BURST BUBBLES
“We travel, some of us forever, to seek other places, other lives, other souls.”
A beautiful quote, fit for a beautiful Pinterest board full of beautiful inspiration about the soulful benefits of travel. It comes from French-Cuban writer Anaïs Nin, who was actually something of a restless, complicated soul herself. Travel has always been a balm for restless souls.
You would think after over a year of very little international travel, stuck at the bottom of the world, our restless souls would be a moaning, seething mass of pent up wanderlust, ready to board the next plane to anywhere that wasn’t here. And yet, slow uptake of travel to Australia from New Zealand since the beginning of the trans-Tasman travel bubble suggests we’re quite happy staying put, shut off from the world, tending to our nests.
Before the Melbourne family reunion scenes at airports in April, three times as many people were coming into New Zealand as were going to Australia. Six hundred thousand New Zealanders live in Australia while a tenth as many Australians live in New Zealand, which will account for some of that discrepancy. But Qantas CEO Alan Joyce has described travel from New Zealand as “sluggish”, suggesting our behaviour hasn’t quite lived up to expectations.
