Carefree days in ancient Rome. When holidays were uncongested.
Once again, the world erupts. Not the usual suspects; (corruption, vested interests, lobby groups divesting the people of good governance, hard cash, Trumpism and the simmering hatred that boils beneath).
No dear reader the vexed question of tourism. And the people of Europe who’ve had enough. Fortunately we may add, the Australian Federal government has made great strides in ensuring the same doesnt happen here, by killing off the Breat Barrier Reef. Something for which Queenslanders are eternally greatful. This fragment starts with an observation by our acclaimed man in the field Ira Maine;
mass tourism overload.
“A vast and ever increasing anti-tourism movement is gathering momentum in Europe, despite the fact that tourism is now the biggest employers on the planet,(or because of it)
Venice (pop. about 55 thousand) will have 28 million visitors this year.
Bless my soul…28 million is just a few million more than the entire population of Australia…
All over the place, horrifying regiments of hotel chains are erupting up out of the sand with precious little regard or respect for local conditions, customs or community. Our own Gold Coast is typical, tasteless, money-grubbing example. of this trend. Repeat it a few hundred times all over the world and you begin to get the picture.
According to Martin Kettle of the Guardian, ‘Tourists Go Home’ is nowadays commonly to be seem scrawled on walls in the more tourist oppressed towns and villages throughout Europe.
28 million visitors to Venice…
Sure ’tis little wonder the bloody place is sinking…
And I’m to blame for all this?
Well, yes..
It doesn’t matter whether I am a budget-conscious package tourist or an independent traveller, doing the upmarket Grand Tour, I am still, as Desmond Morris famously said, part of the tourist ‘infestation’.
‘See Venice and Die’ was the old advice to the traveller. Let’s hope this does not become literally true lest it kill off the tourist trade entirely’.
And then from Sir Atney of Emo, this thoughtful reply;
So crowded it would make any Venetian BLIND
‘And to think that most of those 28 million are funnelled into Venice within the summertime peak season.
At least the Gold Coast was just a sandy waste before it was incarnated as ‘Australia’s Holiday Wonderland’, so little of value was lost there. On the positive side, its glittering lights, beer-barns, fast food, gambling and whoring lure in 13 million rowdy bogans annually, thus temporarily taking some pressure off other parts of our great nation.
However, Venice is a unique showcase of culture, history and civilisation – and it’s being transformed into a gum-spattered Disney-esque theme park!
Hell is other people, said Jan Paul Sartre… and, in these numbers, how right he was! My agoraphobia kicks in the moment I enter the air terminal at Sydney… and worsens from there on.
Birdsville could do with a few tourists. The sand is cleaner than Venice, and not so liable to flooding either.
Stay home and watch the DVD of “Death in Venice” instead! Or wait for the place to be emptied out by a return of the plague that did in Gustav von Aschenbach (Dirk Bogarde): besides the heavily discounted accommodation, you’ll have the place to yourself!
But you may need to row for yourself along those canals’…
And indeed we may ask is Sir Artney tasling about those canals that are close at hand, those in the middle distance, or is he referring to those very distant water systems the fabled and apocryphal “far canals” . Please we urge you, (dear reader) to stay with us for tomorrows thrilling rejoinder in our next installment. Now we urge you to at back to the main game, laughing with us, (and the Communist Party of China) about the state of Australian governance.
Australia has a highly developed tourism overload defence deflector. Kevin Andrews