I was thinking about that when I was dropping my 6 year old off at some hobbies earlier - it’s pretty much expected to have learned how to ride a bicycle before starting school, and it massively expands the area you can go to by yourself. When she went to school by bicycle she can easily make a detour via a shop to spend some pocket money before coming home, while by foot that’d be rather time consuming.
Quite a lot of friends from outside of Europe either can’t ride a bicycle, or were learning it as adult after moving here, though.
edit: the high number of replies mentioning “swimming” made me realize that I had that filed as a basic skill pretty much everybody has - probably due to swimming lessons being a mandatory part of school education here.
In Australia it’s not just knowing how to swim but where to swim and when. A lot of tourists drown in the ocean here because they don’t know how to read the waves / don’t have an understanding of the local area.
Never swam in an ocean, could you elaborate?
As an Aussie what the person below has said is a big one here. We just call them rips. Basically if you just try to swim in them normally you won’t go anywhere and will just make yourself tired. Same goes if you’re caught in a rip and trying to get out. It can lead to people drowning from tiring out and going under. What you want to do is swim diagonally across the rip. Then you can go about your swim or swim safely back to shore. Another tip is if you don’t know what a rip looks like then it can be hard to see them from the shore or while your in the water. They aren’t waves.
https://www.google.com/search?q=beach+riptide&tbm=isch&client=firefox-b-m&hl=en-GB&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwio2KnNkI6BAxWEamwGHV0UAmwQrNwCKAB6BQgBEK4B&biw=678&bih=708
Another one I think people usually have issues with or you hear of a tourist going missing is swimming in water inland. This is more of an up north Aus thing. Basically if you can’t see into the water your going to swim in them don’t. Crocs like to hang out in that sort of water. Very easy to not see them at all.
Great advice, appreciate that! I’ve only swam in small lakes, a couple of rivers, and the Black Sea, so yeah, I could easily see myself making some mistakes in Australian waters. Not that I’m planning to anytime soon, but if I do, I might as well stay alive thanks go this thread.
Cheers, mates!
Except for the crocs, this also applies to New Zealand waters.
If you feel yourself being pulled away from shore, relax, swim across not against.
Also suffers love rips, express line back behind the breakers.
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He must be referring to riptides. In some spots the water hits the beach as waves. In others nearby, the water gets pulled back into the ocean, and those are the spots you need to avoid.
Then depending on the ebb and flow of the twice-daily tides, the riptides are stronger or weaker.
There are ways to see where the riptides are, yet many people from my own coastal town are oblivious to these dangers. Inland/landlocked tourists are even more oblivious and vulnerable.
These are pretty common in northern California and Oregon as well. Just had 4 adults and 2 kids rescued from one yesterday at Cannon Beach, for example.
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If the internet has taught me anything, it’s taught me to never swim in Australia. In freshwater, crocodiles will eat you. In the ocean, sharks and saltwater crocodiles will eat you.
Also riptides will pull you out, small venomous fish will crawl up your urinary tract, volcanic gases will take away buoyancy from the water so you will sink (plus the poisonous gas will kill you). Oh, and the sun will give you cancer. That is, if you don’t get bitten by a spider or snake in your hotel room before you even get to the waterline.
Btw did I mention that basically the entire population is descended from criminals who were sent there as punishment?
Things in Australia that can kill you, or make you want kill yourself, also include:
This guy is just cranky, not trying to kill you, just make you Go Away!
Mate, you forgot to mention the drop bears. Nasty little fuckers, fall out of a tree and maul your face.
This was news to me. My morning is now worse.
Swimming in Australia? Are you suicidal? Hell, even just being in Australia is a threat to life, if the internet is to believed. If it isn’t animals that want to murder you in a painful way, it’ll be plants or fire or plain water.
Our first nation’s people are one of the oldest cultures in the world which is really amazing if you consider just how harsh the country is to live in.
It could be me but I think all cultures are “the oldest”. It’s not like the Dutch just magically spawned into existence 50 years ago and the first Nations people today are culturally very different from the ones a thousand years ago.
Beyond that, if you survive living in Australia for thousands of years then you deserve it
I don’t really see that- there’s a difference between a contiguous culture and genetics. If you’re living in western Italy, you might be descended from and still inhabiting the area of the ancient etruscans, but it doesn’t mean you have the same culture. One could make an argument that you’re from the Roman or florentine culture, but you are from a culture that’s younger than etruscan culture.
Aboriginal Australians (I’m not sure about Torres Strait Islanders, so I hope that’s the right terminology) have been practicing elements of the same culture for longer than any other civilization we know about. You raise an interesting point about them now vs them 1000 years ago, but I grew up wildly differently from how my father did, and we’re still part of the same culture. It’s sort of like the question of stepping into the same river twice- the water is different, but it’s guided by the same constraints.
They were the only ones who managed to make it work and when they managed they could chill because noone else would go there. Until the stupid europeans came.
Knowing where to swim is easy in Australia.
You go to a beach patrolled by our awesome Surf Life Savers. Think like Baywatch, but they are real.
The life savers put flags out in the safest area, and they keep an active watch in the area. You swim between the flags.
No flags, no swim. Simples.
i never been to australia. For me as a good swimmer even as a kid the flags at the balticbsea cost meant nothing. my sports club would regularly go for a camp at the balticbsea and the stronger the waves the more fun we kids had. With such a background that the flags are just a hint for old and unsporty people, it is easy to underestimate the ocean.
A lot of people who don’t grow up here don’t know this though. I used to go on trips to the beach with my international student friends and they had no idea what those flags are and why you should swim between them.
Riptides are scary shit. Even if you do know how to spot them, and what to do if they catch you. Thankfully my 42 year old ass brings a surfboard with me every time I go to the beach. I dunno if our beaches in SoCal are as dangerous as your beaches though.
Even the beaches in Australia want to kill you!
/j
Recently had a similar discussian with an Australian-German who went to elementary in Australia and a German life guard and the “how” is certainly interesting as well. Apparently, you get drilled to crawl in Australia (which is just called “swimming”) because that’s the only style that’s powerful enough to save your life in the face of strong ocean currents. Meanwhile, Germans start by learning the breast stroke in elementary because it’s the most efficient/least tiring form of swimming and the most dangerous water scenario here is people swimming too far out into lakes in forests in the middle of nowhere with no life guards, so the no. 1 priority is stamina to get you back on shore.