Writing Mobility: Australia’s Working Holiday Programme

Abstract

I remember a young woman with an Irish accent and a Thai sarong draped over her shoulders. She was talking to a man with a Canadian flag on his backpack. They were competing with travel stories, and sharing pub-quiz knowledge of Australia and other places. In the background, a couple of young men wearing Premiership football shirts sang the Dutch national anthem. And a Japanese woman passed by dragging a bright pink suitcase on wheels behind her. I remember conversations about the future. Someone listed the places they wanted to visit before they died. Someone else detailed their own plans, which involved getting married, buying a house, having kids, and growing old in the same place they grew up in, surrounded by family and old friends. I remember a young man with a neuropathic bladder. He was reluctant to leave the country in which his condition was diagnosed. He worried that he might not get the catheters he needed as easily elsewhere. I remember news of a detention centre in the middle of the desert, where refugees from other countries were held behind razor wire for years on end.