking pictures of the Rock! Yeah, its just, I think its too much, I know I was there myself too and I wanted to see it myself, but its very commercial. (Saskia) We went to the sunset and there was like so many people and I was like No I cant, I cant enjoy it with so many people around. So I was like holding my hands so I wouldnt see the people and just the Rock, you know. (Helena) I think its just a big tourist thing like when you go and do a thing like Ayers Rock. Youre watching the sunset, it looks so romantic, you know, beautiful like colours in the rock, youre standing there, youre watching it, but if you turn around youre standing with hundreds of people and theyre there having the barbies and having the beers and everything next to you. (Andre)
Even James, who had climbed Uluru, noted:

The only thing that spoilt it was the fact that there was so many people. But, at the end of the day, I was contributing to those so many people, so it was fine, I dont mind. (James)
In addition to these comments, a lack of contact with Indigenous people at Uluru had made their experience less authentic. Where guidebooks represent Uluru as being inextricably linked to Anangu people and culture, the information provided in them also assists in perpetuating a stereotype of Aboriginality similar to that portrayed in
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other forms of tourism media such as brochures and postcards. Guidebooks are just one part of a diverse system of representation within tourism media and popular culture. Research into the images of Indigenous Australians reproduced within tourism media, including my own previous research into postcard representations, illustrates that there is a popular ideology within tourism, and in Australian society generally, that real Indigenous people live in the outback, in the desert regions of Australia, and not in contemporary urban society.79 For example, as I have argued elsewhere, the dominant stereotype constructed on tourist postcards is of a primitive and timeless panAboriginal culture, represented by black-bodied men living in the outback, connected to the land both spiritually and physically, with a focus on the traditional aspects of Indigenous life.80 These findings are consistent with those raised in a study conducted by the Northern Territory Tourist Commission in 1984. The study, which is cited by Annette Hamilton, identifies the expectation of Indigenous experiences as a dominant contradiction and conflict in regard to tourism in Central Australia. The study found that one of the main expectations of tourists to Uluru was to have contact with Indigenous people. The survey found that 40 per cent of international visitors and 33 per cent of domestic visitors expressed disappointment that they did not have experiences with Indigenous people and cultures in the Northern Territory.81 She goes on to state that it is difficult to envisage how tourists will satisfy their expectations of contact with Indigenous culture in the Northern Territory, given that there are:
Only a handful of Aboriginal people [there, and] most of them wish to lead a normal, quiet life just like anybody else. To the tourist, the Aboriginal is an object of his or her vacation gaze, something to be photographed and taken away as a souvenir of the real thing in the Great Outback.82
Such a stereotype is also held by backpackers who believe that their experiences in the Centre, and particularly at Uluru, will be dominated by meeting Indigenous people and engaging in Indigenous cultural experiences. For example:
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I was surprised, even when we were around Uluru you didnt actually see very many Aboriginal people. (Natalie) It surprised me [not seeing Aboriginal people at Uluru] because I thought if its that important why werent they standing there saying to people, Dont climb the Rock? (Melissa) I expected to see them working in places as I said before. Like you go to Ayers Rock, its Aboriginal, where are all the Aboriginals? I think I saw one in the information centre there and they werent even working, I think they were just passing through Youd imagine them to be, well I always did, especially when we travelled up through the Centre youd be in places that would be very remote and they werent around, and we would be like looking at the hilltops and its like you imagine to see Aboriginals standing all around the hilltops with their spears I always imagined thats the way Aboriginals should be because books Id seen and on the postcards youd see them like that, and Ive never seen anyone vaguely look like that! (Rachel)
Despite such expectations, however, some alternative comments included:

What I absolutely dont like is the way theyre being semi-exploited as a tourist [attraction]. (Johan) I suppose its better for them to be invisible in a way If they want to continue their lifestyle then I guess its a lot better for them to be a lot more invisible because theyll all just become tourist attractions and I dont think thats right. (Sara)
Though, as illustrated above, stereotypes of Indigenous people at Uluru are often challenged as a result of travel experiences. This is particularly evident in the following comment:
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Back home I really thought I would go to Ayers Rock, see them sitting there, see them, this sounds strange, see them running with a spear, but, you know, thats the wrong image what the media gave me. (Saskia)
Conclusion
This chapter has contextualised the backpacker experience at Uluru utilising the theory of new tourism. It has been argued that backpackers, as new tourists, increasingly reject the dominant touristic narratives of Uluru, and openly criticise the commercialisation of mass tourism for degrading the authenticity of their experiences. Moreover, the backpackers demonstrate a growing respect for Indigenous people and cultures, evidenced by the dilemmas they face in relation to the climb. Thus, the backpackers are between a rock and a hard place, and this has been reflected in the interview data presented in this chapter. The backpackers decisions on whether or not to pursue the climb at Uluru are informed by cultural awareness and cultural sensitivity based on their respect and appreciation of Anangu cultural and spiritual beliefs. Popular travel guidebooks used by backpackers mediate their experiences at Uluru, and play a major role in educating them about the importance of the Rock to Indigenous Australians, and issues and Indigenous concerns relating to the climb. This chapter has offered a preliminary insight into backpacker experiences at Uluru. It has not been within the scope of this chapter to make comparisons to the views and actions of tourists other than backpackers. An interesting avenue for future research would, therefore, be a comparative study on attitudes towards the climb held by a variety of tourists.
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PART II.qxp
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BEYOND BACKPACKERS
THE OTHER INDEPENDENT TRAVELLERS
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Dollybirds of Passage: The Rise and Rise of the Independent Woman Traveller1
Penny Warner-Smith
I find it revealing that the metal bindings in womens corsets were called stays. Someone who wore stays wouldnt be going far. (Mary Morris, The Virago Book of Women Travellers)2
Janet Wolff has pointed out how our language reveals the deeply rooted expectation that it is men who travel. Gendered metaphors equate men with movement, with journeys, and women with passivity: the woman is the fixed point to which men return.3 In most analyses of travel, particularly of independent travel, it is a male traveller whose experience is foregrounded. It is the male gaze that provides the lens through which the woman is observed, a decorative object selling the landscape or a cipher in a gendered relationship, dependent companion of a male traveller or mother on a family holiday.4 The contradiction is that women do travel, and have always travelled. Although analyses of travel have largely ignored womens experiences,5 the work of writers such as Vivian Kinnaird and Derek Hall points to evidence of increasing scholarly interest in the area.6 For researchers there is a rich source of data to be found in the writings of women who recorded their journeys. The extensive body of writing by women travellers over the last three centuries provides evidence that far from remaining anchored to home and family, women moved widely around the globe, sometimes in the company of others, sometimes alone.7 This tradition of recording travel endures among
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many contemporary women travellers.8 Media imagery of the popularity of overseas travel from Australia in the immediate post-war period and into the 1960s is also a strategic resource. For example, within the Australian Womens Weekly, the predominant magazine for Australian women in this period and a gender text if ever there was one,9 we can trace the development of the independent woman traveller identity, which challenged traditional mythologies of femininity even while reproducing others. Travel is thus a significant site for exploring understandings of gender because of its potential to disrupt notions of appropriate space10 and the elision of women and home.11
Stereotyping women travellers
From Penelope to the present, women have waited If we grow weary of waiting, we can go on a journey. We can be the stranger who comes to town. (Mary Morris, The Virago Book of Women Travellers)12
Independent women travellers have challenged two stereotypes. Not only have they contradicted the essentialist mythology of woman as/and home, they have also confronted the expectation that any travel women do will be within the protecting compass of at least one other companion, probably more, inevitably a male. When Nettie Higgins left Australia for Europe in 1910, her family intended that the trip would be a finishing experience during which she would sightsee in the company of a chaperone. Vance Palmer, the friend who suggested the chaperone, and who was to later become her husband, admired her courage in venturing alone into the unknown heart of mysterious Europe.13 As a woman traveller who was neither organised by nor dependent on men, Nettie was considered unusual. The familiar figure of the Victorian lady traveller is a Mary Poppins prodding her umbrella into the soil of Africa, but in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries there were real-life independent women such as Isabella Bird, Isabelle Eberhardt, Mary Kingsley, Freya Stark, Marianne North and Edith Durham.14 Briavel Holcomb suggests that
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Dollybirds of Passage
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women like Isabella Bird epitomised a quest for a life less fettered by convention. Her adventures included having a fling and climbing Pikes Peak with the trapper Rocky Mountain Jim who when hes had liquor hes the most awful ruffian in Colorado, and casually taking up with a passing British Intelligence Officer in Iran. An Australian woman traveller of this period was Mary Gaunt, who fretted that it was considered dangerous that I walk in the quietest of streets unattended, that I could not be trusted alone with the middle-aged married music teacher who held me a first-class idiot and suffered under my struggles with C major. Although she was widowed while still quite young, she continued to travel and subsequently wrote about her experiences in West Africa, China and the Caribbean.15 These independent women resisted the stereotype of the dependent woman traveller. They occasionally dressed as men or modified their dress in order to minimise the risks that accompanied women seen to be on their own.16 It is ironic that the contemporary independent woman traveller may find many more restrictions in terms of dress and behaviour in the places she travels to than the Victorian traveller found in the places she travelled from. The cultural conventions of Islamic countries may be more inhibiting for a young Australian woman today than were the stifling bonds of family and respectability of which Nettie Palmer was thinking when she left Australia in 1910 to engage in a rite of separation from her family, seeking a room of her own, constructing an identity. After isolating herself in Berlin, sans chaperone, she wrote, Im glad to be going places where nobody will ever care if I live or die, and where I wont find my own photograph, literally or metaphorically, on every mantelshelf I see.17
Adventurous Australian women of the 1960s
Popular media interest tends to suggest that womens independent travel is something new in the broader travel industry,18 but as I have argued above, the growth has emerged out of historical trends. Young women travellers before the second world war were generally a privileged group, but post-war Australia was a site of escalating social
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change. A period of paid work after leaving school and before marriage became normalised for young women of all social classes. The daughter-housekeeper and young lady of a leisure-class family had almost disappeared. Alongside this were the influence and associated cultural change of early second-wave feminists like Simone de Beauvoir in France.19 In America, Betty Friedans book The Feminine Mystique, published in the early 1960s, identified the problem that had no name, the boredom and frustration of women at home.20 In Australia, Dissatisfied and frustrated young women were tempted to leave tradition behind with the possibility of travel abroad.21 An article in the Womens Weekly of 1961 articulated the restless longings of Australian girls:
How many girls in their late teens does this description fit? you have no money; you want to travel; youd be prepared to hitch-hike anywhere; youre sick of conforming to society and tradition; youd rather sleep under the stars than in a bed; you wear your hair long and never see it; youd like to live an offbeat life, if only for the experience.22
We can see such young women in the official statistics that captured the escalation in the number of short-term departures from Australia by young people. Far from being a tidal wave of men and a trickle of women, the numbers of young men and women leaving the country in the early years of the long post-war economic boom were similar. Some allowance must be made for the effect of more young servicemen going to and from the war in Korea in the 1950s, but this was relatively short-lived. In the decade between 1951 and 1961, the number of women aged 2024 who left Australia trebled from 1,520 in 1951 to 4,417 in 1961, whereas the number of men merely doubled from 2,251 to 4,559.23 Despite the statistical evidence, however, there is a persistence in the image of the traveller as a man, evoked for example in Rob Gersters view of the 1960s in Australia: It was also a decade of departures, when young Australians ventured abroad to test their prowess, artistic, athletic or martial, on the world arena.24 These travellers are defined by their occupation; here, the young Australian
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traveller is an athlete, or a soldier, maybe an artist. The trade of housewife25 does not appear, and although we know that young Australian women had travelled to foreign theatres of war and to Olympic or Commonwealth Games before the 1960s, it is the testing of their prowess that gives away the masculine identity of the traveller. Yet Ros Pesman, who travelled overseas herself in this period, has noted, The ships that sailed from the docks in Sydney and Melbourne in the 1950s and 1960s were laden with young Australian middle-class women.26 Further links between gender, the desire to travel, and social class were pointed out by John Clark, then professor of applied psychology at the University of New South Wales. In an article on teenage girls in the Sydney Morning Herald in 1961 he wrote:
A strong desire, not shared by boys, is to travel abroad, to learn how other people live and to know at first hand famous cities like London, Paris and Rome. The girls want this experience before settling down to married life. Only about one in 20 achieve it and these tend to come from the betteroff families, or from particular vocations such as nursing.27
There are several reasons for the rise of independent womens travel in the 1960s. Firstly, overseas tourism, with group travel and packaged destinations, did not become a substantive mode until the late 1970s.28 Secondly, as Clark suggests, young women were more likely to make career choices on the basis of work that would allow them to travel. In this regard, many young Australian middle-class women were able to draw on the model of the educated woman of first-wave feminism, represented by their school teachers and later their lecturers at university, who had often travelled abroad as young women between the two world wars.29 Yet, clearly, this outpouring of Australian young womanhood was due to more than a trickle-down effect experienced by middle- and lower-middle-class girls. Marsha Rowe was one girl from a workingclass background who left Australia in the 1960s. She had paid for her part-time university fees herself because her father, ashamed at his own lack of education, will provide for his sons but not for his
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daughters further education.30 She also paid her own way to London in the mid 1960s. Referring to herself, she says, She was one of the first to go. There. Overseas. Overseas means England or Greece. For the gay men it is Greece.31 As this comment suggests, England, and particularly London, still represented home, the hub of Empire for loyal antipodean subjects. For marginalised Others, such as homosexual men, as discussed by Kevin Markwell and Paul Stolk in this volume, their destinations were elsewhere, in another place.
Going home: travel advertising in the 1960s
The social pages of the Australian Womens Weekly, both pre- and postwar, reflect the point made earlier that women had always travelled. Almost every issue reported the marriage or engagement of a young Australian woman to an Englishman, or a young woman travelling overseas on holiday, perhaps to go skiing, with her parents. Perhaps the travellers sought a suitably cultured husband, for women travelled both in resistance to and in compliance with patriarchy.32 Inevitably, the focus was Europe a mecca of fashion and style with London as its hub. The persistent Anglo-centric, sheer taken-for-grantedness of a world situated in the binary opposition of Empire and Other is explicit in Marsha Rowes definition of overseas, and it is also transparent in the 1960s travel advertising in the Weekly. In 1961, an advertisement for the British Travel Association, representing major shipping groups and airlines, showed middle-aged couples photographing British icons. The woman traveller, safely escorted by her husband, was returning home to England: So much to See So much to Do on Your Holiday in Britain, and a friendly family welcome awaits you. The stereotype of the dependent woman, which Nettie Palmer for one had challenged decades earlier, also survives in a 1961 Weekly advertisement for a competition with a trip overseas as the prize. The wife in hat and gloves clutches her husbands arm, her ritualised subordination33 signified by her relatively smaller size, off-balance
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stance and wide smile. In these images, the association of the dependent woman with the familiar confines of husband and home, in all its multilayered meanings, remains unbroken. Many of the organisations that were represented in the magazine, such as the Malayan Government travel agency and South African Airways, were in colonial outposts, perhaps distant but nevertheless British and familiar. In 1961 the Hong Kong Tourist Association, the British Travel Association and Compass Tours advertised a variety of safe and sanitised world tours for the normatively suburban Australian woman. There were no images of young women on their own in these advertisements. Middle-aged couples and mixed groups predominated. These images, in which middle-aged married women are so clearly present, and young women so absent, sit oddly with the official statistical data, which shows an obvious presence of young women in their late teens and early twenties among Australian women travellers. In the earlier half of the 1960s there was a predominance of advertising by government agencies selling trips to Europe or stopovers on the way to or from London. Two advertisements are representative of this period: one for New Zealand and one for South Africa. In the first, the appeal of New Zealand is depicted as its combination of proximity to Australia and its Otherness, as represented by a caricature of a Maori figure. South Africa is on the way to Europe, psychically proximate to home yet incorporating exotica in the form of an elephant. Ellen McCracken suggests that the key to the attractive powers of mass culture is its ability to join the real and the imaginary so that the boundary becomes progressively vaguer.34 In the case of the examples just described, these are both quite small advertisements placed among the more traditional offerings of the magazine one embedded among recipes and the other alongside an appeal to readers to send in their love stories. Both fulfill the requirement of travel destinations, identified by Erik Cohen, to make travellers feel at home while offering them a novel experience.35 Towards the end of the decade, the middle-aged housewifetraveller was being escorted on the Weeklys annual Discovery Tours,
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which began in 1965 after the magazines proprietor, Frank Packer, bought into the World Travel Headquarters company.36 However, that essential feminine mode of dependent travel co-existed with more exciting, challenging images, into which the younger woman reader could choose to insinuate herself. From 1965, there was a shift in travel advertising. The government agencies almost disappeared, to be replaced by the Lloyd Triestino Line, Flotta Lauro, Alitalia, Qantas and P&O, and the advertisements began to focus on youth and later to show young women without male companions. For example, in February 1965, there was an advertisement for Lloyd Triestino to Europe the gay young way to travel. It shows two young men arm-wrestling while suspended over a swimming pool. In the watching crowd is a young woman in closeup, a reversal of the male gaze suggesting possibilities of feminine pleasure to be obtained in the unclothed male body on-board ship. The linguistic message includes jukebox, sunbaking, bars, night club until the early hours and implies later enjoyment of the body. By May 1968, a BOAC advertisement showed a photo of a young woman trying on clothes in a London shop:
BOAC will shift you into Topgear. Go in. Try on. Come out swinging! Topgear has some of the wildest clothes in all of clobber-conscious London. How do you get there? If youre an Australian under 26, via the British airline, the mini fare, and the Armchair.
Clearly the Weekly was offering plural possibilities for a feminine identity as a traveller in the 1960s, but the point must also be made that difference was limited. There was a generational range in the images, with a dichotomy of older women in traditional subordinate positioning and younger women as autonomous, if compulsorily heterosexual. However the travels of women like Susan Varga, who reluctantly made the pilgrimage back to Hungary in 1966 with her Jewish refugee parents, were invisible.37 The rise of an independent female traveller identity was frequently within the context of
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monarchical loyalties, but perhaps it was this context that allowed it to blossom. In consequence, the history of womens travel may be different in countries other than Australia.
The quest for self
Alison Mackinnon has characterised the way in which travel has been experienced by Australian women this century as an emerging form, which she defines as a means to greater independence, [for] women whose sense of self was irrevocably shaped by that experience.38 It was a rite-of-passage, a quest for self and the world.39 The journey is often freer than the destination,40 and for those who travelled by sea, the ocean voyage of several months from Australia to England was a literal rite of passage, perhaps more so for young women than young men. Clive James could thus describe the arrival of the liner in Southampton: The ship ground to a halt and waited for morning. It shook gently on the vibrations of the girl passengers saying farewell to the crew.41 By the 1960s, going overseas was a useful means of resisting the repressive sexual regime of conservative post-war Australia.42 This regime attempted to mould a heterosexualised femininity43 represented by virtuous young womanhood and maintained by the demonisation of the unmarried mother.44 The escape value of travel as a respectable means of living away from home was thus important to many young unmarried women who would have been stigmatised if they had left home for reasons other than marriage, nursing or travelling overseas.45 While many young men also left Australia in this period, the significance of such travel is greater for women in an era that was marked by the suburban dream, the isolation of women, the domestic ideal and the popularity of marriage.46 Within the Weekly, as the 1960s wore on the outside world was represented more by travel stories,47 but concurrently there were stories about young women inevitably making very traditional choices. One featured a young Englishwoman who travelled to America. Becoming pregnant, she returned to England to have the baby
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adopted, but the story ends with her deciding at the last moment to keep the baby and marry the father. How are we to understand these competing discourses? In analysing the appeal of womens magazines, McCracken argues that a strategy to reinforce conservative morals can be identified:
the ostensibly authoritative grand narrative of reality developed month after month in these texts first allows the pleasure of the transgressive and the forbidden, and then attempts to contain these elements by invoking dominant moral values.48
The shadowy image of the good woman would continue to stalk the young Australian who was tempted to challenge the boundaries. Contradictory positionings of young women as subject to patriarchal constraints while actively embarking on overseas adventures were also to be found in the Teenagers Weekly. This supplement to the Womens Weekly had been published since 1954, a fact that marked the female teenager as significant consumer.49 The regular Dorothy Dix column in the Teenagers Weekly consistently offered young women conservative advice about relationships and an image of emphasised femininity.50 Yet at the same time it was running feature articles about planning twelve-month trips abroad.51 This was where young women could find information about the Overseas Visitors Club as a place to stay, how to survive for twelve months in London, where to find disposal stores to buy camping equipment, and how to find a bed-sitter. In mid-twentieth-century Australia, travel allowed the young Australian woman a space, a heterotopia52 in which she could pursue some form of self-actualisation, whether that might be an exploration of her sexuality, the establishment of her financial independence, or in some way the constitution of a self that went beyond what she had been told she could be. It represented resistance to stereotypes of passivity or dependence, but beyond that, it was a demonstration of strength and a refusal to be positioned as victim. Claire Tristram tells of a rainy day in Paris in the 1970s when she accepted a strangers offer of an umbrella. Far from the charming encounter she envisaged, she
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spent a night of terror, kept hostage at knifepoint in the strangers lodgings. It was twenty years before she could write about the experience not because she was traumatised by it but because she couldnt bring herself to admit to such stupidity.53 Now, as then, the perceived dangers do not deter independent women, who develop strategies to negotiate the risk environment of independent travel.
It is not easy to move through the world alone, and it is never easy for a woman. You must keep your wits about you. You mustnt get yourself into dark places you cant get out of. Keep money you can get to, an exit behind you, and some language at your fingertips. You should know how to strike a proud pose, curse like a sailor, kick like a mule, and scream out your brothers name, though he may be 3,000 miles away.54
Janet Wolff considers the growing evidence that, just as Nettie Palmer did, becoming a stranger (for example by going abroad) is a crucial liberating step in self-discovery.55 Many travellers decide to travel at fateful moments when they are confronting questions of identity and lifestyle, and they see their period away from home as an opportunity for the accumulation of experience, which is used to renarrate and represent self-identity.56 When one returns home, the experiences are forged through reminiscence into possibilities for different conceptualisations of the self.57 This is crucial for women, who remain vulnerable to gendered stereotypes of the angel in the house and the civilising woman.
The Weekly : reflecting the world or lighting the way?
By the beginning of the 1960s, the young Australian woman could find within the Australian Womens Weekly a discourse of the young woman traveller as independent, adventurous and self-reliant, capable of organising her own accommodation and finding her own pleasures. Such images are always polysemous,58 bearing multiple meanings, and are not necessarily read in the same way by all young women. In her work on the Weekly after the war, Susan Sheridan notes that there has been a tendency in feminist theory to denounce the media as the enemy.59 She argues that this ignores the agency of the reader, who
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constructs a position for herself, while possibilities for the reader are also constructed by the text. Even if these images of women travellers spoke more eloquently to young middle-class women whose education had exposed them to ideologies of first-wave feminism, they were nevertheless also available to young working-class women positioning themselves as active subjects through the popular cultural medium of the Weekly. However, as the travel statistics show, it was some time before these social changes were mirrored in the advertising content of the magazine, thus problematising assumptions concerning the extent of any influence travel advertising may have had on social attitudes. There was a time lag in the commodification of the young woman traveller, who was not offered mini fares to Carnaby Street until 1968, when advertising began to reflect what had been happening for a decade, and what had been recognised in the Teenagers Weekly eight years earlier. It therefore seems clear that what was occurring was a resistance by young women to dominant patriarchal discourses on womanhood and an accommodation of the possibilities of changing conceptualisations of the self. It was a demonstration of agency rather than objectified commodification of the independent young woman as a market opportunity. In Betsy Wearings terms, travel represented a personal space that permitted the rewriting of the script of what it was to be a woman.60 Going overseas can be read as a political strategy by which young Australian women negotiated the tensions between their desires for self-discovery and the ties of love and duty that bound them to home and family. As such, it confirms the feminist argument that the analysis of womens leisure is essential to understanding patterns of power and domination in modern society.61
Conclusion
This chapter has argued that the stereotype of the independent traveller as a man has obscured the extent to which women have always travelled. It has drawn on autobiographical accounts of womens travels, particularly over the last two hundred years, to show their
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movement around the world. This archaeology challenges the conflation of women with passivity and home, but it should also be remembered that in the past it was independent European women of means who had the necessary cultural and economic capital to support and record their travels. It has also been suggested here that the 1960s can be seen as a turning point in the history of womens travel, particularly in Australia, when young women left their homeland in droves. The specificities of the long post-war economic boom, the spread of liberal social movements, and the context of strong monarchical loyalties in Australia provided the backdrop for the phenomenon. In particular, the links between England and Australia, as home and imperial outpost, shaped the vanguard of independent women travellers originating from Australia. Again, it is womens own accounts which point to this transformation, but further evidence is provided in official statistics for short-term departures from Australia, which show an escalation in the numbers of young women going overseas, beginning in the 1960s. Within the pages of the pre-eminent Australian womens magazine of the time, the Womens Weekly, can be discerned the tension between popular representations of dependent women and the rise of an independent female traveller identity. Images and editorials from the magazine illustrate not only the enduring nature of the stereotypical femininities presented to Australian women during the 1950s and 60s but also the increasing appeal of travel and the possibilities it held for resistance and the reformulation of womens selfhood.
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Travelling the Electronic Superhighway: Independent Travel and the Internet

Kevin Markwell and Paul Stolk
Travelling independent of the organised tourism industry involves a relatively high level of autonomy, freedom of choice, individuality and self-reliance. In an age where travel has become an essential means of accumulating cultural capital, tourists increasingly desire to differentiate themselves from the mass by operating in this manner. However, in plural societies there are other groups that are required to travel independently due to their otherness. This chapter argues that in both instances, a central component enabling independence is the internet. While the tourism industry has embraced the internet as a marketing tool, it is argued that individual travellers are able to subvert the tourism establishment through its information flow and capacity to multiply personal networks. In considering the ability of the internet to facilitate a variety of forms of independent travel, the chapter attempts to move beyond the concentration on backpackers as the model of independent travel by analysing gay and lesbian tourism.
Profiling the independent traveller
Independent travel is the term commonly used by the tourism industry to describe a style of travel undertaken by those who prefer to maintain a high level of control over their own travel preparations and actions. The independent traveller is generally contrasted with the organised mass tourist, who prefers their travel experience to come in
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a more easily consumed holiday package. The extent of organisational responsibility taken by the tourist relies largely upon individual preference and the skill base from which that consumer draws, which in turn depends on their own travel career and the experiences gained from previous travelling. Consequently, independent travel need not always exclude the use of travel agents (as commonly thought), who might still take shared responsibility for booking accommodation, transportation and other essential, and often specialised, aspects of the travel experience. However, the independent traveller will, under our conceptualisation, have carried out their own information search prior to the travel event and will retain a much greater share of control over when, how and where that person travels. With this general definition in mind, independent travel encompasses a broad spectrum of traveller types, from budgetconscious backpackers right through to ocean-going yachters. It is important to recognise that conceptualisations of independent travellers should not be made entirely on the basis of structural or industry-based definitions; the socio-cultural and psychological aspects of the independent traveller must also be taken into account. Any definition of independent travel needs to be concerned with the less tangible aspects of travelling independently, aspects that encompass the spirit of, and motivations for, independent travel activity. An outline of some studies that have examined the personal characteristics of independent travellers is helpful in this respect. While there has been a tendency for travel scholarship to focus on mainstream types of tourism that are closely associated with a recognisable tourism industry, a number of recent studies have examined the notion of independent travel. Alastair Morrison, Sheauhsing Hsieh and Joseph OLeary provide a useful prcis of the independent travel market in their comparison of the international travel arrangements of 831 travellers from France, 643 travellers from Germany and 754 travellers from the United Kingdom.1 By drawing on information such as traveller socio-demographics, psychographics
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and travel characteristics, their study examines escorted package travel, non-escorted package travel and independent travel. Findings from the research offer the following profile for independent travel:
Generally speaking, those aged between 18 and 34 preferred to travel independently. Independent travellers tended to have relatively high levels of formal education. Independent travellers tended to travel alone and for longer periods of time than package travellers, and were more likely to be single rather than married. Certain destinations were considered more suitable for independent travel, for example the research sample identified North America and Australia as popular independent travel markets. Independent travel is well-matched to some specific travel purposes, such as visiting friends and relatives. Independent travellers rely more heavily on friends and family for information than those who use package travel, prefer to make their own travel arrangements and are more budget-conscious.
The work of G D Taylor is consistent with the findings of Morrison et al.2 In a study spanning thirteen countries between 1986 and 1990, Taylor described independent travel as a travel philosophy that was adopted by individuals. He believed the main characteristics of independent travellers could be encapsulated by the following statements: I enjoy making my own arrangements for vacation trips; I like to make my arrangements as I go along on a vacation; I usually travel on reduced airfares. The most well-known form of independent traveller is the backpacker. Indeed, the media often views the terms backpacking and independent travel as being synonymous, despite backpacking making up only one portion of the much broader independent travel market. However, backpackers do share many of the traits apportioned to independent travellers from academic research. For example, as Philip Pearce describes in his book The Backpacker Phenomenon, backpackers tend to show: a preference for budget accommodation, an emphasis on meeting other travellers, an
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independently organised and flexible travel schedule, longer rather than brief holidays, and an emphasis on informal and participatory holiday activities.3 These criteria display strong similarities to those assigned to independent travellers by Taylor and Morrison et al. However, while backpackers have generally defined themselves as travellers who reject the approach taken to travel by the mainstream tourism industry, it must be acknowledged that the rapidly developing and globally significant backpacker industry parallels many of the qualities of the mass tourism industry. While backpackers have come to be accepted as an exemplar of the independent traveller, and much of the research has tended to focus on them, the differentiation of the tourism market into a variety of niche forms over the past decade or so, and the increased availability of information about destinations and modes of travelling, has meant that travel largely independent of the mass tourism industry is now a possibility for many. Just as the privately owned motor vehicle enabled people to have a much greater control of their holiday travel after WWII, allowing people to plan itineraries according to their own needs without having to fit them around bus and train timetables, so too does the internet enable travellers to plan their holidays in ways that reflect their needs, desires and limitations. This chapter will now focus on the ways in which the internet (and associated digital technologies) enables independence from the goods and services provided by the conventional tourism industry. Beginning with an overview of the development of the internet, the relationships between this technology and travel are examined, followed by a case study of gay and lesbian tourism as a form of independent travel that has a heavy reliance on the internet. It would seem, at least on the face of it, that the profiles that have been developed of independent travellers share some of the characteristics that have been attributed to internet users. Some studies suggest that internet users are generally younger and have a higher level of education than the population as a whole. Of course, it is not correct to assume that the internet is itself completely separate from the tourism industry; the tourism industry finds expression through
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the internet and, in particular, the worldwide web, just as do other industries, groups and individuals. However, what we seek to discuss in this chapter are the ways in which individuals, or specific groups of individuals, can now maintain greater levels of control over all phases of the travel experience, from pre-trip information acquisition through to post-trip reminiscing, via the internet. What follows now is a general overview of the emergence of the internet and its application to tourism.
The internet and travel
The use of the internet and worldwide web dominate most of the developments in the area of consumer access to travel databases. There are thousands of home pages of suppliers and associations and many electronic bulletin boards, newsgroups and chat rooms designed for the travel and tourism community. In fact, tourism and travel pages dominate the worldwide web.4 The internet is currently recognised as the worlds largest repository of online digital information.5 The first steps in the creation of the internet as it is known in its present form commenced in the 1970s through the US Defence Department project ARPAnet. While initially conceived of as a computer-based communication network strong enough to survive a nuclear war, the project evolved such that the internet became a valuable peacetime communication tool. It was used almost exclusively by academic institutions from the late 1970s to the late 1980s, until a research university in Switzerland developed a standard for accessing text in different computers via internet linkages (dubbed Hyper Text Mark-up Language) and the internet began to attract the attention of the business community.6 The worldwide web uses internet technology to link pages of information (in the form of text, data, graphics, images, sound, video or animation) that are viewed through web browser software. The multimedia capability and user-friendly interface of the worldwide web attracted the attention of commercial enterprises and consumers alike, primarily to deliver product and service information to potential
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customers. With the increasingly global adoption of personal computers into the home and workplace during the last decade (particularly evident in developed countries), the internet and worldwide web have become important new arenas in the conduct of commercial trade. The point needs to be made here that it is very easy for those of us in the industrialised West to over-emphasise the level of access that individuals have to the internet. While home-based internet access is very high in countries such as Australia, the United Kingdom, western European nations, the United States and Canada, for those living in developing nations, or indeed for those living in poorer rural and regional areas within the developed world, the internet is much less accessible. Governments, businesses and consumers from many countries have accepted the internet as a new and legitimate marketplace for communication and commerce. The internet is becoming increasingly user-friendly7 and accessible, and less expensive than ever before.8 Its accessibility is likely to improve even more with the expansion of wireless-based internet. Not surprisingly, then, internet use continues to escalate at a steady rate.9 A recent survey by the Travel Industry Association of America (TIA) recorded over 50 million adult internet users worldwide in 1997, a 10 per cent increase from figures in 1996. The potential for the internet to facilitate electronic commerce has received significant attention from many authors,10 and as Karin Weber and Wesley Roehl contend, the travel industry has been identified as one sector likely to be strongly affected by growth in internet use.11 Consumer surveys support this claim, with travel often being ranked among the top three product/service categories purchased using the internet.12 The fact that today most tourist accommodation, whether hotel or backpacker hostel, almost inevitably contains internet facilities, and that backpacker tourist districts in particular are now characterised by internet cafes, also demonstrates the close relationship between the internet and travel. A recent newspaper article published in the Newcastle Herald clearly shows the value placed on the internet by the government and tourism industry.13 Headed New website targets growing backpacker market,
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the article states: The website gives backpackers detailed and accurate information about the [Northern] Territory, and provides the tools needed to plan their itineraries during their stay. Clearly, the independence desired by most backpackers is seen to be facilitated by this particular website, one that provides information about aspects of the Northern Territory as well as the tools that will enable these tourists to plan and conduct an enjoyable visit. Bing Pan and Daniel Fesenmaier present an important distinction between webpages as they relate to travel and tourism.14 Travel websites are those that focus on travellers as their target audience. They seek to satisfy the information needs of travellers and can be produced by corporations, non-profit organisations and individuals for the provision of information as well as facilitating electronic transactions and communication. Tourism websites target tourism professionals or researchers, and are operated by tourism organisations for the communication and exchange of information between or within their target audience. Table 1, overleaf, demonstrates how this categorisation applies. The table shows the range of uses made of travel-related websites and the ways in which information flows between the different users. While Pan and Fesenmaiers summary focuses more on travel websites, the worldwide web is merely one form of the internets capabilities in relation to the travelling community. Despite the webs graphic capabilities, which allow images of destinations, attractions and cultural products to be easily displayed, other internet devices offer a more interactive experience for users. Electronic mail (email), bulletin boards, newsgroups and chat rooms are alternative internet services that facilitate the process of communication and informationgathering. Less commercial than the worldwide web, they provide opportunities for the dissemination of travel information via informal discussion. Bulletin boards and newsgroups are repositories for information specific to a certain topic that can be accessed either by subscription (bulletin board) or active search (newsgroup). Chat rooms, while similar, offer the exchange of information in real time typed conversations between users. Communities of travellers form
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Table 1: Travel- and tourism-related websites Type of Information Explanation Website examples website flow Traveller Facilitate information Online traveller traveller exchange between communities: travellers. www.lonelyplanet.com Travel Traveller Facilitate information Provide online websites professional exchange between information to travellers: travellers and different www.enjoyillinois.com tourism professionals. Professional Business-to-business International Association professional communication, of Convention and professional tourism Visitor Bureaus: association websites. www.iacvb.org Tourism Traveller Online traveller survey New York City 2000 websites researcher to gather information Traveller Survey: from travellers. www.nyctourist.com/ survey_recent4.html
Adapted from Pan and Fesenmaier15
around these bulletin boards and chat rooms, providing spaces for interaction, the exchange of information and the development of friendships. Technology has an influential role to play in the formation of tourism trends. Advances in transportation technology during the post-WWII period is a useful example, having contributed to tourism growth internationally via direct benefits for passengers, such as reduced travelling time and increased comfort.16 Such development helped thwart the tyranny of distance experienced by geographically isolated nations such as Australia and New Zealand. More recently, tourism trends have been profoundly influenced by developments in the information technology industry, particularly through the generalised accessibility of the internet.
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While progress in transport technology decreased travel concerns about large physical distances, information technology, through channels such as the internet, is shrinking the concepts of distance and travel as they are conventionally understood. The characteristics considered emblematic of postmodernity by the sociologist John Urry, such as space-time compression, the increasing visualisation of culture, economic and social patterns underpinned by consumption and play rather than by production, and the de-differentiation of commerce and culture are also all facilitated by the internet.17 Characterised by its global communication system and minimal censorship, the internet is having dramatic implications for both how the travel and tourism industry conducts its business and how the travelling public consider and actualise their travel aspirations. The use of the internet in relation to travel can be examined with reference to the stages of the travel experience (pre-trip, on-trip and post-trip). Table 2, overleaf, provides examples of how the internet can be drawn on to meet information, communication or commerce needs during any stage of the travel experience. Analysis using this method illustrates the extent to which the internet is capable of permeating both the operational processes of the travel industry and the behavioural practices of the travelling public. Whereas, for example, a traveller once may have sent a postcard or made a phone call to friends and relatives, instead they now may have access to some form of internet service. As will be discussed below, the internet allows tourists to involve their friends and relatives back home in the holiday, and to share vicariously in the experiences of the tourist. Email, chat rooms and video chat rooms enable the tourist to make frequent contact with others who are thus brought into the experience in a much more intimate way than postcards or even telephone calls could ever achieve. This brings us to the notion of space-time compression, considered by Urry to characterise postmodernity, which has been facilitated in tourism by the internet. The rapid development of internet cafes and other retail outlets that now offer internet and email access means that travellers can involve their friends and family in their travel experiences
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Table 2: Internet usage during the stages of travel Travel Information Communication E-commerce experience needs needs needs stage Reading the Seeking advice Purchasing travel experiences of from a travel insurance Pre-trip other travellers expert (WWW) (newsgroups) (chat room) Planning future Keeping in touch Buying a ferry activities with friends and ticket On-trip (WWW) relatives (WWW) (email)
Contribute to information exchange about destinations (bulletin boards) Sending travel Selecting guide photos to friends book for next (email) holiday (WWW)
Post-trip
in a much more instantaneous way than ever before. Whereas postcards are primarily a one-way form of communication, email enables the receiver of the email to respond immediately to the sender, and the fact that the traveller has a cyber-address means that they are contactable, provided that they can find internet access. Chat rooms enable the tourist to communicate in real time with friends and family back home, again facilitating much more intimate and speedy contact between tourist and their relatives and friends than conventional postal services ever did. Telephones have of course provided these opportunities too, but at a much greater cost. Travellers need not be restricted to sending text via their emails either digital photography means that images can be attached to emails and sent back home immediately as well. In fact, digital photography (both still and movie) may well have a far-reaching effect on travel generally. Digital photography permits the photographer to view her/his photograph immediately and, if they so choose, to erase
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it and take another, better shot. The picture-perfect holiday becomes the perfect-picture holiday. Post-holiday, the images can be further manipulated using the appropriate software, enabling the photographer to enhance, modify and manipulate images in an enormous variety of ways. These developments affect the way in which time and space are understood and experienced by the tourist. It is also important to note Urrys comments that technology is not by itself a determinant of change in the tourism practices of individuals, groups and organisations; rather, technology requires social acceptance before innovations are taken up generally. In the case of the internet and travel, increasing numbers of consumers have had access to the internet for some years, and these people have developed the literacy levels needed to make use of it in sophisticated ways. Given the growing popularity of online banking and other financial transactions, it is not surprising that consumers have been making use of the technology for their travel plans. Tourism, as an extremely information-intensive industry,18 appears to be highly suited to a medium such as the internet, and can reasonably be expected to have continued success (at least in economic terms) as access and exposure to the internet widens. It has been estimated that the online leisuretravel bookings market is expected to grow from its 1998 figure of US$3.1 billion to over US$29 billion in 2003.19 Popular websites include dedicated online travel agents such as Travelocity and Expedia (www.travelocity.com and www.expedia.com). However, the internet and travel are not linked by the value of commercial transactions alone. Many potential tourists are turning to the internet as a source of pre-trip information.20 Websites such as Lonely Planet Online (www.lonelyplanet.com) and the Virtual Tourist (www.vtourist.com) are indicative of the quality and depth of travel information available online. Lonely Planet Online, for instance, does not only provide information about destinations; through its Thorntree e-noticeboard it also provides an opportunity for people to post questions about destinations, accommodation, travel companies and any other aspects of travel, which can then be answered by other people who have experienced those places or businesses. Separate e-
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noticeboards exist for different special-interest traveller communities, such as women, men, travellers with disabilities, travellers with children, as well as gay and lesbian travellers. Certain topics, such as health, sport travel and even the involvement of technologies such as digital cameras, mobile phones and computers in travel, are given their own e-noticeboards! This facility involves more than just the one-way flow of information from a sender to a receiver. First, a single question posted on an electronic noticeboard can elicit multiple responses, thus providing a range of opinions and shared experiences. In addition, the person who asked the original question can pursue a more detailed response with more questions to one or more of the people who offered advice, which enables them to obtain very specific information. One of the topics posted on the gay and lesbian noticeboard was about whether anybody had met up with anybody they had talked to in here. The response below is representative of many comments:
I have met a few people from here and the experiences have been great. Most are fellow travellers with whom I exchanged travel notes, and a few are locals who have showed me some nice places. On the whole, however, it is difficult to arrange a suitable place and time to meet, especially when one is on the move all the time.
Thus, an electronic noticeboard such as this provides people with opportunities to make new friends, share travel-related information and gain local insights into particular destinations. The capacity of the internet to enable such interactions is clearly considerable. Admittedly, there are only a small number of studies available, but evidence suggests that those individuals who use the internet as part of their travel experience share a similar profile with independent travellers. In a study comparing the holiday patterns of Austrian internet users against the general Austrian population, B Baier found that the internet user/tourist was young, of highmedium financial standing, mostly male, highly qualified and gainfully employed.21 Baier also discovered that her research sample travelled more frequently than
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the rest of the population, often to more distant locations, and showed a slightly stronger inclination for active holiday types (sporting and cultural trips) than classically passive types (beach holidays, relaxation). These characteristics compare favourably with those found by Weber and Roehl in their attempt to profile people searching for and purchasing travel products on the internet,22 and with the work of Morrison in profiling independent travellers.23 Moreover, there appears to be enough similarity between the profile of individuals who are using the internet for travel purposes and individuals who are classified as independent travellers to hypothesise some form of relationship. The following section presents a case study of the relationships between the internet and the independent gay travel market. This market is a strategically useful research site that helps to illuminate the ways in which the internet has been, and will continue to be, an important facilitator of modes of independent travel.
Case study: Independent gay travellers and the internet
Whereas backpacking is a form of independent travel that, at least in part, is a type of middle-class rite of passage for young people making the transition from a formal education system to full-time work, there are forms of independent travel that exist because they reflect the outsider status of participants. One such group of independent travellers comprises gays and lesbians. For many lesbians and gay men, temporary escapes from their places of residence to destinations that offer a greater sense of individual and collective freedom play an important part in their lives. A number of authors argue that such pilgrimages to the centres of gay culture and community are important in the construction and ongoing maintenance of gay identities.24 Travel becomes a means to temporarily leave behind the social and political factors that operate to oppress or constrain gay subjectivities and citizenship, and to connect with other gay men and lesbians in a more accepting social milieu. Robert Aldrich has shown
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how the importance of travel for homosexual men living in northern Europe has a long history, with southern Italy in particular being a destination where homosexual relations could take place more easily.25 However, while recreational travel has long been important for gays and lesbians, until recently an organised and identifiable gay and lesbian tourism industry that catered for the specific needs of this historically marginalised group did not exist. The mainstream tourism industry by and large did not, and to a great extent still does not, adequately cater for the needs of lesbians and gays. Various forms of discrimination or hostility frequently occur in a wide range of travelrelated contexts, including the allocation of seating on aircraft, the booking of double rooms for same-sex couples, the behaviour of tour leaders and other tour participants towards gays and lesbians, and the negative responses of members of the destination community towards the public expression of same-sex affection. Consequently, gays and lesbians, especially those with the financial resources to do so, have been required to develop a relatively high level of independence from the institutionalised tourism industry in order to have greater control over their holiday experiences. The mainstream tourism industry tends not to provide gay and lesbian travellers with the kinds of information they need, including advice on which hotels are gay-friendly, the location of gay bars and nightclubs, and sex-on-premises venues and cruising areas, the latter of which are of importance in gay mens cultures in particular. Notwithstanding the recent emergence of a sophisticated gay and lesbian tourism industry, such tourists can still be considered well-equipped independent travellers. So, for these reasons, gays and lesbians frequently venture outside the institutionalised travel establishment in order to organise their holidays. One of the mechanisms that allows this independence is that gay and lesbian communities comprise overlapping informal friendship networks that facilitate the effective and rapid transfer of information about a wide array of matters, including, of course, travelrelated information. We suggest that central to contemporary information transmission within and between gay and lesbian communities is the internet, particularly the worldwide web. It has
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been suggested that gay men and lesbians are early adopters of new technologies, trend-setters, and that internet usage among gays and lesbians is very high.26 As this chapter has already shown, travel and tourism are particularly well suited to this medium, and so it is not surprising then that a wide array of travel-related sites exist for gay men and, to a lesser extent, lesbians on the worldwide web. The potential for the conventional structures and practices characteristic of the tourism industry to be subverted through these technologies by gays and lesbians is, we believe, quite high. While community or lifestyle publications and the socialising that takes place in bars, nightclubs and other venues are all effective vehicles for the transmission of information about travel and tourism, it is the internet and its capacity to facilitate all kinds of instantaneous and delayed communication that we believe will be pivotal in the development of gay and lesbian travel. Online chat rooms provided by a number of websites such as www.gay.com, www.gaydar.com and www.menonthenet.com provide opportunities for gays and lesbians to meet and begin friendships with others located anywhere from Angola to Zimbabwe. Videoconferencing programmes such as ICUii and Netmeeting add a visual dimension to this interaction, further enhancing the power of these media. Friendships can be established and meetings arranged when one of the pair is visiting the other. Indeed, anecdotal evidence suggests that meeting people through some form of computermediated interaction acts as a motivator to travel to particular destinations to meet net-buddies in real time and real space. Accommodation might be offered by the person living in the destination to be visited, or at the very least that person can bridge the gap between visitor and local by showing the other around and assisting him or her in gaining access to the gay social world at that destination. These personal connections offer opportunities for gays and lesbians to travel very independently of the organised and structured tourism industry, in effect subverting the industry. The potential for quite intimate relationships to develop online means that tourists then stay with their friends at the friends home, rather than in
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a hotel or some other form of accommodation; they are guided by their friend and the friends social group and in this way penetrate into the back-stage27 of a destination more easily than if they were reliant on the established tourism industry with its set of attractions, experiences and services. Information about destinations, accommodation, special events such as dance parties, and the social opportunities available at specific destinations can be gathered first-hand from residents, or other tourists, rather than relying on the (inevitably biased) advertising of venue and property owners, or the often out-of-date information provided by gay guidebooks. Chat rooms and bulletin boards enable gay and lesbian tourists to swap information, compare experiences and ask very specific questions about matters of interest to them on which it could otherwise be quite difficult to obtain information. The following passages are taken from a gay and lesbian travel message board. They demonstrate the importance that such an online communication facility has for gay and lesbian independent travellers. The first two messages demonstrate the role that the message board plays in providing people with access to specific advice and information about particular destinations, as well as helping to meet up with fellow gay or lesbian travellers or locals:
seeking backpacking advice or a cool dyke to meet up with for a day. peru, ecuador and bolivia now until Sept. 10. flexible schedule. im 23, speak spanish and have the independent, easygoing but responsible, socially conscious backpacker spirit. Hi, Visiting Santander & Bilbao (Spain) next week, looking for some info: bars, nightclubs, saunas, cruising areas? Anyone else around these cities would like to meet for a beer? Gracias!
In the next message, information is being provided about the social status of lesbians in India, but the person who has posted it (in response to an earlier request for such information) has also provided hotmail contacts for people who may wish to seek further information.
homosexual women in India are not visible at all, and its very hard to find them and get in touch with them. However, there are organisations for
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lesbian and bisexual women, mainly in the big cities. There is a new one in Bombay call [omitted]. Its just about to get started as an independent NGO, and has no phone number yet however, if you are in bombay you can attend the monthly meetings and you can get in touch with [omitted]@hotmail.com, or [omitted]@hotmail.com.
Finally, in the message that follows, the capacity for the internet to enable travellers to make immediate contact with fellow travellers is clear. Entitled Feeling lonely in Bangkok, this message has been posted so that the person who posted it can make social or sexual contact with other travellers who also happen to be in Bangkok. For many travellers, and indeed people generally, the internet provides them with a means of making contact with others in ways which they would not feel comfortable or confident in more conventional social settings such as nightclubs and bars:
I am a young brazilian guy experienced and independent traveller and I am in Bangkok right now and would love to meet some guy for a beer.
The internet has a number of significant advantages over more conventional print forms of travel media such as guidebooks and tourist brochures. The speed at which new information can be uploaded on to websites means that a webpage can be updated several times per day if this was required, compared with the publication process associated with printed guidebooks, which take many months to compile, edit and publish. Opportunities for interaction between the internet users are almost limitless. Travellers can post stories about their journeys on message boards, or post comments that might answer the specific questions of other travellers. These first-hand accounts provide up-to-date and culturally specific information that many guidebooks simply cannot, or will not, do. Travellers with very specific tastes or requirements are able to connect with groups of people sharing those (sometimes very esoteric) interests, and so can be better catered for than by the more conservative mainstream tourism industry.
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Conclusion
This chapter has discussed the ways in which the internet and its associated digital communication facilities, such as the worldwide web, email, bulletin boards and chat rooms, provide seemingly boundless possibilities for independent travellers. The findings from a number of studies suggest that the socio-demographic characteristics of internet users and independent travellers are similar, and that the internet is increasingly seen as a rich source of up-to-date information useful in the pre-tour phase of travel. But its capacity for reshaping both independent travel and travel more generally goes beyond simple provision of information. Communities of travellers can form around specific electronic bulletin boards and on email lists, enabling active discussion to occur in relation to specific destinations or forms of travel. Friendships can develop and individuals can act as points of entry into local social groups for the traveller. Video chat rooms, whereby people can see who they are speaking with and interact in a much more complete way than simply reading text, enhance this form of communication. Email and chat rooms also enable the traveller to actively involve the friends and relatives in the travellers place of origin, keeping them informed of progress and enabling them to be involved in the day-to-day life of the traveller. Digital photography enables the transmission of images along with text, as well as opening up an array of possibilities to take greater control of the photographic process. The communication offered by the internet therefore does not only offer opportunities to alter the relationship between the independent traveller and the tourism industry; it also changes the nature of the relationship between the traveller and home. No longer does the independent traveller have to feel so isolated from home, because the internet collapses our conception of spatial distance, enabling much greater, more instantaneous and more frequent contact with significant others. Those who are left behind in turn have a much greater access to the experiences of the traveller and, to an extent, can become
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entwined in the travel experience. These possibilities offered by the internet may have considerable impact on the future of not only independent travel but also its more popular forms.
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BLURRED BOUNDARIES
DEPENDENCY AND INDEPENDENT TRAVEL
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Ambassador, Worker and Player: Independent Travellers Working in American Summer Camps
Kevin Lyons
Around January each year, advertisements begin to appear in the employment sections of major newspapers throughout Australia, aimed at recruiting young Australians to work in American summer camps. Up to two thousand young Australians answer the call annually and engage in what is often marketed as a cultural exchange program. While American camps and the exchange programs that serve them exemplify organised leisure, this chapter argues that independent travellers working in this context challenge any simplistic unidimensional typing of their participation. In examining the experiences of independent travellers who work at camps in the United States, particular emphasis is placed upon exploring how independent travellers negotiate and reconcile the ambiguities that this experience presents.
Segmenting the independent traveller
Travel and related research on tourism has provided a wealth of typological models to classify travellers. Typologies have been developed based on a broad range of increasingly sophisticated criteria associated with social roles, motivations, activity types, sociodemographics, travel experiences, lifestyles, values and personality.1 Proponents of typological research argue that it provides a valuable foundation upon which action can be taken.2 For example, the
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principles of market segmentation in tourism are based on the premise that particular types of travellers can be categorised, and their needs identified and met, through the development of niche products. Recently, the dominance of typological research has been criticised. Adrian Franklin and Mike Crang argue that the proliferation of increasingly fine-tuned and elaborate typologies and a general craze for classification has emerged from a view of tourism as a series of discrete, enumerated occurrences of travel, arrival, activity, purchase, departure, where tourists are seen as another incarnation of Rational Economic Man.3 As a result, there has been an unchallenged belief underlying travel and tourism research that increasingly finer-tuned and elaborate typologies will eventually form a classificatory grid in which definition and regulation can occur.4 One of the significant categorisations in tourism literature is the designation of the independent traveller. The criteria for identifying this category of traveller has been shaped by designations such as the drifter, the wanderer, the long-term budget traveller and the backpacker.5 While each of these types have differing criteria upon which they have been constructed, they share a common focus associated with non-institutionalised tourism, which recognises that among those who fall under the rubric of tourism, some organise and undertake their travels independently of mass tourism.6 The independent traveller often undertakes a range of experiences that may, strictly speaking, exclude them from being categorised (at least temporarily) as being independent. To some degree, many independent travellers find it difficult to avoid institutionalised experiences. For some, this may simply reflect the efficiencies that mass tourism offers (as exemplified by Wests analysis in this volume of Australians who participate in organised tours of the Gallipoli battlefields). However, for many, the contemporary context in which one travels independently makes it impossible to avoid the structured and the packaged, which may seem to be the antithesis of established understandings of independent travel. What is often overlooked in the craze for classification that dominates travel and tourism research is that the lived experience of the everyday is not
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easily categorised, and any attempt to do so makes invisible the dynamic characteristics of travel. Many independent travellers are exposed to a multitude of opportunities and challenges that may at once render them classifiable as mass tourists, exchange participants, employees, independent travellers or a number of other designations. Indeed, the implied mutual exclusivity of traveller typologies has tended to privilege difference, Otherness and exotica, and to overlook the banal and extraordinary everyday of tourism and travel.7 Rather than trying to pigeon-hole travellers according to particular characteristics, interests or behaviours, it is valuable to focus upon how travellers who may, in some sense, be best classified as independent travellers negotiate the potentially competing roles they find themselves in during their travel experiences. Many independent travellers find themselves wearing numerous hats at once. For example, many travellers undertake paid employment as part of their travel experience. Patricia Adler and Peter Adler argue that the experience of working not only satisfies the need for money but also provides a mechanism through which travellers can access what is typically inaccessible to tourists.8 While Natan Urielys typology of work and travel recognises that paid employment may have an impact on the experience of the traveller,9 little is known about how independent travellers negotiate the potentially competing roles of traveller and worker. By exploring the experiences of independent travellers who undertake employment while travelling and who also find themselves involved in highly organised, packaged and institutionalised contexts, it is possible to move away from a uni-dimensional typological approach to understanding independent travel and begin to examine the dynamic, somewhat messy and ambiguous experiences that independent travellers negotiate and which form a central component of this travel type. To this end, this chapter focuses upon the experience of a group of Australians who travelled independently and who chose to undertake paid employment at summer camps as
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part of their travels in the United States an experience only accessible through the highly packaged context of cultural exchange a context rife with ambiguities.
Background to American camps
If you grow up in the United States, there is a good chance that you will have attended a summer camp at least once before you reach the age of sixteen. It has been estimated that over 50 per cent of the total United States adult population attended a camp during their childhood.10 Presently, there are an estimated two thousand accredited camps operating in the United States each summer,11 including day camps, residential camps and year-round programs, reflecting the continuing popularity of organised camping. Unlike other countries where camps operate within the context of schools, summer camp in the United States is a cultural institution that has its own distinct characteristics steeped in history. Summer camps developed as part of the Fresh Air and Rational Recreation movements of the late 1800s, which sought to provide prosocial and healthy summer alternatives to the thousands of children living in the impoverished neighbourhoods of the large industrial cities of the north-eastern United States.12 Highly structured camps were developed in the surrounding countryside and focused upon physical fitness, patriotism and discipline.13 The structured and institutionalised character of American camps continues today and is evident in the regimented scheduling of camp programs, and in the well-oiled machinery of the American Camping Association (ACA), the accrediting body of American camps.14 The cultural institution of organised camping is also the product of less formal but equally powerful rituals and traditions, such as the morning salutation of the American flag, the humble American culinary fare of hotdogs and baked beans, the practical jokes, and the quirky and eccentric camp staff. Summer camp in the United States is a celebrated part of American popular culture. Popular American television programs over the past three decades, including The
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Simpsons, The Cosby Show and All in the Family, and movies such as American Pie, Meatballs and Indian Summer, have reinforced the stereotype of camp as being as American as Apple Pie. Over the past two decades, the all-American profile of camps has been challenged. American camps are far more eclectic in terms of camper profiles. Camps now exist that serve widely diverse populations and cut across categories of ethnicity, class, gender, disability and age.15 Indeed, this diversity has become a mantra of the ACA, who state that camps do kids the world of good.16 The delivery system for this good has increasingly become the employment of an internationally diverse staff. The highly structured context of summer camp employment and the institutionalised characteristics of the summer camp phenomenon in the United States provides potentially ambiguous experiences for independent travellers far removed from the footloose and fancy-free characteristics that are typically associated with independent travel typologies.
Access to summer camp employment
For the remainder of this chapter, my analysis is informed by the voices of young Australian women and men who have worked at a summer camp in the United States. These comments are drawn from semi-structured interviews conducted over two American summer camp seasons in 2001 and 2002 with seventy-one individuals (thirtyeight men and thirty-three women) who all self-identified with the characteristics of independent travellers when they were asked to identify their primary reason for travelling. The travellers interviewed worked in camps across the United States, including private, commercial and non-profit camps. Twenty of these individuals worked in camps owned and operated by religious organisations, and twentytwo worked at camps that served a wide range of campers, including camps for children with special needs. The remainder worked in a variety of camps, including sports and arts camps. All travellers who worked in American camps were affected by the highly packaged process that facilitated their access to this work, and the implied
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cultural ambassador responsibilities and roles that are placed upon international summer camp workers. These factors are discussed below. When travelling within the United States it is almost impossible to avoid packaged and mediated tourism experiences. Some researchers have argued that the idealised smokescreen of packaged tourism is designed to disguise the realities of the anomic conditions of modern life in the United States.17 Others have argued that the packaging of experiences is yet another manifestation of McDonaldisation at work.18 Regardless of the reasons for it, independent travellers in the United States often find their travels punctuated with packaged experiences. This packaging is not only limited to mass tourism experiences but also potentially infiltrates all aspects of the independent travellers experiences, including paid employment opportunities. The strong American dollar has made budget travelling in the United States a financially challenging undertaking. One solution to this situation is to seek employment to supplement the cost of travel. However, the United States has very stringent and controlled processes regulating those foreign nationals interested in seasonal work. One of the most popular seasonal employment opportunities available to travellers is summer camp employment:
I just could not arrange work on my own. Once I started looking into it I hit brick walls everywhere. The US consulate told me that I would need to find an employer in the US to sponsor me. That is not easy to do from Australia. The only work that I could find that I could do legally was at the camps, and the only way to get that work was through a camp counsellor agency. (Melissa, age 26) I really wanted to spend some time in America but knew I would have to get some work so I could afford it. The Aussie dollar is so weak here that I needed to make some American money. Once I started looking into it, camps were the only real option (Malcolm, age 21)
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The structuring and packaging of camp work in the United States problematise the classification of working travellers, such as Urielys working tourist type, who engage in occasional and usually short-term employment as they travel19 by removing choice from the equation. Typically, the labour market provides an array of choices for the potential employee. However, the independency of travel was sometimes negated by the perceived monopoly of employment available to travellers:
Either I work at the camps or I dont work. Even though the work at the camps is fun, I cant help but feel a bit stuck. (Andrew, age 23)
Organised summer camps are one of many seasonal employment opportunities available to university students in America, who have traditionally been the mainstay of camp staffing. However, those responsible for hiring camp staff (typically the camp director) are finding it difficult to compete with large corporate organisations, who now offer a range of seasonal employment opportunities where salaries and benefits are far superior to that typically offered by camps. Increasingly, camp directors are hiring international staff to fill their staffing needs. Each year an estimated 3,000 young people from around the globe travel to the United States to work in organised summer camps.20 The job available to most travellers who wish to work in an American camp is that of camp counsellor. Camp counsellors are usually charged with supervising a group of children as they engage in daily activities at the camp. A counsellor typically works long hours and is usually expected to sleep in a cabin with his or her charges. Camp counsellors often fill the role of the parent for campers.21 This responsibility is balanced with duties associated with the provision of recreation for the campers, such as running and supervising activities:22
I spend most of the day with the campers in my cabins. I get them up in the morning and turn the lights out at night. Most of the day I am either
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playing sports with them. I am a bit like their mother, except I get to be more like a mate sometimes. They like to confide in me about their lives (Emily, age 21)
The process that international camp workers follow in order to secure employment at a summer camp initially involves working through one of the five organisations operating in Australia that are recognised sponsoring agencies authorised to recruit and select appropriate applicants. These agencies charge the applicant a processing fee upon receipt of their application. The agency matches applicants to particular camps who require staff. Once a camp accepts an applicant, a contract is issued. The contract states the length of period of employment (usually nine weeks) and the salary, and usually includes a code of conduct. A breach of contract by an international staff member means an automatic revocation of the visa. This means that if a young Australian participating in this program decides it is not for them, they are required to leave the United States within seventytwo hours:
I know I have to see this job out otherwise I will lose my visa and will have to leave this will mean that I will have done all this hard work without the opportunity to play. (Melissa, age 22)
The international summer camp worker typically pays for their own airfare and visa application fee. In return they are paid at the completion of their camp work what is best described as pocket money (approximately US$1,000). The work commitment is for approximately nine weeks and includes an intensive one-week training period prior to the arrival of campers. All staff are provided with free room and board. Summer camps are renowned for a loose interpretation of what constitutes these two basic requirements. In some camps this may mean well-prepared three-course meals with lodge-style accommodation, while at other camps, canned and freezedried approximations of sustenance and tent accommodation is the standard. In some private camps, staff are also given tips from campers
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or campers parents. By the end of a summer season, if they use their funds wisely, most international staff participating in the J-1 program can expect to at least break even financially.
If there were a camp union I think we would have gone on strike. We work sixteen-hour days, six days a week, earn about (US)$100 a week, and have to eat crap and sleep in with noisy, smelly kids this is more like slave labour. (Michael, age 19)
The monopoly of summer camp work created a certain feeling of resentment among those I interviewed. However, despite the feelings of being overworked and underpaid, many independent travellers applied themselves to the job at hand:
I take [this job] real serious. I have these kids who look up to me and if I fuck up, some kid could get hurt. (Daniel, age 26) I try to make sure that I keep well rested so I can put my energies into the kids. (Sandra, age 21)
Some travellers saw the responsibilities of the job as having potential long-term value:
I figure that this is a stepping-stone for me if I want to work with kids. In fact, this has taught me that I am good at this. I am considering enrolling at uni in teaching when I get back. (Angela, age 23)
A career-building focus is also evident in the following comment:

I am a dance instructor at home and so I wanted to continue with that here and further my skills and see how I would go working with kids in a different country. I am definitely learning stuff because I am the only one here, and so if I dont get the lesson right and make it interesting, the kids will run riot. I am learning a lot about how to design a lesson. (Danielle, age 25)
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As this discussion suggests, summer camp employment structures and packages the experiences of independent travellers. However, this packaging also provides a vehicle through which the traveller could develop personally and professionally. The summer camp employment context creates an ambiguous experience for travellers who recognise the importance of choice and freedom as being central to their travel experiences, while the highly structured and world of camp work left many travellers feeling trapped, with little control over their experiences.
Cultural ambassadorship
The United States State Department, under intense lobbying from the ACA, created the J-1 International Visitor Exchange Camp Counselors Program, a special visa class that allows:
qualified foreign nationals [entry] to The United States for the summer months to act as camp counsellors at camps selected by the sponsoring organisation and to participate in a farewell travel period prior to departing the US to promote the general interests of International Exchange.23
These visas are only issued to individuals through recognised sponsoring agencies, who effectively act as agents on behalf of the US State Department while also acting as employment brokers who match international applicants to particular camps. Since the J-1 visa class for camp counsellors was introduced in the mid 1980s the number of participating countries have exploded from just a few to over forty nations in 2001. Australia provides the most participants, with an estimated 2,000 Australians participating in 2001.24 In addition to supplying a steady stream of labour, participants in the J-1 program are expected to imparts skills to American campers and information about his or her country or culture.25 This definition downplays the worker/employee role and emphasises a cultural ambassador role. The cultural ambassador responsibilities were particularly challenging for a number of individuals I interviewed:
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I brought a boomerang and a bunch of books and stuff about Australia. It amazes me how little Americans know about Australia, and yet the things they do know are often wrong. Like one American guy I work with here has been telling our kids that they had better not make me angry or I will get out my knife like Crocodile Dundee. I spend half my day dealing with that sort of stuff. Even the camp director who hired me keeps saying things to me when I bump into him like Gday mate, are you gonna throw another shrimp on the Barbie. I want to say to him, They are called prawns, and by the way you sound more South African than Australian. (Peter, age 21) I found that the kids are not so interested in the stuff like our flag or who is our prime minister. They only want to know about the Crocodile Hunter and Vegemite. (Megan, age 26) I am always expected to be a real blokey bloke by the kids you know, wrestle a crocodile sort of stuff. But when it comes down to it, like on the international day we had, the only way I could get dressed up as an Australian was as a man I put on a straw hat with corks and put a swag on my shoulder and taught the kids in my group to sing Waltzing Matilda. (Emily, age 19)
Implied in these comments is the desire to at once challenge and reinforce stereotypical roles of Australians. For example, many of the young women who were interviewed describe situations where they found themselves having to debunk the masculinised image of Australians.26 Specific jobs were assigned to Australians on the basis of assumptions about Australians abilities, some of them partly factual, some fictitious. For example, at the camps examined in this study, a disproportionate number of Australians worked as lifeguards, reinforcing the stereotype of the bronzed Aussie while capitalising on the fact that many Australians are qualified and capable in the area of aquatic sports. Nevertheless, the following comment demonstrates how stereotypical views of Australians were not appreciated:
I hate the way the director here thinks that because I am an Aussie I am a great swimmer. Even though I am a good sportsman on land, he was
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amazed when I told him that I get nervous in a bath tub and that I am flat out managing a dog paddle! (Evan, age 20)
The cultural ambassador responsibilities assigned to travellers working in camps was challenging, not only because they required those individuals to be the voice of their culture but also because of the stereotypes that they faced in the United States. Employment at camps and the cultural ambassadorship charged to these individuals created a far more complex experience for independent travellers than work/traveller typologies suggest. However, what is most interesting about these experiences is the degree to which independent travellers were able to reconcile these responsibilities with the agentic freedom that was central to their independent traveller identities.
Ambiguity, hybridity and camp workers
It has been argued that the saturation of meanings derived from experiences in contemporary culture challenge ontological security and have the potential to create existential anxiety.27 Put more simply, any habitual patterns of experience, such as those associated with dominant roles within a particular context, are likely to be destabilised when a diversity of potentially conflicting or ambiguous roles are presented to a cultural actor. This destabilising process creates an initial lack of direction and, in some cases, a feeling of insecurity. The experience of working at the camps created a sense of ambiguity for many of the travellers:
I never thought that I would be so caught up in the whole camp scene. I find myself so frustrated by people who think that I am supposed to represent my country. All I wanted to do was have a job to pay my way around the country. But all this stuff that is put on me makes it pretty stressful. (Evan, age 20) I know that I am here to see the US and to do some travelling, but the idea of just wanting to travel seems so trivial here at camp. (Lexi, age 27)
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Some of the travellers I spoke with dealt with the ambiguities they faced by focusing on their traveller identities:
I know that in a few weeks or even on my breaks, I can throw my backpack on and hit the road. It is amazing how quickly the work stuff fades when I get some time off. I feel like I am on an adventure again. (Mark, age 26) I cant wait until I get out of here and dont have all this responsibility hangin over me. I will only have to worry about me! (Pauline, age 24) I came here to get free food, a place to rest my head and maybe a chance to meet some other people who were travelling. The work and all this you will represent your country stuff is something I try to put in perspective. The reality is that I plan to hit the road as soon as camp finishes and all this will be insignificant. (Sandra, age 21)
These comments suggest a discrete distinction between the camp work and the pleasures of travel. These individuals resented the roles placed upon them at the camps and yearned for the traveller role that was being denied them. However, this was not true for all those with whom I spoke. Many of the travellers actively and intentionally engaged with the experiences of camp in playful manner that enabled them to maintain a connection between the roles they faced:
I just go along with it. Whenever I am asked to do something at the camp, I just mark it up to experience. (Martin, age 18) It is just another part of my travels. I will be a representative of my country if thats what the boss wants. It doesnt matter because I am still meeting people and doing stuff here that is new. (Cathy, age 23) I am happy to play the part of bronzed Aussie. It is kind of fun doin all those things that people think I should do. I get to wear speedos put zinc on my nose and work on my tan. I would never do that at home. (Luke, age 25)
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Keith Hollingshead suggests that contemporary tourism and travel contexts are particularly relevant sites for examining how the ambiguity of roles can be managed through what Homi Bhabha describes as hybridity.28 Hybridity suggests that postmodern cultural actors are freed from stable roles and are able to play with various roles in different contexts, creating a reality that is highly agentic.29 In fact, this playfulness enabled many of those I spoke with to be open to new experiences:
I have found that I have gotten off the beaten track and met real Americans living real American lives. I have only known about summer camps through movies like that chick in American Pie at band camp but its not at all like that. The whole American patriotism thing is alive and well at this camp and I can sort of understand how kids learn to think that America is the biggest and the best at everything. I would never have figured that out unless I got to be here. (Melissa, age 22) I know a lot more about the US than I could ever have known if I did not work here. (Evan, age 20) This is a great place to meet people. I was a bit nervous when I first got here, but now I have some really close friends here and we do a lot of stuff together on the breaks. We went off whitewater rafting last week and this week we are going to Niagara Falls and then to Toronto. I know that the job is here but for me it is the social and fun stuff that I get to do that is really important too. (Ian, age 23)
There was little evidence of angst associated with this hybridity of roles. Instead, it appeared that in many cases the young people interviewed shifted comfortably in and out of roles. This reflects similar propositions posited by leisure and tourism theorists30 who have built on the identity management theories of Erving Goffman31 to suggest that the transience of tourism and travel creates an ideal context for identity mobility. Indeed, this hybridity enabled these travellers to shift their gaze from that of cultural observer to that of cultural participant and to experience real American culture.32
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An additional factor that enabled individuals to be playful was the cultural perception of Australianness that was dominant among many of the American staff with whom I spoke. Many of the camp directors recognised that the combined wanderlust and the partier image of Australians rarely interfered with their ability to do their jobs. In fact, many of the directors suggested that it was a virtue rather than a disadvantage:
The Aussies here are very playful. They are quite irreverent and that gets them into trouble. But it is that light-heartedness that makes them great counsellors and easy for kids to relate to. (Anne, director of a camp in Pennsylvania for children with disabilities) I think the fact that these guys know that they are on the road again soon allows them to put their camp work into perspective. They dont get as hung up on the daily details and can have good time with the kids. (Doug, camp director of a Boy Scout camp in Vermont)
Hollingshead suggests that hybridity of roles is in part contingent upon the cultural context in which the actor operates.33 The playfulness that helps cultural actors manage the ambiguities they face is influenced by the cultural audience who observe the performance.34
Conclusion
The hybridity displayed by some of the travellers who worked at American camps and the relative ease with which they adapted to the varying roles presented to them may be explained by postmodern theory as another example of the decentred, relational and contingent characteristics of the postmodern self.35 However, a central component of the postmodern self is a heightened self-consciousness, where the actor becomes fluent at chameleon-like manipulation of representations. This was not particularly evident among those interviewed at the camps. In fact, in some cases there was a heightened commitment to a solidified and stable identity: that of being a traveller, no matter what. Anthony Giddens has argued that the shifting selves described by postmodern theorists are little more than the project of identity negotiation necessary for success in the late-modern age.36
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What might be interpreted as agentic playfulness by postmodern theorists may be no more than an ongoing reflexivity that enables individuals to reconcile incrementally their identities. It is unclear whether independent travellers working in American camps are examples of postmodern actors or simply individuals with varying degrees of identity development. What is clear is that further research is needed. What is more important is that such a discussion could not happen unless we move beyond seeing travellers as simply a type or category. This chapter began by critiquing the classificatory research that has dominated travel and tourism research for the past twenty years. The assumption of rationality that dominates tourism and travel research, manifested in an over-reliance upon taxonomies, reflects how this approach is grounded in a view of cultures and subcultures as stable systems that can be scrutinised through appropriate classificatory techniques.37 However, a systemic view reinforces an illusory conceptual abstraction of cultures and subcultures.38 This view fails to consider culture as a realm of contextual and situational meanings where events and behaviours may be made intelligible at a given point in time, and for a given setting.39 The experiences of Australians working in American camps exemplifies the inadequacies of the typological approach and demonstrates how a micro-examination of lived experiences can reveal a great deal about the process of negotiation and meaning-making that travellers face on a daily basis.
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I Heard it through the Grapevine: Understanding the Social Interactions of Backpacker Travellers
Laurie Murphy
Social interaction and meeting other travellers is an integral part of the backpacking experience. Backpackers preference for budget accommodation means that they often stay in communal hostel rooms, facilitating this social interaction. The exchange of information about travel experiences as a product of the social interaction between backpackers throughout their travels has important implications for where they stay, what they see and the meanings they derive from their journeys. While word-of-mouth promotion is consistently identified as a key characteristic of backpacking tourism and an important source of information used in travel decision-making, there has been little research done in an effort to investigate this phenomenon. While social situation analysis has been employed to examine touristguide interaction, as well as interactions between hosts and guests,1 it has not been used to examine interactions between travellers. This chapter uses social situation analysis as a framework within which to systematically analyse social interactions between foreign backpackers in Australia, providing an understanding of both the role and nature of social and tourist interaction.
Social aspects of backpacking
In Australia, Southeast Asia and New Zealand, the term backpacker is widely used by the tourism industry, travellers themselves and host
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communities as a description of predominantly young, budget tourists on an extended or working holiday.2 A proliferation of budget backpacker accommodation and transportation facilities, restaurants, tours and travel publications is evident in many more developed and less developed countries. The origins of backpacker travel can be traced back to various historical traditions, including the grand tours of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe, tramping and the youth hostel movement.3 More recent influences include the notion of noninstitutionalised tourism and the development of drifter travel. Scholars such as Erik Cohen, Paul ten Have and Jay Vogt have all identified the emergence of tourist infrastructure catering to the drifters and wanderers of the 1970s, an infrastructure parallel to, but separate from, that which catered to mass tourists.4 This new segment of the industry was comprised of inexpensive transportation systems, cheap hotels and youth hostels, which were surrounded by psychedelic shops, nightclubs and coffee houses. Guidebooks for the counterculture and an increasing flow of word-of-mouth information from experienced travellers to newcomers resulted in a well-trodden network centred on established gathering places. Cohen also saw the emergence of a group of more inward-oriented drifters, who tended to lose interest in, and decrease their involvement with, local people and customs, and increase their focus on the counterculture represented by other drifters. The interpersonal relationships of these travellers were a matter of discussion for both Cohen and Vogt. The transient relationships that occurred were intense due to the immediate bond formed through travellers mutual support of one another as strangers in a strange and sometimes dangerous land, with many experiences to share. Vogt identified four social characteristics between wanderers that resulted in these mutually supportive relationships. Firstly, their interaction is between equals, in contrast to the more asymmetric host/tourist service relationship. Secondly, the temporal dimension, short but continuous blocks of time spent with another traveller, results in very concentrated interaction, which both realise will soon be gone. This encourages risk-
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taking. Thirdly, a hedonistic desire for immediate gratification or a sense of living for the moment results in a high degree of selfdisclosure. Finally, the uniqueness and diversity of people met while travelling becomes an exciting experience that breaks down familiar personality categories. All of this, according to Vogt, encouraged a kind of transient yet intimate relationship in which lack of time and accountability meant there was little to lose. Friends were made quickly, making the best of the situation, and, when leaving, thoughts were on the new friends to be made, not the good ones left behind. A decade later, youth tourists in Thailand who travelled on the cheap in both conventional and non-conventional styles, especially the ones referred to as drifters, wanderers and travellers, were frequently identified as not having the superficial motives, attitudes or demeanour of middle-aged mass tourists. According to Cohen, their experiences were presumed to be more authentic than those of mass tourists, and they were believed to penetrate more deeply into the host society, avoiding staged tourist settings and having a more beneficial impact on the host society.5 Cohen reports that one traveller defined the difference between a tourist and a traveller as being that the former avoid, while the latter seek, one anothers company. The continuing evolution of drifter tourism in Asia and the South Pacific can be found in Pamela Rileys discussion of a type of tourist labelled long-term budget travellers.6 According to Riley, these tourists were neither explorers nor drifters but had characteristics of both. The importance of the communication networks and gathering places (called budget traveller ghettos) in the distribution of information between travellers was again identified. The development of short-term, intense interpersonal relationships based on an eagerness to share adventures was also recognised. Philip Pearce identified the importance of social interaction in his early research on backpackers in Australia.7 Respondents to his study were predominantly aged 2029, and most were from the United Kingdom or Europe. They indicated high desired and actual levels of participation in social- and environment-based activities, and respondents best experiences were often environmentally or socially
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oriented. Pearce proposed five key criteria that described the backpackers he studied. According to Pearce, backpackers are travellers who exhibit a preference for budget accommodation; an emphasis on meeting other people (locals and travellers); an independently organised and flexible travel schedule; longer rather than brief holidays; and an emphasis on informal and participatory recreation activities. A study by Laurie Loker-Murphy and Pearce provided empirical support for this definition.8 Of particular interest to this discussion is the second point of the definition, the importance of meeting other people. Murphy examined the self-reported best experiences of 686 backpackers who were surveyed throughout Australia.9 Of the respondents, 12.4 per cent mentioned interaction with other travellers as part of their best experiences, second only to interacting with locals (15.5 per cent). In the same study, respondents rated, on a five-point scale, the importance of ten travel motivation statements. Most important were to seek excitement/adventure, meet local people and characters, fulfil a lifelong dream/ambition, mix with fellow travellers and to improve ones knowledge of Australias history/ culture and physical environment. When respondents were segmented based on their motive profile, one group was labelled Social/ ExcitementSeekers, given that they placed greatest importance on meeting locals, excitement and adventure, mixing with fellow travellers, and spending time with people they care deeply about. The cluster labelled Achievers also viewed mixing with fellow travellers as being of high importance. In further qualitative research reported by Murphy, the travel motivations of fifty backpacker participants in focus-group interviews were examined.10 Results revealed that meeting other people was an important motivation for both leaving ones home country to travel abroad and choosing backpacking as a means of travel. In a subsequent study, which focused on the travel decision-making processes of backpackers, it was revealed that meeting other travellers was of importance as a travel motive and that other travellers were the most frequent source of information when making choices about what
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mode of transport to use when travelling around Australia, which destinations to visit, where to stay (accommodation) and what to do (tours/activities).
Social situation analysis
Given that social interaction with other travellers is both an integral and functional aspect of backpacking, it seems appropriate that, in an attempt to develop a better understanding of the phenomenon of word-of-mouth promotion, which develops through the grapevine or network of communication between backpackers, an in-depth analysis of the social encounters or situations in which backpackers find themselves is warranted. Past investigations of social interactions in tourism have tended to focus on the role and impacts of hostguest relationships, rather than the role and importance of interactions between travellers. Situations, as defined by Michael Argyle, are a type of social encounter with which members of a culture or subculture are familiar.11 These situations possess nine features: goals and goal structure, rules, roles, a repertoire of elements, sequences of behaviour, concepts, environmental settings, language and speech, and skills and difficulties. It would seem appropriate to assume that the social interactions that occur between backpackers fit this definition and most likely possess these features, which are summarised in the following paragraphs. People enter situations because they anticipate being able to attain certain goals that are related to individual forms of motivation (for example, making friends and the affiliation motive). The central hypothesis of social situation analysis is that all of the other features of situations can be explained functionally in terms of their contribution to the attainment of goals and the satisfaction of drives. Rules are generated in social situations in order to regulate behaviour so that group goals can be achieved. The rules constitute the shared beliefs that dictate what behaviour is permitted and what is not.12 A role can be seen as encompassing the duties, obligations or rights of
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the social position and has associated with it an expected pattern of behaviour. Some situations have very clear role systems (for example, salesman customer, teacherpupils, chairmancommittee member), but the concept can also be extended to include informal roles in small groups where there are no pre-existing patterns. Argyle et al. hypothesise that there is a universal repertoire that varies with situations for several different kinds of elements verbal categories, verbal contents and nonverbal communications or bodily actions. In short, repertoire is the sum of behaviors that are appropriate to the situation.13 The elements of behaviour in a situation come in a distinctive sequence, and a number of sequences might occur in many situations. There are clear differences between situations in which one person is in charge, rambling conversations and true discussion or negotiation. In order to behave effectively in any situation, people must possess not only appropriate concepts but also sufficient cognitive equipment to understand what is happening and decide how to deal with the situation. Various aspects of language and communication, such a vocabulary, grammar, codes and voice tone, are partly situation-specific. Some situations are much more restricted and constrained than others with regard to use of language. Some situations may present unique social difficulties for the people involved because of the stress that results. Difficulty in social situations may be seen as a direct function of social skill.14 The feature of situations that has been most thoroughly investigated is the physical environment.15 There are four concepts relevant to analysing the environmental settings in which social situations occur: boundaries, props, modifiers and spaces. Boundaries are defined as enclosures within which social interaction takes place. Props are the furnishings, decorations and objects contained within the boundaries, while modifiers are the physical aspects of the environment (including noise, colour, light, humidity and odour) that affect the emotional tone of the behaviour. Finally, spaces refers to the distances between people and objects, and the use and meaning
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attached to them. Spatial behaviour has been investigated in relation to four basic phenomena: privacy, personal space, territoriality and crowding.16 In tourism, social situation analysis has been employed to examine touristguide interaction, as well as interactions between hosts and guests in the New Zealand farm tourism context.17 The use of social situation analysis as a framework within which to systematically analyse the aspects of social interactions between backpackers is likely to provide a better understanding of both the role and nature of social interaction and how it can be stimulated, increasing the likelihood of word-of-mouth recommendations. In an attempt to better understand the informal network of information dissemination in the backpacker travel market, this study employs the concepts of social situation analysis to examine the nature of interactions between backpacker travellers. The goals of the research are to apply the theoretical concepts of social situation analysis in a unique setting in order to provide insight into the social encounters experienced by young independent travellers in foreign countries, and to provide the tourism industry catering to backpackers with information that will enable them to have more control over the important element of word-ofmouth promotion.
Interactions in Australia
This qualitative study consisted of fifty-nine in-depth interviews with foreign backpackers in Australia. Participants in this study were asked a series of questions structured around the features of social situations, particularly goals and environmental setting. Sequences of behaviour and skills and difficulties were not directly assessed but were identified in the analysis of the responses to the other questions asked. Interviews were conducted during AugustSeptember 1995 in seventeen different hostels, both YHA (five) and private backpacker hostels (twelve), ranging from small to large. Of the seventeen hostels, seven had more than eighty beds and therefore were classified as large hostels. The hostels were situated in three different locations,
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Townsville (three), Alice Springs/Uluru (six), and Sydney (eight). The range of hostels and locations was sought to allow factors such as remote versus urban settings and individual hostel characteristics to be examined. The average age of respondents was 23.8 years, and the gender split was 47.5 per cent male and 52.5 per cent female. The majority of respondents were from England (44.1 per cent), followed by the Netherlands (15.3 per cent) and Canada (11.9 per cent). Respondents rated learning about/experiencing another country (4.6) and culture (4.4), having new and different experiences (4.4), seeing unique wildlife and nature (4.3), meeting local people (4.2) and having a break (4.1) as the most important reasons for visiting Australia. Meeting other travellers was next in importance at 3.9. Responses to the interview questions are analysed below. The social aspects and opportunities to meet people provided by backpacking were second in importance only to economic issues as a factor in the decision to choose it as means of travelling around Australia. Several comments illustrated the importance of budget and social considerations:
Budget travel, you get to extend your trip, see more, a very relaxed way of meeting people. Staying in hotels you wouldnt get that, plus you couldnt afford it. (British female, age 24) Its the most sociable way of travelling, meeting people is what its all about, and you cant do that when youre in your hotel room. (British female, age 20)
From the exploration of the reasons for interacting with other travellers, it was evident that travel routes and experiences are common topics of conversation. In general, it appears the initial conversation focuses on where people have been and/or are going to, and where they are from. This initial discussion is often used as a feeling out period to decide whether they would like to continue the discussion/interaction with the other person. If they connect with the person and/or get to know each other better, then the discussion
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moves into more detail about travel experiences and personal information. Several comments illustrate both the content and development of social interaction between backpackers:
First questions are always where youre from, where youve been, what are you going to do, it gets very boring. Once you get to know people a little more, the conversation goes past that into more personal stuff. But you cant really skip that step, cause thats how you get to know the person. (Geman female, age 19) Travel, where people have been, the standard questions. You find yourself just repeating the same questions. Everyone here comes out very quickly, and not just superficial, they do get past those questions rather quickly. (British female, age withheld)
Overall, information provided by other travellers influenced the backpackers interviewed at least sometimes, illustrating that for some, gaining travel information is a useful motivation for interacting with others. However, several respondents mentioned that they often hear different things from different people about the same place or tour and therefore often see for themselves anyway. Two comments illustrate the influence of recommendations from others on some travellers:
Yes definitely, a lot of us come to Australia blind and do their info search when they get here. People who have been here for a while, hostel staff, info booths all affect us when were looking for info. Theres so much info out there, the problem isnt finding it, its getting through it. (Canadian female, age 22) Yes, at times, especially if youve really gotten to know a person, it influences you even more. Hostels, when you get to a place, you really dont know a thing. [What people say] does sink in. A lot of times people will tell you not to go to a place, and thats all the more reason to go. Depends on the person, but it is difficult when you dont know a lot, all youve got is a book (English female, age 25)
Those less likely to be influenced by information by others gave the following reasons:
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Usually no. Unless its terrible You shouldnt go there! Its rare to have several people telling you the same thing, so you end up going to check it out yourself anyway. (French female, age 23) Very rarely, because we did a lot of research before we came here, so we knew where we wanted to go. Maybe occasionally, if someone says something is really worth seeing, we might change our plans, a tiny little change, we knew where we were going on what day. (British male, age 26)
As expected, hostels were the most common environmental setting in which respondents were most likely to interact with other backpackers, as illustrated by a twenty-three-year-old American male, who replied, Hostels, its where everything begins. Eating and common areas were frequently mentioned as the places within hostels where they most often interacted with others. Apart from hostels, pubs, tours, transit centres and buses were identified as places where social interaction occurred. The following comments further illustrate the main themes mentioned in responses:
Mostly just sitting around the hostel, you find familiar things that youve done or places youve been and just start talking. Sitting around having a beer, things like organised nights out, BBQs, easier because people are often drunk, they tend to talk more. (English male, age 25) The laundry room, usually the dining room or common room. Hostels is the main place. The bus stations I guess. Waiting for the bus. I met more people when I was travelling myself. People dont approach you when youre a couple, they see you together and they want to leave you alone. People think theyre invading your privacy, which sometimes is true, but sometimes its not. (French female, age 23) The tours, especially these bus tours where you drive from city to city and its up to the tour guide to get everything going and thats what makes the tour, if they know how to get people to talk to each other, how to relate to others with different backgrounds. Even if its in the form of a game that seems stupid, it forces you to let loose, and once you start laughing,
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that really breaks the ice. Its up to you to decide whether you get to know them better, exchange addresses, but if you do it can be very rewarding. (Canadian male, age 26)
Common negative responses regarding the social atmospheres of hostels included the difficulties many travellers experienced when staying at workers hostels. In such places, many of the residents had already made friends and made no effort to talk to newcomers. Other comments included complaints that some hostels were too big and impersonal, and that staff were included in the clique of working guests:
I wouldnt say its fantastic. You have a lot of long-term people here and they tend to get cliquey so its not a total travelling environment, a bit more closed. You have one nationality that dominates and they tend to shut out a lot of people. (New Zealand male, age 25) [The atmosphere is] Quiet, almost impersonal, and when you get here, everyone just talks about work, and theyve made their friends already, so they usually dont end up talking to you. (British female, age 24)
The question aimed at determining whether there are any rules among backpackers with regard to what is appropriate to discuss in social situations with one another yielded several interesting responses. Overall, the most frequent response was nothing, followed by national stereotypes or ignorance about other countries. Another taboo mentioned by some respondents was to skip the initial feeling-out period, where basic questions such as Where are you from? and Where are you going? are asked, and move directly into discussing personal details. Some respondents also mentioned that they found it annoying or inappropriate when people complained too much, and that they sometimes get bored of the same basic or superficial conversation. Several comments related to annoyance regarding national stereotypes and the inappropriateness of discussing personal details, at least too soon:
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Being from Germany, certain people still think Im a Nazi, its really annoying. Basically people who are ignorant of other countries to an extreme and ask dumb questions about my country. (German female, age 19) An example, one girl started talking about her nervous breakdown, things like that, just getting too personal. (Dutch female, age 21) People that come up and tell you their most personal secrets, you kind of dont really want to hear it, at least not right away. (Canadian male, age 26)
At least one comment, however, indicated that the time it takes to move to a more personal relationship with other travellers is shorter than in normal life situations at home:
I think its strange because you probably get a lot closer to people quicker than you normally would, whereas it might take a month to build up a relationship at home you can do it travelling in a day or two and you can get quite intimate. It doesnt really bother me. Im not bothered by a lot. Youre bound to meet people you dont get along with, thats just part of everyday life. (British female, age 23)
Respondents were asked if they had learned any new words or phrases since travelling. The responses indicated there was no language or repertoire of words unique to backpackers, and that any changes in speech and language were a result of travelling in a country with a different language, or at least one with unique colloquial phrases and a distinct accent. The influence of the Australian way of speaking on the travellers was illustrated by the following comments:
Lots of Aussie phrases. Irish phrases cause Ive met a lot of Irish here. You kind of get a slang to your accent. (British female, age 22) The Australian slang phrases, the name of fruits and vegetables as well, but not vastly different from home. (British female, age 20)
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No worries, millions of linguistic mannerisms unique to Aussies. (British male, age 26).
The extent to which the respondents repertoire of behaviour had changed as a result of the backpacking lifestyle and associated interactions with other backpackers was examined by asking what good or bad habits had been learned from other backpackers. The most common responses overall were to be more open and talkative with strangers, and to be more relaxed and less stressed. Increased tolerance and independence were also mentioned, as well as learning to be more security-conscious with their belongings and personal safety. Becoming more open in order to successfully participate in the many social situations and adopting a more relaxed approach to life was a common change in respondents:
You more readily talk to complete strangers than you would at home, but I guess everybody does that when youre travelling alone. Not really, apart from that (Canadian male, age 23) learn to relax, not stress over things (ie. hostels), also learn this from Australians. (Dutch male, age 22)
The increased levels of tolerance developed to cope with being a backpacker were illustrated by many of the respondents:
you get into travel mode, you dont wash as much, and you wear the same clothes over and over. Those things dont seem to bother you when youre a backpacker. Things like not wearing make up, and not worrying about your appearance. Things like locking everything up all the time. Being a lot more self-sufficient. Sleeping with all your ID. (Canadian female, age 29) When Im at home Im very organised, very clean, and Ive kind of let that go since Ive been travelling, which is kind of a shock to me. I guess in that sense Im not a very good backpacker. Just that sort of attitude, much more tolerant. Im sort of shy so Ive kind of changed that as well. (English female, age 24)
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The concepts and cognitive structures needed to fit into the backpacking scene and successfully interact with other backpackers in the many social situations that they are presented with were examined by asking respondents if there were any attitudes or ideas about travel that must be understood to really be backpacking. The responses were similar to those for the question relating to repertoire of behaviour, and most often included tolerance, the ability to relax, to be able to have fun and be easygoing, and to learn to do things more cheaply. A willingness to talk to strangers and to respect other people and their belongings were also mentioned. The theme of tolerance and the ability to relax and not get uptight about things was common in the responses:
You have to be very understanding, tolerate a lot of different habits, not necessarily accept them, but tolerate them. In a hostel theres all sorts of nationalities and cultures, and the hostel becomes a melting pot. You have to be more open, initiate conversation, be a little more outgoing. (German female, age 21) Yes, I think tolerance and flexibility are the key to being a backpacker. You have to put up with a lot of stuff, you have to do a lot of things you normally wouldnt do, but you can experience a lot more given the chance. (Dutch male, age 24)
Backpackers roles
Since there is no formal hierarchy or defined social positions with respect to the social situations in which backpackers interact with one another, roles were examined in a slightly broader context to determine whether respondents felt that, as backpackers, they were different from other tourists. It was hoped that this approach would provide insight into the behaviours or attitudes perceived to be associated with being a backpacker and therefore likely to influence an individuals level of acceptance into social situations with other backpackers. Respondents were most likely to differentiate themselves from other tourists on the basis that they were travelling on a tighter budget, their lack of time constraints due to their extended length of stay, and that they were
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here to see as much as possible going beyond the common tourist attractions to experience and learn more about the country. Also mentioned was a dislike of commercialised package tours:
Yes, of course Im different. I want to see as much as I can and stay as long as I can, but thats just the way I prefer to do things. Of course it all depends on money. If I can do it cheaper, I will. That way its more of an adventure, its not all set up for you. (English male, age 25) Probably because I think other tourists dont see the real Australia. I think when youre backpacking you see the nitty-gritty. I think if youre staying in the posh places like the Hilton, you just see what they want you to see, organised tours with air conditioning. Whereas backpackers are bushwalking in their spare time, others are sitting in their room watching the latest movies. (British female, age 24)
Once the ways in which backpackers considered themselves to differ from other tourists were established, respondents were then asked if they were bothered by being in social situations with them. Overall, respondents indicated that they were not bothered by being in the same place or situation as other tourists, but also frequently mentioned that it was good to get away from tourists when possible. Attitudes towards other tourists are explained in more detail in the following comments:
No, not really, because I know that Ill always be able to get away from it if I want. You know before you go to a place how touristy its going to be. So when you get there, you kind of expect it, you shouldnt let it bother. Sometimes it bothers me being around a lot of backpackers more than tourists, because there is so many. It gets repetitious. Thats why its nice to get away sometimes and have a break. (English male, age 25) No, were all here travelling. Some choose to stay in hotels, some stay in camp grounds, and other like ourselves choose hostels and caravan parks. So no, were all the same in that we all want to see something unique in our travels. (Dutch female, age 27)
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Discussion
While meeting other travellers was not one of the principal motives for visiting Australia, it was still of significant importance. Social interaction was a prime factor in choosing backpacking as a means of travel in Australia. The functional aspects of interaction were determined by examining the content of what was most often discussed by backpackers. It was evident that travel routes and plans, and to a lesser extent experiences, were a common topic of conversation. It is somewhat unclear, however, whether seeking information is a main goal or rather a necessary part of the backpacker conversation ritual. Perhaps it is more a means to an end, that end being to seek out interesting people with whom to develop a closer relationship and perhaps travel. This tends to be indicated by the underlying theme in several responses about often getting bored with the same old chit-chat and the tendency to use it as a feeling out period to get to know the person with whom they are interacting. Regardless, most respondents were, at least some of the time, influenced by what others had told them. However, it is apparent that the degree of influence is dependent upon the consistency of reports on a particular destination from different people, how well they knew and/or liked the person who provided the information, and their previous plans or expectations of the destination. What is quite clear is that information received is often filed for future reference and plays only one part in the final travel decision, perhaps with consistent positive or very negative recommendations having the greatest impact. If businesses want to increase the likelihood that they are recommended, the responses indicate that they need to have friendly, helpful staff who provide good service and ensure that their clients have a fun, memorable time perceived as value for money. Hostels are the most common setting in which social situations involving backpackers occur. It is important for hostels to recognise the important role they play in stimulating and encouraging the flow of word-of-mouth promotion among backpackers. To merely provide shared facilities and common areas does not automatically create an
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environment that fosters social interaction. A recurring theme in responses was the importance of staff, in particular their friendliness and involvement in the social activities of the hostel. Some responses tended to indicate that hostel atmosphere and the opportunity to meet people were particularly important in remote destinations where there is little else to do in the evenings. Other than hostels, boundaries within which social situations involving backpackers occur include pubs, buses and transit centres. Few rules or inappropriate behaviours were identified, with many respondents expressing an open-minded attitude towards topics of discussion. However, there appears to be a generally accepted sequence or routine to initial interactions with other backpackers. Conversations are often initiated with superficial discussions on where people have been and where they are from. This feeling out period is often used to assess each other and determine whether or not to make efforts to get to know one another better. If so, it is then considered appropriate to move on to discussion of more personal topics and particular travel experiences in more detail. Several comments indicated that many interactions do not move beyond the superficial stage. There were a few rules identified that, if broken, might cause discomfort or ensure that the interaction is terminated at the initial stages. These included stereotyping or ignorance of different nationalities, moving too quickly into discussion of personal details, and complaining. Interesting to note is the fact that not every conversation leads to a discussion of travel experiences and recommendations, as well as the recurrent theme that backpackers seem to get bored of the basic superficial conversations and can tire of the constant expectation to interact with new people. There does not appear to exist a unique or distinct set of words or phrases used in backpacker social situations, as often is the case with other subcultures surfers, for example. Perhaps these findings would have been different if the research had been conducted in the drifter days. The host culture appeared to have
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more of an impact on language than other backpackers did, indicating that one does not need to know or understand a distinct lingo to successfully interact with other backpackers. It appears that in order to fit in with, and adapt to, the backpacking lifestyle, and hence the many social encounters and interactions that occur as part of that lifestyle, many respondents had made an effort to be more open and talkative with strangers than they would be in their normal home environment. Having a tolerant attitude towards situations, environmental settings and other people was identified as important. Adopting a relaxed, laidback and easygoing approach was also an important concept and a behaviour that many respondents had adopted since travelling. These results indicate that individuals with innappropriate attitudes or an inability to adopt a relaxed approach to travel may encounter difficulties in developing meaningful interactions with other backpackers. Overall, most backpackers see themselves as fulfilling or occupying a role different from that of other tourists. The concepts and repertoire previously described are part of this role and influence the manner in which they interact with one another, indicating that interactions would be different, or perhaps even non-existent, if they were not backpacking. The key differentiators between backpackers and other tourists identified by respondents were a tighter budget, fewer time constraints and the desire to see and experience more of the country outside the confines of commercialised package tours. These self-reported differentiations are consistent with the social definition of backpackers proposed earlier. The backpackers surveyed, however, adopted an understanding attitude towards other tourists, accepting that they will cross paths as a function of wanting to see many of the same attractions, while recognising that the approach to travel that they have chosen provides them with the opportunity to escape tourists when desired and interact with the more like-minded travellers they met in hostels. Responses to other questions also provided insight into roles in backpacker interactions. Inner dynamics of social situations in hostel settings appear to exist. There were quite clear expectations from
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backpackers of how hostel staff should treat them: with respect and understanding and, to a certain extent, to interact with them as equals. There was definite dissatisfaction with staff who treated guests as if they were a nuisance and were unwilling to provide assistance and information. There was also an indication of what might be described as role conflict between long-stay working backpackers in hostels and those who are travelling through and staying for a shorter period of time. The working backpackers tended to form cliques and be less willing to engage in the expected conversation rituals with new arrivals, making it difficult for them to achieve their goals of information exchange and relationship formation. Many negative comments regarding social atmosphere and the ability to interact resulted from these situations. The only positive comments appeared to come from people who were in the clique. The issue was compounded in situations where staff members formed part of the clique of working backpackers. It is clear that certain social skills are needed for individuals to engage in social situations as backpackers. The ability to initiate conversations with strangers, to be more open than usual and to tolerate the different beliefs and attitudes of others are important. Many respondents seemed to be developing these skills as they travelled and gained more experience in social situations. Difficulties seemed to arise for people who were naturally shy; in larger hostels and, to a certain extent, larger cities, which were both perceived as being more impersonal; and in hostels where there are cliques of working backpackers. The continued expectations to talk to strangers and the repetitiveness of many interactions seemed to cause stress and/or boredom, with some respondents indicating that occasionally they found it necessary to spend quiet time alone. Overall, the results support the findings reported by Vogt, Riley and Cohen of friendships and bonds forming more quickly than in normal life situations.
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PART IV.qxp
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PROFILING THE INTERNATIONAL BACKPACKER
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Great Divides or Subtle Contours? Contrasting British, North American/Canadian and European Backpackers
Philip L Pearce
This chapter considers the conceptual issues of convergence and divergence in relation to backpacker tourism markets. Convergence implies that there is a rising homogeneity among tourists from different countries of origin; divergence suggests that strong differences between the groups will exist. Following an overview of existing studies of backpacking tourists in Australia, the chapter analyses recent survey data collected in Australia on backpackers from the United Kingdom, North America/Canada and Europe. It is argued that within this set of travellers in Australia there are only subtle differences.
The two roads of backpacking studies
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down as far as I could To where it bent into the undergrowth. (Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken)1
Robert Frost, the noted American poet, characterises one of the central dilemmas of travelling. Scholars of backpacking have tended to
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think that they have been faced with a similar proposition. The result has been the emergence of two distinct analyses. One has emphasised the economic contribution of backpackers to national and regional wellbeing. These kinds of studies rely on broad demographic definitions of backpackers in specified statistical categories. Such studies seek to legitimise backpacker tourism to governments and tourism bodies by identifying the economic returns deriving from this market segment.2 In a somewhat separate vein of studies, emphasis is placed on understanding backpackers and their interactions with one another, with the host community, and with the environments they visit.3 The present study aims to work in-between these two paths of research. This choice of direction is not secondary to the more business-oriented and statistical reporting approach to backpacker research. Instead, it can be thought to represent a longer-term view of tourism market analysis whereby novel conceptual and methodological perspectives can be developed. Such benefits can enhance both the understanding of tourist behaviour as a fascinating global phenomenon and provide insights of substance for the operation of tourism. It is perhaps useful to note that some of the definitional angst that accompanies backpacker studies can be traced to the different purposes of research.4 For those who seek to understand the social lives and experiences of backpackers, a more behavioural and social definition has been used.5 By contrast, the use of visitor arrival and tourism flow statistics, allied to expenditure recorded by tourists, demands a neat demographic appraisal.6 As Philip Pearce, Alastair Morrison and Joy Rutledge have argued:
The value of any definition lies in specifying an area or sector of maximum interest for a practical purpose a marketing program, an educational initiative a research study or a government policy. The individual or group will find it valuable to specify exactly what (or whom) they have in mind and what elements of tourism are being targeted.7
In reviewing some of the core existing knowledge on younger budget tourists to Australia, however, we find that the definitions used
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by the two perspectives have much in common. Essentially, the studies share the view that the target market is aged under thirty-five and stays predominantly in budget accommodation for extended periods in Australia. It is important that detailed arguments about errors in the data, due to the inclusion or exclusion of certain demographic groups in the reports, should not be overemphasised, since they are likely to co-exist with errors due to sampling and the interpretation of questions by respondents.8 As well as specifying the broad variables of age, accommodation style and length of stay, the present chapter is informed by the view that backpackers are social travellers, with flexible travel schedules and a liking for adventure.9 Another similarity in the literature on backpackers is a marked absence of theoretical or conceptual contexts for the research. To date, backpacker researchers have been largely content to describe patterns of tourist behaviour and survey them for different national and regional source markets without explaining or exploring these links. To develop an understanding of nationality and backpacker characteristics, some of the existing literature on national differences in consumer behaviour will be discussed.
Divergence and convergence: A conceptual approach to segmentation
An implicit conceptual approach underlies much of the international market segmentation research in tourism. The approach may be described as divergence and is characterised by the view that markets are culture-bound, often nationally distinct and are likely to stay that way.10 If there are to be changes in the motivation and behaviour of consumers from different countries due to the forces of globalisation, then these changes will be slow in coming and will be a consequence of changes within the broad culture of that region. In this view, clear differences among consumers will persist and will reflect the underlying historical, political and spiritual values of the country.11 An alternative view is entitled convergence. In this view, global organisations, global products and global brands are seen as having an
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economic and technical advantage over local supplies and institutions. Supranational processes, it is proposed, will lead to a convergence of demand and supply as individuals are forced to choose their products from the successful mega-companies of the world. Theodore Levitt and Kenichi Ohmae, two of the advocates of this view, suggest that customers with similar needs will have common preferences, irrespective of their culture or nationality.12 This short summary of the convergence/divergence distinction can be linked to a larger discussion of what John Naisbitt has termed the global paradox.13 The paradox in question is Naisbitts term for what he claims are two contradictory trends: increasing global economic and financial integration and rising public consciousness about local culture and identity. Abraham Pizam suggests that the convergence/divergence debate and global business trends of the type discussed by Naisbitt are relevant to tourism and are now manifested in tourism practice and research.14 Clearly, international hotel and resort chains, such as Club Med, are providing similar products in different countries.15 Similarly, in the food service and attractions sector, major international groups now have properties from Thailand to Finland and from Tokyo to Paris.16 Despite these trends, most tourism commentators and researchers seem to consider that strong economic links for cooperation and investment do not imply a disintegration of cultures or a homogenisation of demand. For example, J R Brent Ritchie argues that cultures are strengthened by contact, as communities and regions find ways to enhance their local sense of history and lifestyle.17 Further, there is in fact an underlying economic imperative reinforcing the differences in local values and lifestyles. Places are arguably both more attractive to live in and more attractive to others to visit and to invest in when they are distinctive.18 G Dann is one of the few tourism researchers whose perspective is aligned with the advocates of convergence.19 He pursues the provocative argument that there is little point in continuing to assess national differences in tourist motivation and behaviour when modern societies are internally heterogeneous, where people may have dual
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nationality status, and when national boundaries and definitions are in a state of flux. Tourism researchers would appear not to be heeding Danns advice, since explorations of these nationality differences continue to appear in most of the key tourism and tourism marketing journals. The convergence/divergence distinction applied to consumer behaviour in general may also be conceptualised as operating slightly differently in the area of tourism experiences. It can be argued, following John Urry, that tourism is one of the areas of human activity where individuals can develop and maximise their personal status and identity by participating in diverse roles and experiences.20 This ability to play with issues of identity and experience can be linked to Francis Noes distinction between expressive and instrumental aspects of satisfaction in leisure settings.21 It can be suggested that convergence principles may be operating to harmonise travel behaviour in the functional realms of experience (for example, trip length, facilities used), but it remains possible that the expressive areas of tourist life (identity, meaning, self-esteem and personal development) are largely subject to forces of personal background and place of residence promoting divergence. In the Commonwealth Department of Tourisms National Backpacker Tourism Strategy an argument is made that continuing research into backpacker motivations is important given the volatility of the market.22 Further, the strategy recommends that researchers put effort into identifying the long-term development prospects of the market. The next phase of this chapter will address this suggestion. First, a review of existing studies on backpacker tourists, and their limitations, is provided, then new data on backpackers from the United States/Canada, Europe and the United Kingdom will be presented. This material will be explored closely to ascertain trends towards convergence or divergence in the markets. Additionally, this material will be used to help predict future directions for backpacking in the context of the global issues of convergence and divergence.
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British, North American/Canadian and European backpackers to Australia: An introduction
One of the first reports on backpackers, that prepared by Cairns-based operators R Green and T Higginson, specifically cited young travellers from the United Kingdom, United States/Canada and Europe as a part of the newly identified term.23 The United Kingdom, in particular, was identified by Green and Higginson as a major source region for backpackers. In Pearces Australia-wide survey of backpackers (sample size 597), 38 per cent were from the United Kingdom, 28 per cent from Europe and 12 per cent from the United States and Canada.24 John McCulloch provided corroboration for these percentages with his assessment that in Queensland, the United Kingdom provided 30 per cent of travellers, while Europeans accounted for 21 per cent, with travellers from the United States/ Canada making up 9 per cent.25 McCullochs analysis included more Australians than the preceding study. His work also relied on the nowdiscontinued Queensland-based Major Survey Research Program, which only sampled guests in commercial accommodation, thus possibly underestimating international and particularly United Kingdom backpackers who stayed exclusively with friends and relatives. Nevertheless, this initial range of figures for the three target groupings has been confirmed in subsequent work. L Murphy in her publication Backpackers and the Decisions They Make (sample size 347) records 38 per cent from the United Kingdom, 13.5 per cent from the United States/Canada, and 27 per cent from Europe.26 These figures were close to the percentages from her own earlier work (sample size 686), where she reported 37 per cent for both the United Kingdom and Ireland, 34 per cent for Europe, and 15.6 per cent for the United States/Canada.27 All of the studies discussed above used random or convenience sampling of backpackers at accommodation sites, at transport nodes or at attractions. While imperfect, and likely to be a part of constantly fluctuating international patterns of visitor arrivals, none of the above studies were subject to stratification procedures that limit the number of backpackers studied from any one source.28
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Two of the most comprehensive studies of country-of-origin differences among backpackers are those of Laurie Loker, and Ian Buchanan and Allison Rosetto.29 Both studies come from large-scale, nationwide surveys of backpackers with similar definitions of the term, notably an emphasis on traveller age and length of stay. The two sets of data produce highly comparable findings, although it is necessary to combine some of the distinctions made among European travellers (for example, Germans and Scandinavians and other Europeans) in the Buchanan and Rosetto study to allow for direct comparisons with the categories used by Loker. A comparative appraisal of these two existing published research efforts focusing on British, European and North American/Canadian backpackers will be considered under the four headings of traveller demographics and travel patterns, motives, activities, and satisfaction/complaints.
Traveller demographics and travel patterns
Loker reports that British travellers had the longest length of stay in Australia (30.8 weeks), in contrast with European travellers (14.7 weeks) and travellers from the United States (21.4 weeks).30 This finding needs to be understood in the context of the time spent in work. Of the British travellers, 53 per cent participated in paid work while in Australia, while only 16 per cent of the North American/Canadian travellers and 18 per cent of the European travellers worked or planned to work. Expenditure patterns also varied in Lokers data. The Europeans had the highest daily expenditure ($54), the North Americans/Canadians a moderate amount ($40), and the travellers from the United Kingdom the least ($29). The traveller demographics and patterns reported by Buchanan and Rosetto include the finding that the British travellers tend to be slightly younger than the other groups, with 11 per cent aged 1519. This figure is more than double the number of European travellers who fall into this age bracket (5%), and more than five times that of travellers from the United States (2%). For all groups, however, the percentage of travellers in the 2024 age group is consistently the highest (United
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States 51 per cent, United Kingdom 40 per cent, Scandinavia 39 per cent, other Europe 46 per cent).31 The travellers from Germany are the only group for which the highest percentage (42 per cent) is recorded for the category aged 2529 as opposed to the 2024 segment (22 per cent). Unlike Lokers data, the Buchanan and Rosetto information records the British and the North American/Canadian travellers as having almost the same mean length of stay (104.6 days for those from the United States/Canada and 103.2 days for those from the United Kingdom), with both of these figures higher than that for the European travellers (Germany 54.8, Scandinavia 79.3, other Europe 92.8). It is notable, however, that these figures as a whole are somewhat lower than the 30.8, 21.4 and 14.7 weeks reported in Lokers 1993 work. The expenditure patterns partially repeat Lokers findings: the Europeans have the highest expenditure, but the travellers from United Kingdom and United States/Canada have similar expenditure in the Buchanan and Rosetto study. British backpackers earn the most in the Buchanan and Rosetto study, a finding consistent with Lokers data reporting greater time spent working while in Australia.
Motives
Loker provides a detailed analysis of travellers motives. Using nine travel motive items, Lokers work is the basis for Table 1. A statistical analysis of the data presented in Table 1 revealed that the British travellers had significantly lower scores for the item escape, while the Europeans had statistically the least interest in being with fellow travellers and seeing the well-publicised places. Travellers from the United States/Canada gave the highest ratings to meeting local people. In this study there were no statistically significant differences for these three groups on the single items of relaxation, to be with people I care about, to see history and culture, and to enjoy the physical environment. The motivational material in the Buchanan and Rosetto study used a different kind of motivational item. Instead of seeking personal reasons for travelling, the report employed categories of influence. The data obtained from this approach are reported in Table 2.
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Table 1: The motives of British, North American/Canadian and European backpackers Traveller source region Motive USA/Canada UK Europe Relax/take it easy 3.24 2.96 2.70 Escape 2.78 2.47 2.64 Meet local people 3.94 3.68 3.74 Mix with fellow travellers 3.31 3.29 2.91 People I care about 2.17 2.07 2.46 See talked-about/publicised places 2.72 2.54 2.11 Improve knowledge of history/culture 3.22 3.16 3.13 See physical environment 3.47 3.50 3.15
Source: Extracted from data supplied by Loker, 1993.32
Table 2: Primary motivation for travel to Australia by region of origin Traveller source region Primary motivation UK USA/ Germany Scandinavia Other Canada Europe Always wanted to visit 38 44 49 46 41 Australia Recommended by 6 6 10 5 10 friends or relatives Friends or relatives 27 22 12 10 11 who live here For employment 6 3 2 1 3 For study 1 12 2 3 10
Source: Buchanan and Rosetto, 1993.33 Reproduced in part from statistical table 10.
While the data reported in the two tables have a different basis, one generalisation across the two studies can be suggested. The
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significance of the friends and relatives link appears to be a modest rather than dominant contributor to backpacker motivation. In Lokers study the item to be with people I care about receives the lowest importance rating. In the Buchanan and Rosetto study the North American/Canadian and British travellers report, respectively, that 22 per cent and 27 per cent of their primary motivation is the link to friends and relatives, but here, too, it is not a dominant reason for travelling to Australia.
Table 3: Preferences for the packaging of activities travellers from the United Kingdom, United States/Canada and Europe
Theme of the activities Active sports Environmental experiences Aussie social experiences Rural working experiences Dangerous wildlife Outdoor activities UK 2.47 1.97 1.15 1.61 1.89 1.82 Traveller source region USA/Canada Europe 2.25 2.23 1.89 1.91 1.25 1.15 1.77 1.52 1.96 2.02 1.75 1.66
Source: Loker, 1993.34 Scale: 1=low, 5=high. Lower scores = preference for spontaneous, less packaged approach to the activity/experience.
Activities
Lokers analysis of activities is extensive and purposeful. She identifies the broad popularity of activities in Australia and then conducts a factor analysis, providing a thematic organisation of activities into common clusters. The twelve clusters she reports are active sports, environmental experiences, Aussie social experiences, rural tours and wildlife, Aussie cultural experiences, urban experiences, nightlife, rural working experiences, dangerous wildlife interests, outdoor activities,
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water-based sports and island-based activities. She demonstrates that for all of the backpackers studied, there tended to be a preference for activities that were less structured and packaged by tourism providers. Six of the factors reported showed differences in the amount of packaging preferred by travellers from the different nationality markets of interest. This material is presented in Table 3. The differences reported in Table 3 are not large, but they do provide an indication based on means difference testing that the travellers from the United Kingdom prefer more packaging and organisation of active sports, environmental experiences and outdoor activities. Travellers from United States/Canada appear to be seeking some additional organisation for social and working experiences. Travellers from both Europe and the United States/Canada express higher scores for the structuring of contacts with dangerous wildlife. Buchanan and Rosettos data on activity participation by country of origin reveal very few differences among the travellers. The percentages for participation in a number of key activities are reported in Table 4, overleaf. The information on activities in the two studies is complementary. While the Buchanan and Rosetto data reports consistently similar levels of participation in the activities, Lokers work highlights some subtle contours of difference in how travellers prefer these activities to be organised. The satisfaction of backpacking travellers, one of the possible outcomes of these differences in preference, is explored in the next section.
Satisfaction and complaints
The information reported in the two studies on traveller satisfaction and complaints is not closely linked. Overall, Loker records several aspects of activities with quite high levels of dissatisfaction. For example, she notes that 19.5 per cent of all backpackers find something to dislike about organised tours, and that the contact with wildlife and Indigenous Australian culture is disappointing to 17 per cent and 14 per cent of backpackers respectively. In her published data, separate analyses of satisfaction scores by nationality
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Table 4: Participation in select activities for travellers from the United States/Canada, the United Kingdom and Europe Traveller source region Activity UK USA/ Germany Scandinavia Other Canada Europe Swimming/Diving 88 92 87 87 90 Snorkelling 66 72 58 73 60 Scuba diving 42 51 37 42 43 White water rafting 16 13 8 14 10 Canoeing/Kayaking 22 23 18 20 23 Horse racing/riding 23 18 16 28 21 Rock climbing 28 38 46 40 44 Bushwalking 71 83 85 82 83 Outback safari 42 38 46 57 43 Whale/dolphin 33 27 26 37 30 watching Snow skiing 2 4 Less 5 4 than 1
are not recorded. Using a different type of survey question essentially a closed-format style as opposed to Lokers open-ended style Buchanan and Rosetto report a series of items under the headings most enjoyed and most disliked attributes of the holiday. This material is summarised in Table 5. A major point of contrast in these satisfaction appraisals is the specificity of the complaints elicited in the structured approach of Buchanan and Rosetto (flies, weather) and the more diffuse but challenging problems (inadequate guides, poor interpretation) noted in Lokers open-ended appraisal.
Synthesis of existing findings
The material reviewed in the two key studies contrasting backpackers from three regions does not reveal a simple story of marked
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Table 5: Most enjoyed and most disliked attributes of Australia by backpackers from different regions
Attributes Most enjoyed Everything Friends/relatives Weather People Lifestyle Country/scenery Wildlife Beaches Most disliked Nothing Distances Expensive Flies/insects Weather UK 10 9 14 20 8 10 5 2 UK 31 7 4 13 5 Traveller source region USA/ Germany Scandinavia Canada 5 6 7 9 6 8 7 4 7 28 15 16 7 3 Less than 1 8 15 2 6 18 15 7 5 Less than 1 USA/ Germany Scandinavia Canada 39 34 41 12 7 2 7 4 7 10 4 12 5 12 9 Other Europe 11 3 10 15 3 24 13 1 Other Europe 31 5 1 12 9
differences. Buchanan and Rosetto try to provide clear thumbnail sketches of their own data for different markets. They claim that their overview is useful not only to show where differences lie but to aid marketers to focus their efforts more directly on specific portions of this market segment known broadly as backpackers.35 Superficially, this seems like a positive applied outcome of their research. The thumbnail sketches they provide repeat the subtle points of contrast already discussed. Nevertheless, close examination of the nonstatistical statements made about each market effectively reveals a pattern of similarity rather than division. These similarities are highlighted in Table 6.
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Table 6: Thumbnail sketches of backpackers from major markets

Region United States/Canada Summary point USA/Canadian backpackers experience a lot of what Australia has to offer both in terms of the sites and activities available to them and the hospitality of the Australian people. While the natural environment is important to USA/Canadian backpackers, so too is the social/cultural component of the Australian visit. Find time to participate in a wide range of activities and to visit a variety of attractions such as national parks, markets and botanical gardens. Enjoyed the people in Australia which possibly reflects the social aspects of employment and for reunions with friends and relatives. Experience a lot of Australia and seek both outdoor and cultural experiences. Seek and have an intense experience in Australia. Enjoy the Australian environment, people, weather and wildlife. Try to do and see as much as possible during their time in Australia. Australia offers experiences somewhat different to those at home. Travel the most extensively of all backpackers.
United Kingdom
Germany
Scandinavia
Other Europe
Source: Extracts from Buchanan and Rosetto, 1997.
Some critical observations
It is timely to introduce a number of critical observations on this existing research material. First, some of the differences reported may not be reliable. Surveys in this field are linked to a particular period in
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time. There may be variability when comparing data because of different years, seasons and places of collection. Second, instability in the findings can also be predicted because of the ways in which questions are asked (the open-ended/closed-ended question differences already discussed emphasise this point for complaints). Third, researchers need to be wary of making too much of small differences in means or percentages. While some of these differences may be statistically significant (likely to represent reliable and consistent differences in the larger population of backpackers), they may be very limited in the size of the effect (amount of difference) revealed.36 To make this point clearer, since not all researchers are familiar with the effect size-significance issue, research results can be reliable but of minor importance or scale. By way of illustration, consider a hypothetical finding that, on average, males rate shopping as a less important travel motivation than do females. If the statistically significant difference is, say, only 0.2 on a ten-point scale, for a sample of 1,000 members of each sex, it is likely that there will still be a large number of males interested or more interested in shopping than many of the females. For percentage differences in survey results, it can be suggested that differences of 1015 per cent begin to matter for applied uses, rather than mere differences of 25 per cent.37 The issue of effect size issue is of direct relevance to marketers. Buchanan and Rosetto claim that by identifying differences among national groups, marketers will be able to focus their efforts more directly. The important addendum to their comment is that the differences must have large effect sizes; that is, they have to be dramatic or substantial rather than merely consistent but small in scale. To develop the point, if 62 per cent of Europeans like climbing and 55 per cent of backpackers from the United Kingdom like the activity, a statistical difference may exist, but to the marketing world the promotion of the activity in both places would be equally worthwhile. The next phase of this chapter will pursue these directions, presenting new data on backpackers from the United States/Canada, Europe and the United Kingdom. This material will be explored closely to ascertain trends towards convergence or divergence in the markets.
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Subtle contours in reef research
Since 1993 a tourism research team based at James Cook University has been funded by the Cooperative Centre for Reef Research to collect data on tourists visiting Australias Great Barrier Reef. The survey collects statistical information on who goes to the Great Barrier Reef and from where, and seeks information from respondents on travel motivation and activity participation. Over 7,000 visitors have been sampled. Response rates from visitors to the surveys have been uniformly high, averaging over 75 per cent for the eight years of surveying. All of the main departure points and all styles of reef operation (large day trips, small day trips, overnight dive trips, extended dive trips) have been included in the survey design. Visitors have been interviewed on-board the vessels and at points of departure or transit from Port Douglas to Cairns, Mission Beach, Townsville and the Whitsundays, as well as in Mackay, Rockhampton and Gladstone. Backpackers have been and continue to be an important market in reef tourism. The data analysed further in this chapter comes from 529 cases identified as international backpackers (aged less than thirty-one, staying in Australia for longer than one month) from the United Kingdom, United States/Canada and Europe drawn from the 7,100person data set. The key comparisons to be made among the backpackers from Europe, the United States/Canada and the United Kingdom will adopt the themes explored in the critical analysis section of this review. For example, the data for backpacker motivation will be organised by descriptive data reporting the scores for the groups on seventeen key motivation items and their significance, but it will also identify items where the effect sizes are larger. Additionally, since the convergence debate specifies the similarity of traveller motives, attitudes and interests, the items where no differences appear will also be presented. For the motivational data it can also be argued that the item has to matter to the travellers for it to be noteworthy. That is, if travellers are shown to have marked differences on an item of little worth or consequence to them, then this is a minor finding compared to differences recorded for items that are a leading part of their
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Table 7: Motivational profiles of backpackers from the United Kingdom, the United States/Canada and Europe Traveller source region and mean importance ratings Motivational item UK USA/ Europe F statistic Canada values Items of high importance with significant group differences Being physically active 2.03 1.63 2.10 F2,517=13.91 Finding thrills and excitement 1.64 1.87 1.89 F2,517=6.12 Getting away from the demands 1.70 1.89 1.90 F2,517=3.27 of home Having fun and being 1.50 1.64 1.67 F2,518=3.01 entertained while on holiday Being daring, adventurous 1.88 2.10 2.10 F2,515=4.99 Learning new things 1.51 1.35 1.40 F2,520=3.42 Items of lowmoderate importance with significant group differences Indulging in luxury 2.88 2.98 3.18 F2,517=5.74 Activities for the whole family 3.45 3.11 3.36 F2,517=5.60 Being together as a family 3.21 2.81 3.05 F2,517=6.18 Items where no differences exist Having a change from work 1.91 1.95 2.03 n/a Unique/different cultures 1.86 1.73 1.73 n/a Seclusion/opportunity to get 2.07 2.10 2.13 n/a away from it all Seeing a culture different from 1.65 1.67 1.51 n/a my own Experiencing a simpler lifestyle 2.34 2.22 2.41 n/a Seeing and experiencing a 1.30 1.31 1.33 n/a foreign destination Talking about the trip when I 2.50 2.35 2.58 n/a return home
Scale 1=very important to 5=not important.
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Table 8: Activity participation of backpackers by source region

Activity Cruises of one or more nights Visiting beaches Boat trips other than reef trips Fishing not at the reef Rainforest short walks Rainforest day walks Day trip tours of the rainforest Bush walking Snorkelling Camping Bird watching Mangrove visits Canoeing Nightlife Visiting scenic landmarks Whitewater rafting Visiting zoos Scuba diving Shopping (arts/craft) Scenic train ride Markets Relaxing/doing little Picnics See friends/relatives National park sightseeing General sightseeing Visiting a museum Traveller source region USA/ UK Europe Canada 50.9 45.5 40.1 92.5 87.6 88.1 36.8 36.4 36.7 14.0 20.7 9.0 74.6 66.9 71.8 43.4 49.6 36.2 32.0 37.2 36.2 53.9 54.5 54.8 93.4 90.9 87.6 61.4 49.6 53.1 17.1 26.4 31.1 21.9 28.9 18.1 28.9 24.8 26.0 85.9 70.2 75.1 68.4 59.5 61.0 43.9 25.6 35.0 36.0 42.1 41.8 47.1 57.6 56.5 65.8 75.2 62.1 19.8 28.9 25.4 48.7 64.5 54.2 84.2 83.5 84.2 42.5 37.2 43.5 46.5 44.6 44.6 66.2 67.8 62.7 57.5 59.5 53.7 36.0 29.8 35.0
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Table 8 continued: Activity participation of backpackers by source region

Activity Casinos Attending cinemas Visiting botanical gardens/public parks Visiting outdoor museums and historic parks Outback safari tours Glass-bottom boats Seeing wildlife Local festivals Viewing small towns and villages Fishing Sailing Visiting islands Viewing marine animals Traveller source region USA/ UK Europe Canada 18.0 26.4 21.5 50.4 43.8 50.3 47.4 51.2 53.7 20.2 25.6 23.2 36.8 25.6 39.0 28.1 36.4 26.6 63.6 63.6 65.5 28.1 28.1 28.8 50.9 54.5 56.5 20.2 25.6 12.4 64.7 54.5 39.1 77.6 76.0 81.9 70.6 76.0 63.8
motivational profile. Table 7 provides this information on backpacker motivation, while Table 8 documents the comparative information on activities. The material presented in Tables 7 and 8 reveals some subtle but not substantial differences among the backpackers from different source regions. Broadly, the motivational items ranked highly by any one group tend to be ranked highly by other groups, while items with low priority for any group are accorded similar low priorities by others. The two single most important themes are that the United Kingdom travellers are seeking more thrills, fun and excitement than the other groups, while the United States/Canada market is more oriented towards physical activities and learning about new settings. Europe-
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based backpackers, at least for the motivational items, sometimes provide results similar to the United Kingdom group and sometimes akin to the United States/Canadian market. Overall, this motivational material provides sound evidence that there are only subtle contours of difference among these backpacker markets, rather than sharply contrasting reasons for travelling. Similarly, the activity data presents a view of homogeneity in activity participation rates and interests. Only fifteen out of the forty activities listed reveal more than 10 per cent variation in participation rates. The largest differences in activity participation arise from the British backpackers, who have relatively higher participation in nightlife, sailing and whitewater rafting. Where differences exceeding 10 per cent exist, the North American/Canadian market is characterised by the highest relative participation in visiting markets, shopping and fishing. Europeans are somewhat more likely to go bird watching and on outback safari tours than the other two groups, and are markedly less likely to go sailing and fishing. Nevertheless, it is important to keep these differences in perspective. For well over half of the backpacker activities, the groups provide remarkably similar patterns of participation, including matched ratings for highly popular activities (for example, visiting beaches 92.5 per cent, 87.6 per cent, 88.1 per cent), moderately popular activities (for example, day-trip tours of the rainforest 32.0 per cent, 37.2 per cent, 36.2 per cent) and less popular activities (for example, canoeing 28.9 per cent, 24.8 per cent, 26.0 per cent). The consistency of these types of findings indicate a topography of subtle contours and minor fluctuations in the landscape of backpacker attributes rather than a mountainous region of stark contrasts. In concluding this review of data pertaining to backpacker differences, it is possible to suggest that within this set of travellers coming to Australia at the turn of the millennium, there are few marked differences between travellers from the most common source regions. It is a conclusion that favours the convergence theory of market evolution rather than that of divergence. The forecasts for tourism to Australia from Europe, the United States/Canada and the
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United Kingdom all indicate a strengthening of demand in the next decade.38 The present research suggests that backpacker markets to Australia in the future will only be different in subtle details. It can be proposed that of the two paths that can be followed in the nature of markets, convergence or divergence, it is the path of convergence that will provide the route of the future.
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Yellow Bible Tourism: Backpackers in Southeast Asia

Jeff Jarvis
Despite backpacking becoming a central component of Western youth culture, the benefits that this independent traveller segment provides to host regions are often misunderstood or completely ignored. In light of the downturns in travel to the region following the 2002 Bali bombings and 2004 tsunami catastrophe, this chapter considers the benefits backpacking tourism brings to Southeast Asia. In profiling the backpacker market in Southeast Asia prior to these disasters, it is argued that although backpackers do not spend a great deal of money per day there (up to A$38), they are still economically significant and strategically important due to their long duration of stay (average 152 days). From the survey data collected for this study, a new independent traveller type is identified, the holiday backpacker, who travels for a shorter period of time in a similar manner to mainstream tourists but who utilises the infrastructure developed for long-term travellers. Additionally, the study identifies the associated growth in hub backpacking, which centres around specific airport locales. This contradicts the popular perception of a backpacker overland route from Bali to Bangkok.
Southeast Asia and backpacking
Southeast Asia has played an important role in the emergence of independent travel, arguably being the destination where the modernday concept of backpacking developed. One of the main players in the development of contemporary backpacking, the Australian-based
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independent travel publishing house Lonely Planet, was established by Tony and Maureen Wheeler after travelling through Southeast Asia in the early 1970s. Their book of travel notes grew to become the guidebook Southeast Asia on a Shoestring, commonly known as the yellow bible to backpackers travelling in the region. While Southeast Asia, with its colonial links to the age of European exploration, has long been romanticised by the West as a place of mystery and adventure for young men and women of character, we can identify more specific economic and structural factors that have driven backpacker tourism to the region in the late twentieth century. Firstly, Southeast Asia provides value for money and a culturally alternative experience to mass tourism. The youth tourism industry in Europe is typically dominated by charter tourism packages to sun, sea and sand destinations, primarily on the shores of the Mediterranean, where young Europeans have the opportunity to party on islands such as Ibiza or on the Turkish coast. In contrast, Southeast Asia offers the more adventurous traveller a myriad of cultures, environments and, most importantly, the sense of authenticity and exploration. Secondly, backpacking to Southeast Asia has been driven by the emergence of the jumbo jet, which has made the region affordable and accessible. Previously, travel to Southeast Asia involved a long and arduous journey by ship or an expensive flight. The emergence of the jumbo jet has meant that large numbers of people can be transported quickly and inexpensively from various parts of the planet to Southeast Asia. However, the popularity of travel to the region may be enhanced as a result of the outbound tourism industry in the Western world seizing the opportunity to sell high-yield long-haul flights and insurance, particularly to the youth market. Travel agents typically work on a commission basis, which means that for every ticket they sell, they get paid a percentage. Using this rationale, it is far more lucrative for travel agents to sell a more expensive LondonBali ticket than a LondonParis ticket, especially when insurance is included. In the northern hemisphere, specialist youth agents have seen the advantage in promoting exotic Southeast Asia to young travellers in the hope of stimulating demand. For example, the Scandinavian youth travel
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company Kilroy Travel promotes Asia and Australia, warning their clients to travel before its too late, meaning before they are too old. Finally, the greater accessibility of Southeast Asia and Australasia came at a period of time when extended youth travel was gaining a greater level of acceptance in society. The 1970s ushered in an unprecedented era of social freedom for the youth of the Western world. This made it much more acceptable for young people to travel after university or during their twenties. In combination, these factors helped to establish the Southeast Asian region as a prime backpacker destination post-1970.
Benefits of backpackers to Southeast Asia
We can begin to infer the potential benefits of backpackers to the Southeast Asian region from the extensive research that has been conducted in Australia. Backpackers in Australia have been identified as high-yield tourists, spending over $A5,000 each in 2003.1 They travel more widely than package tourists, spreading the benefits to a wider geographic area and contributing to local economic development through their purchases of locally produced goods and services. In this way, backpackers have initiated tourism development in local regions, helping to diversify the local economy. As Mark Hampton notes, In comparison with large-scale development, backpacker tourism needs only cheap, simply constructed accommodation requiring relatively low investments.2 Backpackers have also acted as a stimulus for localised urban redevelopment within cities, particularly of run-down red-light districts, as was seen in the Melbourne suburb of St Kilda in the 1980s. Typically, these districts are centrally located and offer cheaper rents, which makes them attractive to developers. In St Kildas case there was an oversupply of suitable accommodation, given its history as a seaside holiday town in the early 1900s. Old guesthouses, hotels and coffee palaces, which had been originally designed without en-suites, were converted to backpacker-style accommodation with minimal investment. Once the backpackers arrived, they brought economic activity and a vibrancy that contributed to the urban rejuvenation
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process. For such reasons, backpacking is now well established as a strategic and lucrative sub-segment of the Australian tourism industry, with the Federal Government early in the 1990s committing $A4 million to its development. Australian Tourist Commission (ATC), State and local tourism organisations have also identified the backpacker segment as a key target market. Strong government support has continued into the twenty-first century, with the following recognition given to the segment in a national strategy document for the industry in 2003:
While backpackers constitute 10 per cent of visitors to Australia they contribute 22 per cent of expenditure by international visitors they visit more regional areas than other international visitors and hence can provide a boost to local economies which might not benefit significantly from the growth in inbound tourism.3
In contrast, the significant economic and associated benefits of backpacking are still greatly underestimated by most countries in Southeast Asia. According to Hampton, this sector is at best tacitly ignored, or at worst actively discouraged in official tourism planning.4 The tourism resources of these countries are typically focused on developing international mass tourism or segments such as the MICE market (meetings, incentives, conventions and exhibitions).5 Regina Scheyvens argues that it is the association of modern-day backpacking with the hippy and drifter tourism of the 1960s and 70s that has discouraged less-developed countries governments from welcoming backpackers.6 In Goa, the director of tourism believed that luxury tourism was the way forward, hippies and backpackers do not bring in enough money.7 This chapter attempts discover the economic benefits that backpackers bring to Southeast Asia.
Research methodolology
Expanding upon initial research conducted in Australia by Philip Pearce,8 Laurie Loker9 and Jeff Jarvis,10 this study investigates international backpackers travelling in Southeast Asia, which is defined as Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia. The aim is to profile backpackers travel patterns, expenditure and motivation to travel to
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Asia, as well as the information sources used in planning their trips. The research was conducted in 1997 and took the form of a quantitative face-to-face survey with 1,372 independent backpackers.11 The survey population were all international travellers (excluding Australians) who fulfilled the assigned key definition criteria of an independent traveller as defined by Pearce.12 That is, by exhibiting a preference for budget accommodation, having a flexible travel schedule and travelling in Southeast Asia for more than one week (a criterion that acts to exclude stopover travellers). A non-probability method of sampling was used, whereby members of the sample are purposefully or accidentally selected in a non-random manner. This methodology was most suitable, as it provides the greatest flexibility when dealing with the individual characteristics of the backpacker market. In order to obtain data of the highest accuracy, the survey was administered through personal interviews. This involved the five researchers travelling as backpackers throughout the Southeast Asian region to conduct the interviews. This allowed for clarification of questions where there may have been some uncertainty as to the responses required. The lack of well-defined backpacker hostels of the type that exist in Australia and parts of Europe forced the researchers to expand their data catchment area to conduct interviews at accommodation houses, restaurants and other locations where backpackers congregated. This methodology replicated that followed by Pamela Riley in her study on long-term budget travellers in the AsiaPacific region.13 Within each region, surveys were conducted at the following locations:
Indonesia (Bali): Kuta, Ubud, Lovina, Padangbai, Lombok, Gilli Islands, Sengiggi. Indonesia (Java): Banyuwangi, Probolinggo, Mt Bromo, Yogyakarta, Solo, Jakarta, Bogor, Bandung, Pangandaran. Singapore/Malaysia: Singapore, Melaka, Kuala Lumpur, Cameron Highlands, Georgetown. Thailand (North): Bangkok, Chang Mai, Pai, Ko Chang. Thailand (South): Hat Yai, Ko Samui, Krabi, Ko Phi Phi, Ko Pha Ngan.
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Table 1: Survey respondents location (by region)

Region Thailand (South) Indonesia (Bali) Thailand (North) Indonesia (Java) Malaysia/Singapore Total Frequency 380 287 284 224 197 1,372 Percentage 27.7 20.9 20.7 16.3 14.4 100.0
Southeast Asian backpacker profile (demographics)
The sampling resulted in a relatively balanced gender ratio, with 53 per cent males and 47 per cent females, and an average age of 27.1 years. Over 78 per cent of the sample came from Europe. This finding coincides with other studies of backpackers in Australia, the region that discovered that Americans were under-represented and Europeans over-represented among long-term travellers.14 British travellers were most common in the sample, followed by those from Scandinavia and other/continental Europe, which includes such countries as France, Italy and Holland.15 This mix is similar to the proportions of nationalities that occur in the Australian backpacker market, with Europe being the dominant region.16 Just over one quarter of the sample were students, with the professional category, which includes groups such as accountants, lawyers and marketers, making up a further 19 per cent. This finding correlates with Hamptons observation that the backpacker category may not be comprised mainly of students but has an increasing proportion of professional people and the self employed.17 The backpacker market in Southeast Asia is a highly educated one, with over 54 per cent of the sample either currently studying at university or having graduated. This finding, which corresponds with the Australian data,18 has strategic implications for the region: given the link between education and future income streams, the backpackers of
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Table 2: Survey respondents region of origin

Region of origin United Kingdom Continental Europe Scandinavia Germany Canada USA Israel Asia Africa New Zealand South America Total Number 374 261 260 182 110 98 29 23 19 12 4 1,372 Percentage 27.30 19.00 18.95 13.23 8.00 7.10 2.10 1.70 1.40 0.90 0.30 100.00
today are likely to have the means to become repeat travellers to the region. This high level of education is supported by Rileys interviews with backpackers in Southeast Asia. On the basis of these interviews, she argued:
Long-term travellers are primarily middle class and most are in their late twenties and early thirties Most are college educated. These people held various occupations prior to their trips; for example, engineer, accountant, nurse, teacher, systems analyst, director of a TV component company, secretary, corporate lawyer, investment banker, electrician. Obviously the vast majority are from developed Westernized nations.19
The high levels of education backpackers possess and the distances they travel from home also correlate with Nelson Graburns argument that cultural self-confidence correlates with willingness to travel:
Cultural self-confidence is less a matter of income than class, and most specifically childhood and educational experience The middle classes, usually those with a college education and prior travel experience are
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Table 3: Survey respondents level of education

Level of education Tertiary complete Secondary complete Tertiary incomplete Technical Postgraduate Secondary incomplete Total Percentage 34.8 28.4 14.6 14.4 5.2 2.6 100.0
pro-typical tourists in search of new experiences, in the extreme form, in their wandering youth who to varying degrees wish to consume like television, the world, its sights, its history, its peoples and their cultures, their clothes, artefacts and who compete back at home in prestige ranking based on distance, exoticism and crises overcome.20
Graburn goes on to point out that the basic nature of backpacking can be associated with a prolonged moratorium from the responsibilities of adult life, thereby explaining the backpacker preference for longer rather than shorter trips.
This type of tourism, like graduation, marriage and promotions, mark the passage of personal life from one status to another rite of passage tourism is commonly found associated with major life changes such as the emergence into adulthood, divorce, widowhood or career changes. Such tourism often consists of prolonged absences, often arduous, which are a kind of self testing, where in the individuals prove to themselves that they can make the life changes 21
This desire for an extended travel experience was substantiated through an examination of how backpackers found the time to travel, with over 80 per cent either quitting their job, taking leave without pay or completing a period of study. The high average length of stay in Southeast Asia further supports this point. This study also highlights the emergence of a new segment within the backpacker market, the holiday backpacker, who travels as part of
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Table 4: How survey respondents made time available for travel

How time was made available Quit job Holidays from full-time job Just finished university/school Between semesters at university Leave without pay Other Total Percent 37.5 19.3 15.6 13.8 12.8 1.0 100.0
their annual holiday from their full-time job. This finding is interesting because it contradicts the common perception that backpackers generally travel for an extended period of time throughout Southeast Asia. The nationalities of holiday backpackers were as follows: 32 per cent were German, followed by 26 per cent Continental European, 17 per cent British and 11 per cent Scandinavian. Their average age was 31.3 years, indicating that this segment was slightly older than their fellow backpackers. Of those backpackers who were on holiday from their full-time job, 49 per cent were staying for less than one month and 92 per cent for less than three months. The well-backpacked islands of South Thailand and Bali, which have established traveller infrastructure, appear to be the key locations, with 45 per cent of holiday backpackers staying in southern Thailand and 29 per cent in Bali. This highlights how holiday backpacking could be becoming a viable alternative to more traditional forms of mainstream tourism.
Travel patterns in Southeast Asia
Gaining an understanding of the travel patterns of backpackers is important, as travel patterns provide an insight into the distribution of income from the backpacker segment. Their basic travel pattern can be inferred from the type of airline ticket they purchased for their journey from their home country. Table 5 highlights that around two-thirds of
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Table 5: Type of airline ticket used by survey respondents

Type of ticket Round the world Asia return Asia one-way Australia/NZ return Other Total Percentage 17.3 52.0 12.1 14.2 4.4 100.0
Table 6: Forms of transport used by survey respondents

Form of transport Tourist bus Local bus Boat Air Train Percentage 75.6 63.1 64.3 36.8 60.1
the market were specifically focusing their travels on the Southeast Asian region, with the remainder of the market travelling in Asia as a component of a trip either to Australia or around the world. These results highlight the importance of Southeast Asia as a stopover for backpackers in Australia, with 14.5 per cent of the market having already been to Australia and up to another 22 per cent planning to go. Importantly, therefore, just over one-third of the backpacker sample in Asia were also travelling to Australia, a fact that highlights the mutual interdependence of the two regions. Thus, a similar backpacker is travelling to Southeast Asia as is found in Australia. Therefore, the research that has been undertaken on the segment in Australia is relevant to the Southeast Asian region, and vice versa. As for how the backpackers travelled within Southeast Asia, bus transport, both that used by locals and that aimed at tourists, were dominant. Tourist buses are typically mini-buses specifically chartered
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for the backpacker market, and their routes may run, for example, from Khao Sahn Rd in Bangkok to southern Thailand. The predominance of using small-scale or local transport reinforces the inferred impact of backpackers expenditure in the local economies of the region. The Lonely Planet guide advises travellers visiting Myanmar to use local transport to avoid supporting the government.22 However, interestingly, over 36 per cent of the sample used air transport to travel within Southeast Asia, thus bypassing the overland route.
Route and hub backpacking
One of the common beliefs associated with backpacking in Southeast Asia is that of an overland travel route. The existence of the route is supported by guidebooks such as the Lonely Planet guide to Southeast Asia, the yellow bible, as well as academic studies:23
Backpackers in Southeast Asia often follow well-trodden paths through the region. A typical route starts with a cheap flight to Bangkok, through south Thailand and peninsular Malaysia, to Singapore, Java, Bali, eastern Indonesia, and Australia.24
However, this study found a high concentration of travellers surrounding the major air-transport hubs of the region (Bangkok and Denpasar). Significantly, only 30 per cent of travellers interviewed in Bali had landed in Bangkok, indicating that less than a third could have been travelling overland on the yellow bible route between the destinations at that time. Additionally, of the 60 per cent of backpackers surveyed in Indonesia who were travelling to another destination, only 37 per cent were going on to Singapore/Malaysia, with 33 per cent travelling on to Australia by air and 15 per cent going directly to Thailand, presumably by air as well. From this evidence, the indication is that there are two types of backpacking emerging: overland-route backpacking and hub backpacking, where travellers arrive with a return or stopover ticket at an airport, use the city as an initial base and travel to the surrounding regions. The classic example of this is of a traveller who buys a return ticket to Bangkok and spends a month or so travelling around the
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Table 7: City of arrival in Southeast Asia

City Bangkok Denpasar (Bali) Singapore Jakarta Kuala Lumpur Other Total Percentage 55.1 15.0 11.0 8.0 4.0 6.9 100.0
region, returning to Bangkok to fly home. This finding has economic ramifications for tourism destinations. The potential losers are those destinations that are located some distance away from major airport hubs, as their capacity to increase the number of backpacker tourists to the region, especially of short-term holiday backpackers, could be limited. The winners are those locations in closer proximity to the hubs and who have good transport links.
Backpacker expenditure in Southeast Asia
Data gathered from backpackers in Australia has shown them to be one of the highest-yielding segments of the tourist market, with the Bureau of Tourism Research calculating that backpackers generated in excess of $2,251.9 billion in 2003, with each backpacker worth more than A$5,000 to the nation.25 The average expenditure per day of the sample of backpackers in Southeast Asia (in Australian dollars) ranged between A$22.82 (in Java) to A$38.79 (in Singapore) per night.26 Multiplying that figure by the average length of stay of those travellers spending all their time in the region (with Asia-return or one-way air tickets) of 152 days, the average backpacker in Southeast Asia can be estimated to be worth between A$3,468 and A$5,896 to the region. It should also be noted that stopover backpackers on their way around the world or to Australia are also of significant value, but this varies
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Table 8: Average daily expediture of survey respondents by region

Region South Thailand North Thailand Bali West Java East Java Malaysia Singapore Expenditure in A$27 29.20 31.89 35.62 30.68 22.82 24.10 38.79
according to the length of time they stay in the region. As with Australia, food and drink consumes the majority of a backpackers expenditure, ranging from 45 per cent of daily expenditure in Southern Thailand to 31 per cent in both Northern Thailand and Singapore. This provides a great opportunity for local community involvement in the tourism industry and supports Hamptons argument that the economic leakage from backpacking is less than other forms of international tourism.28 If accommodation is considered in conjunction with food and drink, over 72 per cent of the surveyed backpackers expenditure flowed directly into the local economy in southern Thailand.
Motivation to travel
In order to identify why the travellers selected Southeast Asia as their destination, respondents were asked a free-response question, where multiple responses were permitted. The results confirm descriptions of backpackers as cultural tourists, with over 84 per cent of those surveyed mentioning culture as the main reason they chose to travel to Southeast Asia. This correlates with Erik Cohens study, which identified one of the advantages of alternative non-institutionalised tourism as the ability of the traveller to gain greater access to the host society and culture.29 Riley also identified that meeting the people was
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Table 9: Reason for travelling in Southeast Asia

Reason Culture Cheap Positive word-of-mouth Climate Natural attractions Relaxation Easy to travel around Percentage of respondents who mention reason 84.3 53.4 23.4 23.3 19.8 15.4 10.6
a primary goal of travellers in Asia,30 and Loker-Murphy and Pearce in their study on young budget travellers in Australia identified the ability of the travellers to experience Australian life and culture as crucial in framing their best experiences in Australia.31
Conclusion
This chapter has identified that backpackers in Southeast Asia are very similar in demographic terms to those who travel in Australia. They are primarily young, European and educated. Over 36 per cent of all backpackers in Southeast Asia are on their way to or from Australia, indicating the mutual interdependence between the regions. Economically, the backpackers were identified as being worth up to A$5,896 per traveller to the region, with up to 72 per cent of their daily expenditure in southern Thailand going on accommodation, food and drink, directly contributing to the domestic economy. This finding highlights the importance of backpackers to local economic development and reinforces the fact that they should not be disregarded by the national tourism bodies of the region, as they are a major force for economic development of both rural and urban destinations. The study also highlighted a sub-segment of holiday backpackers, who were identified primarily in both southern Thailand and Bali,
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close to the air hubs of Denpasar and Bangkok. These travellers are typically older and utilise the travel infrastructure that has developed for long-term travellers while on paid annual leave from their full-time job. This observation clearly highlights how backpacking has become relatively institutionalised and organised, a movement away from such independent travel forms of drifters and explorers. It highlights how one of the key defining elements of backpacking, being on an extended vacation, may need to be reviewed in light of the current findings. As the backpacker market expands, it is segmenting into observable sub-segments, with different types of backpackers with different needs now emerging. Overall, the study has highlighted that backpackers are a valuable, if not underestimated, segment of the global tourism industry, and that they are of strategic importance to the tourism industry of Southeast Asia and, as a consequence, Australia.
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Independent Travel and Civil Religious Pilgrimage: Backpackers at the Gallipoli Battlefields Brad West
1 R White, Inventing Australia: Images and Identity 16881980, George Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1981, p 127. 2 R Ely, The First Anzac Day: Invented or Discovered?, Journal of Australian Studies, no 17, pp 4158. 3 R Bademli, Gallipoli Peninsula Peace Park International Ideas and Design Competition, Turkish Ministry of Forestry, Ankara, 1997, p 37. 4 A Efe, personal communication. 5 Bademli, op. cit., p 38. 6 ibid. 7 M Gratton, Emotional Dawn for Pilgrims at Gallipoli, Sydney Morning Herald, 26 April 2000, p 4. 8 PM delights in Turkeys rich heritage, Courier Mail, 24 April 2000, p 6. 9 C Harvey, Wave of Support for Sacred Ensign, Australian, 11 February 1998, p 6. 10 A Coombs, Lest We Forget the World War I Lesson, Sydney Morning Herald, 27 April 2000, p 17. 11 M M Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination, University of Texas, Austin, 1981. 12 Z Bauman, From Pilgrim to Tourist or a Short History of Identity, in S Hall and P du Gay (eds), Questions of Cultural Identity, Sage, London, 1996, p 30. 13 ibid., p 31. 14 J Adler, Travel as Performed Art, American Journal of Sociology, no 94, vol 6, 1989, pp 136691; B Pfaffenberger, Serious Pilgrims and Frivolous Tourists, Annals of Tourism Research, no 10, vol 1, 1983, pp 5774; V L Smith, Introduction: The Quest in Guest, Annals of Tourism Research, no 19, 1992, pp 117; U Wagner, Out of Time and Place: Mass Tourism and Charter Trips, Ethnos, no 42, 1977, pp 3852. 15 Adler, op. cit., p 1369. 16 G H Jones, Celtic Britain and the Pilgrim Movement, Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion, London, 1912; A Kendall, Medieval Pilgrims, Wayland, London, 1970; V Turner and E Turner, Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture, Columbia University Press, New York, 1978. 17 M Schudson, Review Essay: On Tourism and Modern Culture, American Journal of Sociology, no 84, vol 5, 1979, pp 124958.
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18 R Shields, Honeymoon Capital of the World, Places on the Margin, Routledge, London, 1991, pp 11761; A Moore, Walt Disney World: Bounded Ritual Space and the Playful Pilgrimage Center, Anthropological Quarterly, no 53, 1980, pp 20718; Wagner, op. cit. 19 Y Zerubavel, Recovered Roots, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1995, p 133. 20 D Boorstin, The Image, Harper & Row, New York, 1964; l Turner and J Ash, The Golden Hordes: International Tourism and the Pleasure Periphery, Constable, London, 1975. 21 E Cohen, Pilgrimage Centres: Concentric and Excentric, Annals of Tourism Research, no 19, 1992, p 49. 22 J J Rousseau, The Social Contract, H Regnery, Chicago, 1954; E Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life [1915], Allen & Unwin, London, 1954. 23 V Turner, The Center Out There: Pilgrims Goal, History of Religions, no 12, vol 3, 1973; V Turner, Dramas, Fields and Metaphors, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 1974; V Turner, Liminal to Liminoid, in Play, Flow, and Ritual, Rice University Studies, no 60, vol 3, 1974, pp 5392; V Turner, Pilgrimage and Communitas, Studia Missionalia, no 23, pp 30527; V Turner, Process, Performance and Pilgrimage, Concept, New Delhi, 1979. 24 Turner, Process, Performance and Pilgrimage, ibid., p 153. 25 Turner and Turner, Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture, op. cit., p 32. 26 S M Bhardwaj, Hindu Places of Pilgrimage in India, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1973. 27 E Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life , Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1971. 28 J Sumption, Pilgrimage: An Image of Medieval Religion, Faber, London, 1975, p 123. 29 Malcolm X, Autobiography of Malcolm X, Grove, New York, 1966, p 325. 30 M Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination, University of Texas, Austin, 1981. 31 ibid., p 280. 32 K S Inglis, Men, Women, and War Memorials: Anzac Australia, Daedalus, no 116, 1987, p 36. 33 K S Inglis, The Unknown Australian Soldier, Journal of Australian Studies, no 60, 1999, pp 817. 34 B Schwartz, Social Change and Collective Memory: The Democratization of George Washington, American Sociological Review, no 56, 1991, pp 22136; B Schwartz, Collective Memory and History: How Abraham Lincoln Became a Symbol of Racial Equality, Sociological Quarterly, no 38, vol 3, 1997, pp 46996. 35 L Hunt, Politics, Culture, and Class in the French Revolution, University of California Press, Berkeley and London, 1986. 36 R Wagner-Pacifici, Memories in the Making, Qualitative Sociology, no 19, vol 3, p 310. 37 C Geertz, Islam Observed, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1968, p 67. 38 B Anderson, Imagined Communities, Verso, London, 1983.
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39 40 41 42
R Ward, The Australian Legend, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1958. U Igdemir, Ataturk and the Anzacs, Turk Tarih Kurumu, Ankara, 1978. HE Mr Bulent Ecevit, Prime Minister, Republic of Turkey, 2001. M Mauss, The Gift, Cohen and West, London, 1970.
Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Backpackers at Uluru Tamara Young

1 Denis OByrne, Joe Bindloss, Andrew Draffen, Hugh Finlay, Paul Harding, Patrick Horton, Lyn McGaurr, Meg Mundell, Jon Murray, Hannah Ross and Phillipa Saxton, Australia: Up Front, Outback, Down Under, Lonely Planet Publications, Hawthorn, 2000, p 439. 2 Uluru is the Indigenous name for Ayers Rock. In 1985 the name was changed when the Anangu (the local Indigenous peoples) were granted native title. Similarly, the nearby rock formations formerly known as the Olgas are now referred to by the Indigenous name of Kata Tjuta. While the name change is relatively well known in Australia, the non-Indigenous name Ayers Rock is still more commonly used and cited than the Indigenous name Uluru. For example, many tourism media such as brochures, guidebooks and postcards still refer to the area exclusively as Ayers Rock, although increasingly both names are being used with the site being referred to as Ayers Rock/Uluru. Tourist facilities in the area, including the airport and the resort at Yulara, are still known only by the name of Ayers Rock. For a discussion of the challenges associated with renaming the tourist site see Bob McKercher and Hilary du Cros, I Climbed to the Top of Ayers Rock but Still Couldnt See Uluru: The Challenge of Reinventing a Tourist Destination, in Bill Faulkner, Carmen Tidswell and David Weaver (eds), Progress in Tourism and Hospitality Research 1998: Proceedings of the 8th Annual Australian Tourism and Hospitality Conference, Canberra, 1998, pp 37685. 3 Andrew Stevenson, Tourism Chiefs Defend Ban on Climbing Rock, Sydney Morning Herald, 1920 May 2001, p 2. 4 Material referred to throughout this chapter is the product of interviews conducted with thirty backpackers during fieldwork in the Northern Territory and Northern Queensland, AugustNovember 2000. 5 Laurie Loker-Murphy and Philip Pearce, Young Budget Travelers: Backpackers in Australia, Annals of Tourism Research, vol 22, no 4, 1995. 6 Bolin, op. cit. 7 Mark Hampton, Backpacker Tourism and Economic Development, Annals of Tourism Research, vol 25, no 3, 1998. 8 Australian Tourist Commission, Backpacking , Its a State of Mind: Opportunities in the Australian Independent Travel Market, Australian Tourist Commission, Sydney, 1995. 9 Commonwealth Department of Tourism, National Backpacker Tourism Strategy, Commonwealth of Australia, Canberra, 1995. 10 These reports include: R Haigh, BTR Occasional Paper No. 20: Backpackers in Australia, Bureau of Tourism Research, Canberra, 1995; Ian Buchanan and
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11 12
13 14 15 16 17 18
19
20 21 22 23
24
Allison Rossetto, Occasional Paper No. 24: With a Swag upon my Shoulder: A Comprehensive Study of International Backpackers to Australia, Bureau of Tourism Research, Canberra, 1997; Ian Buchanan, International Backpackers and Australian Tourism Regions, in Bureau of Tourism Research (ed.), Australian Tourism and Hospitality Conference, Bureau of Tourism Research, Canberra, 1998. Western Australian Tourism Commission, Backpackers in Australia, Perth, 1993; Western Australian Tourism Commission, Guide to Kimberley Aboriginal Product Experiences, Perth, 1999. For example, a number of scholars have studied backpackers as the focus of their research including: Glen Ross, Ideal and Actual Images of Backpacker Visitors to Northern Australia, Journal of Travel Research, vol 32, no 2, 1993; Laurie Murphy, Exploring Social Interactions of Backpackers, Annals of Tourism Research, vol 28, no 1, 2001. Erik Cohen, A Phenomenology of Tourist Experiences, Sociology, vol 13, 1979, pp 179201. J W Vogt, Wandering: Youth and Travel Behaviour, Annals of Tourism Research, vol 4, no 2, 1976, p 74. Pamela Riley, Road Culture of International Long-Term Budget Travellers, Annals of Tourism Research, vol 15, 1988, p 313. Luke Desforges, Checking Out The Planet: Global Representations, Local Identities and Youth Travel, in T Skelton and G Valentine (eds), Cool Places: Geographies of Youth Cultures, Routledge, London and New York, 1998, p 176. Tim Edensor, Tourists at the Taj: Performance and Meaning at a Symbolic Site, Routledge, London and New York, 1998, p 28. Philip Pearce, The Backpacker Phenomenon: Preliminary Answers to Basic Questions, James Cook University, Townsville, 1990; Laurie Loker, The Backpacker Phenomenon II: More Answers to Further Questions, James Cook University, Townsville, 1993. Auliana Poon, Competitive strategies for a new tourism in C Cooper (ed.) Progress in Tourism, Recreation and Hospitality Management, Belhaven Press, London, 1989; Auliana Poon, Tourism, Technology and Competitive Strategies, CAB International, Oxon, 1993, pp 91102. Graham Dann, The Language of Tourism: A Sociolinguistic Perspective, CAB International, Oxom, 1996, p 19. Ian Munt, The Other Postmodern Tourism: Culture, Travel and the New Middle Classes, Theory, Culture and Society, vol 11, 1994, p 119. John Urry, The Tourist Gaze: Leisure and Travel in Contemporary Societies, Sage Publications, London, 1990, p 104. Erik Cohen, Toward a Sociology of International Tourism, Social Research, Spring 1972, pp 164182; Erik Cohen, Nomads from Affluence: Notes on the Phenomenon of Drifter Tourism, International Journal of Comparative Sociology, vol XIV, no 12, 1973, pp 89103. Northern Territory Regional Tourism Association, Central Australia Holiday Guide 2000/2001, p 49.
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25 Edensor, op. cit., p 7. 26 Terry Brown, Antecedents of Culturally Significant Tourist Behavior, Annals of Tourism Research, vol 26, no 3, 1999, p 680. 27 See Stanley Breeden, Uluru: Looking After Uluru Kata Tjuta the Anangu Way, Simon and Schuster Australia, Sydney, 1994, pp 13755. 28 Brown, op. cit. 29 ibid. 30 Burnum Burnum, Burnum Burnums Aboriginal Australia: A Travellers Guide, Angus and Robertson, Sydney, 1988, pp 2606. 31 Ann McGrath, Travels to a Distant Past: The Mythology of the Outback, Australian Cultural History: Travellers, Journeys, Tourists, no 10, 1991. 32 McGrath, op. cit., p 115. 33 John Fiske, Bob Hodge and Graeme Turner, Myths of Oz: Reading Australian Popular Culture, Allen & Unwin Australia Pty Ltd, North Sydney, 1987, p 123. 34 McGrath, op. cit., p 122. 35 ibid., p 123. 36 Annette Hamilton, Spoon-Feeding the Lizards: Culture and Conflict in Central Australia, Meanjin, vol 43, no 3, 1984, p 377. 37 Julie Marcus, The Journey Out to the Centre: The Cultural Appropriation of Ayers Rock, in Gillian Cowlishaw and Barry Morris (eds), Race Matters: Indigenous Australians and Our Society, Aboriginal Studies Press, Canberra, 1997, p 30. 38 Roslynn Haynes, Seeking the Centre: The Australian Desert in Literature, Art and Film, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1998. 39 Marcus, op. cit., p 29. 40 Fiske, Hodge and Turner, op. cit., p 125. 41 For example, Hamilton, McGrath, Breeden, Marcus and Haynes. 42 For a more detailed account on the history of tourism at Uluru see Jim Davidson and Peter Spearritt, Holiday Business: Tourism in Australia since 1870, Melbourne University Press, Carlton South, 2000, pp 187219. 43 For information on the development of Yulara see Phillip Cox, Yulara, Panda Books, McMahons Point, 1986. 44 McKercher et al., op. cit., p 380. 45 ibid. 46 Davidson and Spearritt, op. cit., p 200. 47 Brown, op. cit. 48 Stevenson, op. cit. 49 Elvi Whittaker, Public Discourse on Sacredness: The Transfer of Ayers Rock to Aboriginal Ownership, American Ethnologist, vol 21, no 2, 1994, p 317. 50 Brown, op. cit., p 676. 51 Burnum Burnum quoted in Marlene Norst, Burnum Burnum: A Warrior for Peace, Kangaroo Press, Sydney, 1999, pp 1767. 52 Australian, 16 May 2001, p 3. 53 Deborah Bhaattacharyya, Mediating India: An Analysis of a Guidebook, Annals of Tourism Research, vol 24, no 2, 1997, p 371.
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54 Laurie Murphy, Australias Image as a Holiday Destination: Perceptions of Backpacker Visitors, Journal of Travel and Tourism Marketing, vol 8, no 3, 1999, p 32. 55 OByrne et al., op. cit. 56 Bede M Sheppard, Erica B Levy and Laura M Bacon (eds), Lets Go: Australia 2000, Lets Go Publications, Cambridge, 2000. 57 Margo Daly, Anne Dehne, David Leffman and Chris Scott, Australia: The Rough Guide, Rough Guides, London, 1999. 58 Bhaattacharyya, op. cit., p 372. 59 ibid., pp 3735. 60 OByrne et al., op. cit., p 437. 61 Daly et al., op. cit., p 584. 62 Sheppard et al., op. cit., p 291. 63 ibid., p 293. 64 Daly et al., op. cit., p 584. 65 OByrne et al., op. cit., p 437. 66 Daly et al., op. cit., p 584. 67 Sheppard et al., op. cit., p 291. 68 OByrne et al., op. cit., p 437. 69 Sheppard et al., op. cit., p 291. 70 ibid., p xv. 71 Daly et al., op. cit., p 588. 72 ibid. 73 ibid. 74 McKercher et al., op. cit., p 377. 75 Personal observation, Uluru, 31 July 2000. 76 Desforges, op. cit., p 182. 77 Peter Phipps, Tourists, Terrorists, Death and Value, in Raminder Kaur and John Hutnyk (eds), Travel Worlds: Journeys in Contemporary Cultural Politics, Zed Books, London and New York, 1999, p 84. 78 Desforges, op. cit., p 183. 79 Heather Zeppel, Selling the Dreamtime: Aboriginal culture in Australian tourism, in David Rowe and Geoffery Lawrence (eds), Tourism, Leisure, Sport: Critical Perspectives, Hodder Education, Rydalmere, 1998. 80 Tamara Young, Postcards From Australia: A Study of Touristic Images of Aboriginal Australians, Hons thesis, The University of Newcastle, 1997. 81 Hamilton, op. cit., p 377. 82 ibid.
Dollybirds of Passage: The Rise and Rise of the Independent Woman Traveller1 Penny Warner-Smith
1 Dollybird was a popular term for a young woman in 1960s youth culture. 2 M Morris, The Virago Book of Women Travellers, Virago, London, 1996, p xvi.
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3 J Wolff, On the road again: metaphors of travel in cultural criticism, Cultural Studies, vol 7, no 2, 1993, pp 22439. 4 A Pritchard, Tourism and representation: a scale for measuring gendered portrayals, Leisure Studies, no 20, 2001, pp 7994. 5 E Cohen, A phenomenology of tourist experiences, Sociology, no 13, 1979, pp 179201; D MacCannell, The Tourist: A New Theory of the Leisure Class, Macmillan, London, 1976; J Urry, The Tourist Gaze: Leisure and Travel in Contemporary Societies, Sage, London, 1990. 6 V Kinnaird and D Hall (eds), Tourism: A Gender Analysis, Wiley, Chichester, 1994. 7 See, for example, B Holcomb, Women travellers at Fins de Siecles, Focus, the American Geographical Society, vol 43, no 4, 1993, pp 1114; D Hall and V Kinnaird, A note on women travellers in V Kinniard and D Hall (eds), Tourism: A Gender Analysis, Wiley Chichester, 1994; Wolff, op. cit. 8 See, for example, M Bond and P Michael, A Womans Passion for Travel: More True Stories from a Womans World, Travelers Tales, San Fransisco, 1999; M Daly and J Dawson (eds), Wild Ways: New Stories about Women on the Road, Spectre, London, 1998. 9 S Sheridan, Reading the Womens Weekly: Feminism, Femininity and popular culture, in B Craine and R Pringle (eds), Transitions, New Australian Feminisms, Allen Unwin, St Leonards, 1995. 10 For example, R Deem, Women, cities and the holidays, Leisure Studies, no 15, pp 105119. 11 Wolff, op. cit. 12 Morris, op. cit., p xxii. 13 R Pesman, The trip to Europe in the lives of Australian women: Nettie Palmer and travel as self exploration, National Library of Australia News, vol 4, no 11, 1994, p 7. 14 Wolff, op. cit. 15 Holcomb, op. cit., pp 1112. 16 ibid; Morris, op. cit. 17 Pesman, op. cit., p 7. 18 See, for example, S Kurosawa, Gender Agendas, Australian Magazine, 67 November 1999, p 74. 19 See S de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1972. 20 B Friedan, The Feminine Mystique, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1965. 21 S Sheridan, Who was that woman? The Australian Womens Weekly in the PostWar Years, UNSW Press, Sydney, 2002, p 113. 22 Womens Weekly, 26 October 1961, p 61. 23 ABS unpublished data, op. cit. 24 R Gerster and J Bassett, Seizures of Youth: The Sixties and Australia, Hyland House, Melbourne, 1991, p 103. 25 R W Connell, Which way is up? Essays on Class, Sex and Culture, Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 1983.
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26 R Pesman, Duty Free: Australian Women Abroad, Oxford University Press, 1996, p 1. 27 J Clark, Teenagers: Important influence of work and home, Sydney Morning Herald, 10 July 1960, p 48. 28 N Leiper, Tourism Management, TAFE Publications, Collingwood, Vic., 1995. 29 P Warner-Smith, Sites of Success: Gender, Education and Career, PhD thesis, The University of Newcastle, 1997. 30 M Rowe, Up from Down Under in S Maitland (ed.), Very Heaven: Looking Back on the 1960s, Virago, London, 1988, p 155. 31 ibid., p 158. 32 Pesman, Duty Free, op. cit. 33 E Goffman, Gender Advertisments, Harper and Rowe, New York, 1979. 34 E McCracken, Decoding Womens Magazines: from Mademoiselle to Ms, Macmillan, London, 1993, p 2. 35 Cohen, op. cit. 36 Sheridan, Who was that woman? op. cit. 37 S Varga, Heddy and Me, Penguin, Ringwood, 1994. 38 A Mackinnon, Love and Freedom, Professional Women and the Reshaping of Personal Life, Cambridge University Press, 1997, p 184. 39 Pesman, Duty Free, op. cit., p 222. 40 M Pearson, Pilgrims, travellers, tourists: The meanings of journeys, Australian Cultural History, no 10, 1991, pp 12534. 41 James, op. cit., p 172. 42 T Irving, D Maunders and G Sherington, Youth in Australia: Policy, Administration and Politics: A History since World War II, Macmillan, Melbourne, 1995. 43 B Thorne, Gender Play: Girls and Boys in School, Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, 1993. 44 M Spensky, Producers of legitimacy: Homes for unmarried mothers in the 1950s in C Smart (ed.), Regulating Womanhood, Routledge, London, 1992. 45 Pesman, Duty Free, op. cit., p 2. 46 N Mackenzie, Women in Australia, Cheshire, Melbourne, 1962. 47 Sheridan, Who was that Woman?, op. cit., p 4. 48 McCracken, op. cit., p 2. 49 J Stratton, Bodgies and Widgies: Just working-class kids doing working-class things in R White (ed.), Youth Subcultures: Theory, History and the Australian Experience, National Clearing House for Youth Studies, Hobart, 1993. 50 R W Connell, op. cit. 51 See, for example, Womens Weekly, 28 September 1960; Womens Weekly, 1 November 1961. 52 B Wearing, Leisure and Feminist Theory, Sage, London, 1998. 53 C Tristram, Why I have never seen the Mona Lisa smile in M Bond and P Michael (eds), A Womans Passion for Travel: More True Stories from a Womans World, Travelers Tales, San Fransisco, 1999.
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54 M Morris, Nothing to declare: Memoirs of a woman travelling alone in M Bond and P Michael, A Womans Passion for Travel: More True Stories from a Womans World, Travelers Tales, San Fransisco, 1999, p 270. 55 J Wolff, Resident Alien: Feminist Cultural Criticism, Polity Press, Cambridge, 1995, p 2. 56 L Desforges, op. cit., p 942. 57 D Little, Negotiating adventure recreation: how women can access satisfying adventure experiences throughout their lives, Loisir et Societe: Society and Leisure, vol 23, no 1, 2000, pp 17195. 58 McCracken, op. cit., p 8. 59 Sheridan, Reading the Womens Weekly, op. cit. 60 Wearing, op. cit. 61 R Deem, All Work and No Play? The Sociology of Women and Leisure, Open University Press, Milton Keynes, 1986; E Green, S Hebron and D Woodward, Womens Leisure? What Leisure? Macmillan, Hampshire, 1990; Wearing, op. cit.
Travelling the Electronic Superhighway: Independent Travel and the Internet Kevin Markwell and Paul Stolk
1 A M Morrison, S Hsieh and J T OLeary A Comparison of the Travel Arrangements of International Travellers from France, Germany and the UK, Tourism Management, vol 15, no 6, 1994, pp 45163. 2 G D Taylor Styles of Travel in W F Theobald (ed.), Global Tourism, 2nd edn, Butterworth Heinemann, 1998, pp 26777. 3 Phillip L Pearce, The Backpacker Phenomenon: Preliminary answers to basic questions, James Cook University, Townsville, 1990. 4 P J Sheldon, Tourism Information Technology, CAB International, Oxon, 1997. 5 P W Williams, P Bascombe, N Brenner and D Green, Using the Internet for Tourism Research: Information Highway or Dirt Road? Journal of Travel Research, no 34, Spring 1996, pp 6370. 6 Sheldon, op. cit. 7 M A Bonn, H L Furr and A M Susskind, Predicting a behavioural profile for pleasure travellers on the basis of Internet use segmentation, Journal of Travel Research, vol 37, no 4, 1999, pp 3338. 8 R R Burke, Do You See What I See? The Future of Virtual Shopping, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, no 25, 1997, pp 35260. 9 N Au and J S P Hobson, Gambling on the Internet: A Threat to Tourism? Journal of Travel Research, no 35, Spring 1997, pp 7781. 10 See J Alba, B Lynch, B Weitz, C Janiszewski, R Lutz, A Sawyer and S Wood, Interactive Home Shopping: Consumer, Retailer, and Manufacturer Incentives to Participate in Electronic Marketplaces, Journal of Marketing, no 61, July 1997, pp 3853; R A Peterson, S Balasubramanian and B J Bronnenburg, Exploring the Implications of the Internet for Consumer Marketing, Journal of the Academy for Marketing Science, vol 25, no 4, 1997,
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pp 32946; L J Camp and M Sirbu, Critical Issues in Internet Commerce, IEEE Communications Magazine, May 1997, pp 5862. K Weber and W S Roehl, Profiling people searching for and purchasing travel products on the World Wide Web, Journal of Travel Research, vol 37, no 3, 1999, pp 2918. See E Heichler, Internet Lacks Content for Women, Computerworld, vol 31, no 19, 1997, p 64; D Tweney, Making Money on the Web: What is Really Working? Infoworld, vol 19, no 36, 1997, pp 634; A J Yoffie The e-Shopper Brandweek, vol 38, no 19, 1997, pp 302. Anon., Backpackers go out back, Newcastle Herald, 24 April 2002, pp 289. B Pan and D R Fesenmaier, A Typology of Tourism Related Web Sites: Its Theoretical Background and Implications in D R Fesenmaier, S Klein and D Buhalis (eds), Information and Communication Technologies in Tourism 2000, Springer-Verlag Wien, Austria, 2000, pp 38195. ibid., p 389. C M Hall, Introduction to Tourism, 3rd edn, Longman, Melbourne, 1998. J Urry, Cultural change and contemporary tourism, Leisure Studies, no 13, 1994, pp 2338. A Poon, Tourism, Technology and Competitive Strategies, CAB International, Oxon, 1993. New York Post, Online Travel Business Exploding published by NUA Limited, 2 October 1998. Available at: <http://www.nua.ie/surveys>. R S Bristow Commentary: virtual tourism the ultimate ecotourism?, Tourism Geographies, vol 1, no 2, 1999, pp 21925. B Baier, The Interplay of Holiday-Related Travel Habits and the Use of New Information and Communication Technologies in D R Fesenmaier, S Klein and D Buhalis (eds), Information and Communication Technologies in Tourism 2000, Springer-Verlag Wien, Austria, 2000, pp 30313. Weber and Roehl, op. cit. Morrison et al., op. cit. R Aldrich, The Seduction of the Mediterranean: Writing, Art and Homosexual Fantasy, London, 1993; H Hughes, Holidays and homosexual identity, Tourism Management, vol 18, no 1, 1997, pp 37. Aldrich, op. cit. See D Baker, A History in Ads: The growth of the gay and lesbian market, in A Gluckman and B Reed (eds), Homo Economics: Capitalism, Community and Lesbian and Gay Life, Routledge, New York, 1997, pp 1120; A Gluckman and B Reed The gay marketing moment in A Gluckman and B Reed (eds), Homo Economics: Capitalism, Community and Lesbian and Gay Life, Routledge, New York, 1997, pp 310. D MacCannell, The Tourist: A New Theory of the Leisure Class, Schocken, New York, 1976.
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Ambassador, Worker and Player: Independent Travellers Working in American Summer Camps Kevin Lyons
1 See P A Adler and P Adler, Resort workers: Adaptation in the leisure-work nexus, Sociological Perspectives, vol 42, no 3, 1999, pp 37197; J Krippendorf, The Holiday Makers: Understanding the Impact of Leisure and Travel , V Andrassy (trans.), Heinemann, London, 1987; N Uriely, Travelling workers and working tourists: Variations across the interaction between work and tourism, International Journal of Tourism Research, no 3, 2001, pp 18. 2 K Keng and L Cheng, Determining tourist role typologies: An exploratory study of Singapore vacationers, Journal of Travel Research, vol 37, no 4, 1999, pp 38291. 3 A Franklin and M Crang, The trouble with tourism and travel theory? Tourism Studies, vol 1, no 1, 2001, pp 522. 4 ibid. 5 See E Cohen, Who is a tourist: A conceptual classification, Sociological Review, no 22, 1974, pp 52755; L Loker, Backpacker Phenomenon II: More Answers to Further Questions, James Cook University, Townsville, 1993; P Riley, Road culture of international long-term budget travelers, Annals of Tourism Research, no 15, 1993, pp 31328; E Vogt, Wandering: youth and travel behavior, Annals of Tourism Research, vol 4, no 1, 1976, pp 2541. 6 Uriely, op. cit. 7 A Franklin and M Crang, Tourism Studies, op. cit., vol 1, no 1, 2001, p 8. 8 P A Adler and P Adler, Transience and the postmodern self: The geographic mobility of resort workers, Sociological Quarterly, vol 40, no 1, 1999, pp 3156. 9 Uriely, op. cit. 10 A Ball, and B Ball, Basic Camp Management: An Introduction to Camp Administration, American Camping Association, Martinsville, 1996. 11 ibid. 12 P Schmitt, Back to Nature: The Arcadian Myth in Urban America, Oxford University Press, New York, 1969. 13 E Eells, History of Organized Camping: The First Hundred Years, American Camping Association, Martinsville, 1986. 14 American Camping Association, Standards for Day and Resident Camps: The Accreditation Programs of the American Camping Association , American Camping Association, Martinsville, 1996. 15 See Ball and Ball, op. cit.; L Grier, Internationalize your camp staff , Camping Magazine, no 4, 1996, pp 447; J Kennison, Training staff for multicultural diversity, Camping Magazine, no 2, 1991, pp 1417. 16 American Camping Association, op. cit. 17 C Rojek, Ways of Escape: Modern Transformations in Leisure and Travel, MacMillan Press, London, 1993. 18 G Ritzer, The McDonaldization of Society, Pine Forge Press, London, 2000.
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19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39
Uriely, op. cit., p 4. American Camping Association, op. cit. Ball and Ball, op. cit. F Meier and A Mitchell, Camp Counseling: Leadership and Programming for the Organized Camp, Brown & Benchmark, Madison, 1993. United States State Information Agency, Exchange Visitor Program Services, GC/V Eligibility for Exchange Visitor (J-1) Status, US State Department, Washington, 2001. W Harwood, International Staff Handbook, CCUSA, Palo Alto, 2002. United States State Information Agency, op. cit., p 376. D Rowe Tourism Australianness and Sydney 2000 in D Rowe and J Lawrence (eds), Tourism, Leisure and Sport: Critical Perspectives, Hodder Education, Rydalmere, 1997. Anthony Giddens, Modernity and Self-identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age, Stanford, Stanford University Press, Stanford, 1991. K Hollingshead, Tourism, hybridity, and ambiguity: The relevance of Bhabhas third space cultures, Journal of Leisure Research, vol 30, no 1, 1998, pp 12157. H Bhabha, The Location of Culture, Routledge, London, 1994. See P A Adler and P Adler, The Sociological Quarterly, op. cit. vol 40, no 1, 1999, pp 3156; B Wearing and S Wearing, Conceptualizing the selves of tourism, Leisure Studies, vol 20, no 2, 2001, pp 14359. Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Doubleday, Garden City, 1959. J Urry, The Tourist Gaze: Leisure and Travel in Contemporary Societies, Sage, London, 1990. Hollingshead, op. cit. K Gergen, The Saturated Self: Dilemmas of Identity in Contemporary Life, Basic Books, New York, 1991. ibid. Giddens, op. cit. Hollingshead, op. cit. ibid., p 121. ibid., p 122.
I Heard it through the Grapevine: Understanding the Social Interactions of Backpacker Travellers Laurie Murphy
1 P L Pearce, Tourist-guide interaction, Annals of Tourism Research, no 11, 1984, pp 12946; P L Pearce, Farm tourism in New Zealand, Annals of Tourism Research, vol 17, no 3, 1990, pp 33752. 2 Commonwealth Department of Tourism, National Backpacker Tourism Strategy, Canberra, 1995; J McCulloch, The youth hostels association: Precursors and contemporary achievements, Journal of Tourism Studies, vol 28, no 3, 1992, pp 405; P L Pearce, The Backpacking Phenomenon:
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5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17
Preliminary Answers to Basic Questions, James Cook University, Townsville, 1990. J Adler, Youth on the road: Reflections on the history of tramping, Annals of Tourism Research, no 12, 1985, pp 33554; F Alderson, The New Grand Tour: Travelling Today through Europe, Asia Minor, India and Nepal, London, 1971; E Brodsky-Porges, The grand tour: Travel as an educational device 16001800, Annals of Tourism Research, vol 8, no 2, 1981, pp 17186; C Hibbert, The Grand Tour, London, 1969; McCulloch, ibid. E Cohen, Nomads from affluence: Notes on the phenomenon of drifter tourism, International Journal of Comparative Sociology, vol 14, no 12, 1973, pp 89103; P ten Have, The counter culture on the move: A field study of youth tourists in Amsterdam, Mens en Maatschapij, vol 49, no 3, 1974, pp 297315; J Vogt, Wandering: Youth and travel behaviour, Annals of Tourism Research, vol 4, no 2, 1976, pp 74105. E Cohen, Marginal paradises: Bungalow tourism on the islands of Southern Thailand, Annals of Tourism Research, no 9, 1982, pp 189228. P Riley, Road culture of international long-term budget travelers, Annals of Tourism Research, vol 15, no 3, 1988, pp 31328. Pearce, The Backpacking Phenomenon, op. cit. L Loker-Murphy and P Pearce, Young Budget Travellers: Backpackers in Australia, Annals of Tourism Research, vol 22, no 1, 1995, pp 81943. L Murphy, Young Budget Travellers: A Marketing and Decision-Making Analysis, Doctoral thesis, James Cook University, 1997. ibid. M Argyle, A Furnham and J A Graham, Social Situations, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1981. ibid. Pearce, Farm tourism, op. cit. Argyle et al., op. cit. J Gahagan, Social Interaction and its Management, Methuen, London, 1984. Argyle et al., op. cit. Pearce, Tourist-guide interaction, op. cit.; Pearce, Farm tourism, op. cit.
Great Divides or Subtle Contours? Contrasting British, North American/ Canadian and European Backpackers Philip L Pearce
1 Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken, verse 1, lines 15. 2 L Loker-Murphy and P Pearce, Young budget travellers: Backpackers in Australia, Annals of Tourism Research, vol 22, 1995, pp 81943; J Jarvis, The Billion Dollar Backpackers, National Centre for Australian Studies, Monash University, Melbourne, 1992; S Doorne, A Report on Backpacker Expenditure Patterns 199394, New Zealand Tourism Board, Wellington; I Buchanan and A Rosetto, With my swag upon my shoulder, Occasional Paper, no 24, Bureau of Tourism Research, 1997, pp 93.
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3 P Riley, Road culture of international long-term budget travelers, Annals of Tourism Research, vol 15, 1988, pp 31328; P L Pearce, The Backpacker Phenomenon, Department of Tourism, James Cook University, Townsville, 1990; G Ross, Ideal and actual images of backpacker visitors to Northern Australia, Journal of Travel Research, vol 32, no 2, 1993, 547; L Murphy, Exploring social interactions of backpackers, Annals of Tourism Research, vol 28, no 1, 2001, pp 5067; T Elsrud, Risk creation in travelling: Backpacker adventure narration, Annals of Tourism Research, vol 28, no 3, 2001, pp 597617. 4 J E S McCulloch, Backpackers: The Growth Sector of Australian Tourism, Resources and Publications Section, Queensland Parliamentary Library, Brisbane, 1991; Commonwealth Department of Tourism, National Backpacker Tourism Strategy , Commonwealth Department of Tourism Canberra, 1995. 5 Pearce, op. cit. 6 Buchanan and Rosetto, op. cit. 7 P L Pearce, A Morrison and J Rutledge, Tourism: Bridges Across Continents, McGraw-Hill, Sydney, Australia, 1998, p 385. 8 A J Veal, Research Methods for Leisure and Tourism, Financial Times, Prentice Hall, London, 2000. 9 Pearce, op. cit; Jarvis, op. cit; L Loker, The Backpacker Phenomenon II: More Answers to Further Questions, Department of Tourism, Townsville, 1993, pp 57. 10 S P Douglas and Y Wind, The myth of globalization, Columbia Journal of World Business, vol 22, no 4, 1987, pp 1929. 11 S Schwartz and L Sagiu, Identifying culture-specifics in the content and structure of values, Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, vol 26, no 1, 1995, pp 92116. 12 T Levitt, The globalization of markets, Harvard Business Review, vol 61, no 3, 1983, pp 92102; K Ohmae, Managing in a borderless world, Harvard Business Review, vol 67, no 3, 1989, pp 15261. 13 J Naisbitt, The Global Paradox, Avon, New York, 1994. 14 A Pizam, The American group tourist as viewed by British, Israeli, Korean and Dutch tour guides, Journal of Travel Research, vol 38, 1999, pp 11926. 15 A Morrison, Hospitality and Travel Marketing, 2nd edn, Delmar, Albany, New York, 1996. 16 G Richards and B Richards, A globalised theme park market? The case of Disney in Europe, in E Laws, B Faulkner and G Moscardo (eds), Embracing and Managing Change in Tourism, Routledge, London, 1998, pp 37997; T Mules, Globalization and the economic impacts of tourism in B Faulkner, G Moscardo and E Laws (eds), Tourism in the Twenty-First Century, Continuum, London, 2000, pp 31217. 17 J R B Ritchie, Global tourism policy issues: An agenda for the 1990s, in World Travel and Tourism Review, vol 1, CAB International, Wallingford, UK, 1991.
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183
18 A Poon, Tourism, Technology and Competitive Strategies, CAB International, Wallingford, UK, 1992; World Tourism Organization (WTO), WTOs 1996 International Tourism Overview, WTO, Madrid, Spain, 1997. 19 G Dann, Limitations in the use of nationality and country of residence variables, in D Pearce and R Butler (eds), Tourism Critiques and Challenges, Routledge, London, 1993. 20 J Urry, The Tourist Gaze, Sage, London, 1990. 21 Noe, op. cit. 22 Commonwealth Department of Tourism, National Backpacker Tourism Strategy, Commonwealth Department of Tourism, Cnberra, 1995, p 32. 23 R Green and T Higginson, The Backpacker Market, Cairns Backpacker Association, Cairns, 1988. 24 Pearce, op. cit. 25 McCulloch, op. cit. 26 L Murphy, Backpackers and the Decisions They Make, Department of Tourism, James Cook University, Townsville, 1996. 27 Loker, op. cit. 28 Buchanan and Rosetto, op. cit. 29 Loker, op. cit; Buchanan and Rosetto, op. cit. 30 Loker, op. cit. 31 Buchanan and Rosetto, op. cit. 32 Loker, op. cit. 33 Buchanan and Rosetto, op. cit. 34 Loker, op. cit. 35 Buchanan and Rosetto, op. cit., p 42. 36 J Bruning and B Kintz, Computational Handbook of Statistics, 2nd edn, Scott, Foresman and Company, Glenview, Illinois, 1977; J Stevens, Applied Multivariable Statistics for the Social Sciences, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Hillsdale, New Jersey, 1993. 37 F P Noe, Tourism Service Satisfaction, Sagamore, Champaign, Illinois, 1999. 38 Tourism Intelligence International, How the British Will Travel 2005, Tourism Intelligence International, Bielefeld, Germany, 2000; Tourism Intelligence International, How the Germans Will Travel 2005, Tourism Intelligence International, Bielefeld, Germany, 2000.
Yellow Bible Tourism: Backpackers in Southeast Asia Jeff Jarvis

1 Bureau of Tourism Research, International Visitor Survey, Quarterly Results, March 2003, Canberra. 2 M Hampton, Backpacker Tourism and Economic Development, Annals of Tourism Research, vol 25, 1998, p 651. 3 Department of Industry, Tourism and Resources, Green paper: A mediumto long-term strategy for Tourism, Canberra, 2003, p 23. 4 ibid.; Hampton, op. cit., p 640. 5 Hampton, ibid., p 640.
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6 R Scheyvens, Backpacker Tourism and Thirld World Development, Annals of Tourism Research, vol 29, 2002, p 144. 7 D Wilson, Paradoxes of Tourism in Goa, Annals of Tourism Research, vol 24, 1997, pp 5275. 8 P Pearce, The Backpacker Phenomenon: Preliminary Answers to Basic Questions, James Cook University, Townsville, 1990. 9 L Loker, Backpacker Phenomenon II, James Cook University, Townsville, 1993. 10 J Jarvis, The $10 Tourists, Victorian Tourism Commission, Melbourne, 1991; J Jarvis, The Billion Dollar Backpackers, National Centre For Australian Studies, Monash University, Melbourne, 1994. 11 Who were selected via judgemental sampling by a research team of graduate students from the graduate tourism program, National Centre for Australian Studies at Monash University, conducted in 1997. 12 Pearce, op. cit. 13 P Riley, Road Culture of Long-Term Budget Travellers, Annals of Tourism Research, 1988, pp 31328. 14 ibid. 15 It should however be noted here that Australian travellers were not surveyed within the region, therefore their impact on the market in Southeast Asia was ignored. 16 Bureau of Tourism Research, International Visitors Survey, June Quarter 1998, p 35. 17 Hampton, op. cit., p 646. 18 Jarvis, The Billion Dollar Backpackers, op. cit. 19 Riley, op. cit., p 319. 20 N Graburn, The Anthropology of Tourism, Annals of Tourism Research, vol 10, 1983, p 20. 21 ibid., pp 1213. 22 C Rowthorn, Southeast Asia on a Shoestring, 11th edn, Lonely Planet, Melbourne, 2001, p 536. 23 Hampton, op. cit. 24 ibid., p 642. 25 Bureau of Tourism Research, International Visitors Survey, JuneMarch Quarter 1998, p 35. 26 It should be noted that the exchange rate used to convert the Asian currencies into Australian dollars was from April 1997. 27 ibid. 28 Hampton, op. cit., p 649. 29 E Cohen, Toward a Sociology of International Tourism, Social Research, vol 39, no 1, 1972. 30 Riley, op. cit., p 325. 31 L Loker-Murphy and P Pearce, Young Budget Travellers: Backpackers in Australia, Annals of Tourism Research, vol 22, 1995, p 834.
Contributors.qxp
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Contributors
Jeff Jarvis is director of the graduate tourism program at the National Centre for Australian Studies, Monash University. He is recognised as one of the pioneer researchers in this field as the author of the 1994 report The Billion Dollar Backpackers. As part of the Australian Tourism Ministers Committee for Youth Tourism he helped to devise the blueprint for the marketing award-winning backpacker strategy for the Australian Tourist Commission. In 2003 he was invited to participate in the TEMPUS project to construct a strategic plan for the development of tourism and cultural industries in BosniaHerzegovina. He is currently undertaking research into backpacker tourism in developing countries Kevin Lyons completed an associate diploma in recreation at the former Kuring-Gai College of Advanced Education before moving to the United States, where he received his bachelor of human services at Thomas Edison State College, New Jersey, and his masters degree from the University of Georgia. Kevins doctoral thesis examined how intentional communities in the United States are developed and how these communities differ under varying administrative and social conditions. Kevin has built his academic interests upon his extensive professional experience in community recreation services. Kevin Markwell is a senior lecturer in the School of Social Sciences and member of the Cultural Industries and Practices Research Centre at the University of Newcastle, Australia. He has research interests in the relationships between leisure, tourism and gay mens identities and cultures, as well as in the ways nature is constructed and experienced within the broad frame of leisure and tourism. He is currently working on a book entitled Somewehere Over the Rainbow: Understanding Gay Tourism, to be published by the Haworth Press.
Contributors.qxp
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Laurie Murphy has been lecturing in the tourism program at James Cook University since 1991. Her main area of interest is tourism marketing, particularly market segmentation, travel decision-making and destination image. Her doctoral thesis focused on the travel and decision-making behaviours of backpacker travellers in Australia. Philip Pearce completed an honours degree in psychology at the University of Adelaide and a doctorate at the University of Oxford. He became Australias first professor of tourism at James Cook University, Queensland, in 1989, and founded the Journal of Tourism Studies in 1990. He is particularly interested in international markets, cross-cultural studies, tourist motivation and tourist attractions. Paul Stolk is a researcher for the Cultural Industries and Practices Research Centre at the University of Newcastle, Australia. His research interests incorporate aspects of special-event tourism, tourism planning and policy, and independent travel. In 2001 he completed an honours thesis examining the sustainability of recreational scubadiving practices in marine protected areas. Penny Warner-Smith is a senior lecturer in social and cultural studies in the School of Social Sciences at the University of Newcastle, Australia, where she has taught courses in the sociology of leisure and gender studies. During the course of her doctoral research she examined the place of travel in the early career lives of both men and women professionals. She is a principal investigator on the Australian Longitudinal Study on Womens Health (Womens Health Australia) and deputy director of the Research Centre for Gender and Health at the University of Newcastle. She has published in the areas of young women travellers, young womens aspirations, womens health and paid work, and childcare and womens health.
Contributors.qxp
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Brad West is a lecturer in the Department of Sociology at Flinders University. An advocate of the Durkheimian approach to cultural sociology, he publishes widely on national identity and social change. His doctoral thesis examined the burgeoning ritual of Australian backpackers touring the WWI Gallipoli battlefields in Turkey as an avenue through which to explore the workings of national collective memory in an era of global travel. Much of his current research explores the dialogical workings of national collective memory. Tamara Young is a doctoral candidate in the School of Social Sciences, University of Newcastle, Australia. Her thesis examines the ways in which Indigenous Australian cultures are interpreted and understood in the context of tourism. Field research, conducted during 2000 in the Northern Territory and Northern Queensland, focused on international backpacker travellers and their cultural experiences in Australia. This project builds on her previous research on the representation of Indigenous Australian peoples and cultures in tourism postcards.
Contributors.qxp
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Backpacker index.qxp
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Index
A
accommodation 4, 34, 36, 39, 67, 73, 76, 81, 856, 100, 10910, 112,13, 119, 133, 136, 155, 1656 adventure 36, 59, 67, 105, 11112, 123, 133, 149, 154 Africa 2, 589, 63, 159 age 11, 604, 66, 73, 82, 97, 11011, 116, 133, 137, 154, 158, 161, 166 ambiguity 93, 97, 102, 1046 America 76, 969, 1034, 106, 159 American Camping Association 967 American travellers 4, 131, 1367, 138, 140, 141, 142, 143, 144, 147, 148, 149, 150 Anangu 33, 37, 40, 423, 478, 50, 53 anti-authoritarianism 22, 2930 Anzac 1011, 1928, 30 Australia 3, 5, 12, 19, 21, 23, 2630, 76, 78, 93, 102, 109, 111, 115, 117, 131, 1367, 140, 143, 146, 150, 155, 158, 1623, 1667 Central Australia 3940, 512 Northern Territory 44, 51, 77 Queensland 44, 136 Australian Tourist Commission 34, 156 Australian travellers 24, 9, 1113, 16, 18, 223, 25, 278, 31, 93, 95, 102 Australian Womens Weekly 58, 60, 629 authenticity 10, 22, 25, 35, 38, 4950, 63, 106, 111, 123, 154 desired experiences 4953, 77, 1404, 166 holiday backpackers 5, 153, 160, 166 hub backpacking 153, 163, 167 Bali 2, 1534, 157, 161, 1637 Bali bombings 2, 153 Bangkok 87, 153, 157, 1634, 167 Bird, Isabella 589 Britain 623, 65, 69, 76, 116, 136 British travellers 34, 72, 111, 131, 1368, 1405, 14750, 1589, 161 Buchanan, Ian 1378, 1403, 145 budget 10, 34, 36, 41, 73, 94, 98, 10912, 116, 122, 126, 133, 154, 166 Bureau of Tourism Research 34, 164 Burnam Burnam 37, 40
C
Canadian travellers 4, 116, 131, 136, 1404, 14750, 159 chaperoned travel 5759, 624 class 35, 601, 689, 83, 97, 159 cliques 119, 127 Cohen, Erik 15, 63, 11011, 127, 165 commercialisation 4950, 53, 123 communication see social interaction and ritual conversation conservatism 1112, 5960, 656 convergence/divergence 131, 1335, 143, 1456, 1501 cultural ambassadorship 98, 1025 cultural sensitivity 33, 3940, 43, 469, 53, 59 cultural tourism 23, 5, 10, 15, 27, 31, 93, 106, 112, 134, 138, 140, 154, 166
B
backpackers 9, 723, 83, 94 definitions 1, 9, 34, 74, 109, 112, 126, 132, 1367, 167
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D
danger 59, 67, 1401 decision-making 4, 35, 40, 448, 109, 112, 11718, 124 dialogicism 12, 18, 25, 2931 dissatisfaction 1413 drifters 35, 94, 11011, 125, 156, 167 duration of stay 45, 10, 19, 34, 39, 734, 112, 116, 133, 1378, 153, 1601, 164
German travellers 72, 120, 1378, 1424 Germany 30, 59, 159, 161 globalisation 13, 1335 grand tour 19, 110 guidebooks 33, 36, 413, 45, 51, 53, 87, 110, 117, 154, 163
H
Hampton, Mark 34, 1556, 158, 165 history 9, 13, 203, 2531, 378, 40, 5960, 84, 96, 110, 112, 134, 138 history continued of backpacking 153, 155 of pilgrimage 14, 16 of women travellers 579, 61, 63, 65, 679 Hollingshead, Keith 1067 home 13, 1517, 21, 58, 60, 623, 679, 88 homogeneity 5, 131, 134, 150 hybridity 1067
E
economic benefits 5, 345, 132, 134, 1556, 161, 1646 education 68, 734, 823, 15860, 166 Empire 12, 29, 623, 69, 154 environment 111, 14041, 166 Europe 58, 623, 69, 76, 84, 110, 154 European travellers 4, 111, 131, 1368, 1415, 1479, 1589, 161, 166 exotic 35, 63, 95, 154, 160 expenditure patterns 132, 137, 153, 1556, 161, 1646 explorers 35, 154, 167
I
identity 4, 17, 24, 35, 59, 65, 679, 71, 1038, 135 Australian 23, 29, 103 backpacker 1223, 126 gay and lesbian 83 national 910, 12, 20, 27, 35, 378, 44 independent travel 3, 9, 13, 31, 356, 41, 589, 678, 71, 74, 83, 85, 88, 93, 102, 108, 153, 167 definitions 1, 3, 714, 94 Indigenous Australian cultures 35, 38, 41, 434, 4653, 141 Indonesia 156, 158, 1634 information-gathering 712, 745, 812, 846, 88, 109, 112, 11718, 124, 157 infrastructure 5, 36, 71, 74, 110, 153, 161, 167
F
feminism 601, 65, 678 'finishing school' 19, 58 freedom and travel 13, 601, 65, 83, 104 friends and relatives 73, 79, 136, 140 future of backpacking 12, 89, 135, 151, 158
G
Gallipoli 3, 913, 16, 1820, 226, 2831, 94 gay and lesbian travel 3, 62, 71, 74, 826 gaze 16, 52, 57, 64, 106
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191
internet 23, 71, 746, 789, 815, 878 bulletin boards 75, 778, 86, 88 chat rooms 75, 7780, 88 newsgroups 75, 77 online communities 77, 82, 84, 868 user profile 74, 76, 82, 85, 88 Islam 18, 59 Italy 84, 158 itinerary 34, 74, 112, 133, 157
nationalism 912, 16, 19, 234, 301, 38, 106 nationality 1335, 141, 145, 158, 161 Netherlands 116, 158 'new tourism' 3, 33, 356, 53 New Zealand 11, 63, 78, 109, 115, 159 niche market 2, 74, 84, 94, 133, 146, 153, 156, 162, 167
O
otherness 3, 9, 17, 31, 35, 49, 623, 71, 834, 95
J
Java 157, 1635
P L
language 120, 126 Lets Go 41, 43, 45 liminal travel 156 see also periphery Loker-Murphy, Laurie 34, 112, 1368, 1402, 156, 166 London 1, 624, 154 Lonely Planet 33, 36, 413, 45, 78, 81, 154, 163 Palmer, Nettie (ne Higgins) 589, 62, 67 participation 34, 74, 83, 86, 11112, 1402, 14850 Pearce, Philip 34, 73, 11112, 132, 136, 1567, 166 periphery 1516, 31, 35 pilgrimage 3, 9, 1314, 1618, 20, 31, 39, 83 civil religious 9, 1213, 15, 23, 30 postmodernity 13, 35, 79, 1068
M
Malaysia 63, 156, 158, 1635 mass tourism 14, 356, 39, 4850, 61, 63, 712, 74, 84, 867, 945, 98, 11011, 123, 141, 154 McCracken, Ellen 63, 66 men 578, 601, 68, 82, 116, 158 Morris, Mary 578 Morrison, Alastair 724, 83, 132 motivations 1213, 20, 22, 72, 93, 112, 116, 124, 135, 13840, 1467, 149, 166
R
Riley, Pamela 111, 127, 157, 159, 165 ritual 34, 13, 1617, 22, 31, 62, 65, 83, 96, 160 conversation 11617, 119, 1245 see also social interaction roles 93, 95, 989, 1027, 122, 126, 135 Rosetto, Allison 1378, 1403, 145 Rough Guide 41, 43, 45 Rowe, Marsha 612
N
National Backpacker Tourism Strategy 34, 135, 156
S
sacred 3, 9, 1315, 1718, 22, 25, 28, 31, 3840, 456
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Scandinavian travellers 1378, 1424, 154, 159, 161 sexual freedom and travel 59, 646, 83 Singapore 156, 158, 1635 social interaction 4, 34, 73, 812, 858, 10913, 116, 118, 1212, 124, 1267, 132, 138, 140, 165 hostguest 10910, 113, 115, 117, 119, 124, 127 intensity 11011, 120, 127 ritualised conversation 11617, 119, 1245 with mass tourists 36, 43, 4950, 123, 126 social situation analysis 109, 11315 Southeast Asia 2, 5, 109, 1546, 15960, 1627 spirit 72, 111 status 17, 71, 135, 160 stereotypes 34, 235, 35, 492, 58, 62, 669, 935, 97, 1035, 107, 119, 125 structure 94, 978, 102, 141 summer camps 4, 93, 96102, 104, 107 Sydney Morning Herald 12, 61
Uriely, Natan 95, 99 Urry, John 79, 81, 135
V
visa conditions 100, 102 Vogt, Jay 11011, 127
W
wanderers 35, 94, 110,11 Wolff, Janet 57, 67 women 3, 5768, 82, 103, 116, 158 word of mouth 19, 22, 42, 10910, 113, 115, 124, 166 work 823, 158, 160, 167 working holidays 4, 61, 95, 98102, 1045, 107, 110, 119, 127, 137, 141 World War I 910, 21 World War II 59, 74, 78
T
Taylor, G D 734 Teenagers Weekly 66, 68 Thailand 111, 156, 158, 161, 163, 1656 tolerance 1212, 1267 tour guides 11, 246, 2930, 412, 48, 118 tsunami 1, 153 transportation 110, 113, 136, 154, 162 travel patterns 161, 163, 166 travel records/stories 57, 67, 69, 75, 87 Turkey 3, 913, 1920, 22, 2431, 154
U
Uluru 3, 33, 3740, 4253, 116 United States of America see America
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JAS
Australias Public Intellectual Forum
Editor
Professor Richard Nile, Australia Research Institute, Curtin University of Technology
Editorial Committee
Professor Jim Wieland, Humanities, Curtin University of Technology Dr Graham Seal, Australia Research Institute, Curtin University of Technology Dr Mary Besemeres, Australia Research Institute, Curtin University of Technology Dr Maureen Perkins, Australia Research Institute, Curtin University of Technology Dr Tim Dolin, Australia Research Institute, Curtin University of Technology
Board of Management and Advisory Board

Professor Dennis Altman, Government, LaTrobe University Professor Bruce Bennett, English, Australian Defence Force Academy Associate Professor Verity Burgmann, Politics, University of Melbourne Associate Professor David Carter, Australian Studies, University of Queensland Associate Professor Ann Curthoys, History, Australian National University Professor Kate Darian Smith, Australian Studies, University of Melbourne Professor Robert Dixon, English, University of Southern Queensland Professor Mark Finnane, Humanities, Griffith University Dr Andrew Hassam, Australian Studies, University of Wales, Lampeter Dr David Headon, Australian Studies, Australian Defence Force Academy Dr Jenny Hocking, Australian Studies, Monash University Dr Dorottya Hollo, Australian Studies, Eotvos Lorand University, Budapest Dr James Jupp, Social Sciences, Australian National University Professor Marilyn Lake, History, LaTrobe University Professor Stuart Macintyre, History, University of Melbourne Professor John McLaren, English, Victoria University of Technology Associate Professor John McQuilton, Geography, University of Wollongong Dr Meaghan Morris, Cultural Studies, University of Technology, Sydney Dr Ffion Murphy, Writing, Edith Cowan University Professor Jill Roe, History, Macquarie University Dr Deborah Bird Rose, North Australian Research Unit, Darwin Professor Lyndall Ryan, Australian Studies, University of Newcastle Professor Angela Smith, Australian Studies, Stirling University, Scotland Professor David Walker, Australian Studies, Deakin University Professor James Walter, Politics, Monash University Professor Hu Wen Zhong, Australian Studies, University of Beijing, China Dr Adi Wimmer, Australian Studies, University of Klagenfurt, Austria Professor Gus Worby, Australian Studies, Flinders University www.api-network.com

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Backpackers Front.

Down the Road

Down the Road

Brad West Editor

Richard Nile General Editor

Australia Research Institute

Journal of Australian Studies

Down the Road

169 185 189

Down the Road

Down the Road

BACKPACKING THE SACRED

Down the Road

Independent Travel and Civil Religious Pilgrimage

Down the Road

Independent Travel and Civil Religious Pilgrimage

Pilgrimage and independent travel

Down the Road

Independent Travel and Civil Religious Pilgrimage

Down the Road

Independent Travel and Civil Religious Pilgrimage

Down the Road

Independent Travel and Civil Religious Pilgrimage

Down the Road

Independent Travel and Civil Religious Pilgrimage

Down the Road

Independent Travel and Civil Religious Pilgrimage

Down the Road

Independent Travel and Civil Religious Pilgrimage

Narrative challenges and alliances

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Independent Travel and Civil Religious Pilgrimage

Down the Road

Independent Travel and Civil Religious Pilgrimage

Down the Road

Independent Travel and Civil Religious Pilgrimage

Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Backpackers at Uluru

Down the Road

Backpackers and new tourism

Between a Rock and a Hard Place

Down the Road

Between a Rock and a Hard Place

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Between a Rock and a Hard Place

Down the Road

Between a Rock and a Hard Place

Down the Road

Between a Rock and a Hard Place

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To climb or not to climb? Backpackers at Uluru

Between a Rock and a Hard Place

Table 1: Backpacker behaviour at Uluru

Natalie 28 Helena 23 Pierre Peter James Johan Sara 23 25 21 31 21 Melissa 27

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Between a Rock and a Hard Place

Down the Road

Between a Rock and a Hard Place

Authenticity and the backpacker experience at Uluru

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Even James, who had climbed Uluru, noted:

Between a Rock and a Hard Place

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