Aussies up close

"What is Australia’s major industry?" I asked Trish Pascuzzo, my wonderful escort/guide in Sydney. "Tourism," she quickly replied. I like to conclude, in retrospect, that if tourism is indeed Australia’s major industry, then its people are a major tourist attraction. Owing to limited space, however, I can cite only a few proofs of my contention.

In less than an hour after I was on the Qantas plane for Sydney, a uniformed man (presumably the captain) approached me and said: "Welcome on board, Ms. Orosa. I hope you are enjoying your flight. If you need anything, please let me know."

I may have owed the special greeting to the Australian Embassy or to the Australian Tourist Commission, either of which must have notified the captain of my presence as an official guest. But certainly, neither entity had influenced the conduct of my seatmate – a young Australian bachelor – who showed me utmost consideration and thoughtfulness throughout the flight. (He had just been on one of his many business trips to Subic.)

After the overhead lights were dimmed for the evening, he stayed glued to his TV set while I, being a poor sleeper on any aircraft, kept tossing despite the amenities of Business Class – elevated leg rest, inclined back rest, etc. Finally, my seatmate want to sleep. For want of anything to do, I started looking for my other shoe which had lain buried under my thick, heavy blanked, my over-sized handbag, and my pillow I was moving as quietly as I could when suddenly, I saw my seatmate’s long arm raised – he was holding my missing shoe! I must have awakened him but he appeared more amused than annoyed when I apologized to him.

On the short flight from Sydney to Melbourne, my seatmate was a friendly woman banker who was off on a holiday with her similarly friendly husband. She told me a few things about herself and her family, and when we bade each other goodbye, I assumed I’d never see her again. At the airport, I was intently watching out for my suitcase on the fast-moving carousel. I would have missed it but there was my seatmate getting it for me, with lightning speed. I didn’t realize it was she standing beside me all along, focused as I had been on retrieving my suitcase. How glad I was for her kindness, she being much taller and far stronger than I!

In airports, theaters and other public places, total strangers would invariably answer my questions with a smile, their detailed answers far exceeding my expectations. Again, in public places I derived the impression that Australian families are close-knit: I’d see men carrying or cuddling babies in their arms. A Filipino waitress in my hotel in Sydney told me that her Australian boss willingly does her chores for her whenever she was other tasks to finish. How’s that for gender equality? Incidentally, hotel waitresses and housekeepers earn much, much more than Filipino journalists – a fact which buttresses Ambassador Ruth Pearce’s National Day speech wherein she says that the quality of life in Australia is higher than anywhere else in the world, second only to Norway’s.

My escort/guide once told me that tipping is not standard or compulsory in Australia as it is elsewhere – e.g., in the US yet porters, taxi-drivers and their kind do their work with courteous, smiling efficiency fulfilling their duty for its own sake, without any extra compensation.

In other words, they want to leave the tourist with a favorable impression of themselves and, by extension, of their country which they genuinely care about. As further proof of this, on the day I arrived, a limousine came to fetch me at the airport.

The chauffeur, a highly-educated, literate fellow, took me to the wrong hotel, however – Raddison Hotel sounds so much like Renaissance Hotel – yet the porter who took my suitcase "overwhelmed" me with his warm smile and hearty welcome.

At the Melbourne airport, the woman issuing boarding passes behind the counter volunteered to wrap a small canvas bag of mine in thick cellophane, for "extra protection", before sending it directly to the plane’s luggage compartment. Her service was not necessary, the German-made canvas bag having been repeatedly tested for "heavy duty". But it took a nephew to untie the knots that had secured my bag!

The deskman at the Windsor Hotel – named in memory of the stay of the Prince of Wales in 1923 – made my last half hour in Melbourne memorable. I was taking a very early flight to Sydney to catch my plane for Manila, and nobody was around except the aforementioned person.

As we chatted, he thoughtfully suggested that I take a seat at the foyer while he stand some distance away from me so I would not have to crane my neck. Why? He towered over me – all six feet, five inches of him! We exchanged notes on musicals, plays, travel sites, universities, etc. When the car finally came for the drive to the airport, he escorted me out, adjusted my seat belt, then went to the hotel entrance from where he kept waving at me until I could barely see him.

To be sure, Aussies, like any other people, have their seamy side. I quickly saw that side at Melbourne’s international airport in the person of a woman security officer – blonde, fiftyish, of medium height and garbed in a white uniform – who wielded a martinet’s stick. How needlessly, how unreasonably rude and gruff she was!

A mitigating circumstance, if at all, is that security officers must regard every traveller a terrorist unless he or she proves to be otherwise. Nevertheless, I did encounter other security officers who, although maintaining the strictest surveillance over incoming luggage, were courteous or, at least, civil.

At any rate, the image of that woman who grossly abused her authority will soon be obliterated by that towering Sir Galahad who so graciously kept me company in the foyer of the Windsor Hotel. A major tourist attraction all by himself, he did give substance to my thesis that being nice, warm and hospitable to the tourist has become second nature to the Australians as a whole, their fierce nationalism and pride of country driving them, unself-consciously, to present their best possible image to the world.