Six things I’ve learnt about Aussie travellers from being a tour guide

May 25, 2026 — 5:00am

“Australians!” says Richard Hanlon, co-owner of Bujera Fort just outside the Indian city of Udaipur. “We love Australians. They’re the best guests. They’re easy-going, they try everything, they’re out exploring the local village and cruising on Pichola Lake, and they don’t make a fuss.”

I’ve been guiding small groups of Aussies around India, Morocco and Italy under the Tripwired brand name since 2018. This week, I’m taking a group of five through Italy’s foodie capitals of Bologna, Modena and Parma, in another couple of weeks it’ll be another group of 10 in Romania.

As a tour guide, you get to see your guests gasp when they walk through the gateway that frames the Taj Mahal, and over breakfast when they’ve had a lousy night’s sleep. You get to know what makes them happy, what’s going to dazzle them and what makes them edgy.

Less sightseeing, more living

My Aussie travellers are mostly between 65 and 75. They’ve had busy professional lives and they’ve seen a lot of the world. One of the guests on our current tour spent two weeks in Bologna just a couple of years ago, and that means I have to dig deep to find fresh experiences. They don’t like too many churches, palaces, galleries or museums, and I don’t blame them. Their eyes were glazing over on today’s visit to the church of Santa Maria della Vita in Bologna, famous for its 15th-century sculpture, Lamentation over the Dead Christ. They were much happier yesterday when we stopped to watch a young couple dancing on the cobblestones while a busker played an oboe under the portico at via Santo Stefano.

They’ll ask heaps of questions when we wander around in villages, but best of all is when they’re doing something. Making tortellini yesterday was a big hit, and block printing fabrics in a small Indian village brings out their competitive instincts.

They’re not all angels all of the time. They can get testy when tired or when dinner goes past 10pm.

Our national talent for adventurous eating

I’m always amazed just how unfussed Aussies are when confronted with unfamiliar food, and I put this down to the amazing variety that our multicultural population brings to the restaurant table. We’ll often have a street food aficionado or two in the mix, and a few will try anything. On our Rajasthan trip in March, Paul K went full Indian from day one. It was masala dosa for breakfast, daal baati churma for lunch, kachoris for snacks and more green chillies the side with dinner. Many are erudite cooks. They will ask chefs for their recipes and chat about the best way to cook radicchio, the merits of eggless pasta and how much harissa paste to use with chick pea soup.

Aussies are intrepid travellers

We’re at home in the world, and mostly comfortable going out of our comfort zone. Australians will plunge into the souks in Marrakesh and get lost, and sitting cross-legged in a tent made from camel hair while a Bedouin woman brews tea over an open fire in the Sahara is never a problem. In Jodhpur, Brian D hired a tuktuk and just asked to be driven around for a couple of hours.

Another time in Rajasthan, on a slow-moving train through the lumpy Aravalli Hills, our carriage was invaded by monkeys. The Indian passengers were alarmed and dismayed, slamming the windows shut and yelling to shoo the monkeys out, but the Aussies thought the whole performance was hilarious. When things go wrong, they rise to the occasion.

In West Bengal last year, we were flying from Assam to Bagdogra before a journey up to the hill station of Darjeeling, but when we got to the airport our flight had been cancelled. Instead of a short, non-stop flight, we had to fly to Kolkata and kick our heels for a few hours in the airport before we could take another flight to Bagdogra. We arrived at our hotel well into the night, but there were no groans, no rebellious murmurs.

Coffee matters

We’re a coffee-conscious nation, and that first morning coffee sets the tone for the day. You can’t often count on a decent coffee with breakfast in the hotel, so it’s important to plan a coffee stop soon after we begin our tour for the day. In Italy, that’s never going to be a problem – and they’re amazed that coffee costs about half what it does at home, less if they’re prepared to stand up at a bar – but in most other countries a random coffee stop is not going to cut it. As a guide, you need to know where is going to deliver the goods, and that means I drink a lot of caffe macchiati.

Lost skills still fascinate travellers

They like seeing how things work, and how they’re made. My guests grew up in an era when some of their parents worked in factories or on farms. Our generation knew how to fix cars and make dresses and carry out minor electrical repairs. Living in a post-industrial society, we’ve lost a lot of those skills, but the developing world is full of tailors, potters, silversmiths, brickmakers and workers who toil over banging, whirring machines. One of our best discoveries was wandering into a coir factory in India’s southern state of Kerala. Everything was done by hand, by the light of oil lamps, by sweating men working giant looms and spinning wheels, and our travellers were enthralled.

Not always perfect, just good travellers

They’re not all angels all of the time. They can get testy when tired or when dinner goes past 10pm. Some will stray, one might keep us waiting past departure time, some will ask what we’re doing tomorrow when they’ve just been told twice, but these are minor niggles. Ninety per cent of them are fabulous company and I wouldn’t give up guiding them for quids.

In a restaurant in Morocco last year, an American woman at the next table came over and started chatting. “Do you take Americans on your tours?” she asked. I’m never going to pass up an opportunity, and we’ve had plenty of Brits before and that’s worked like a charm, but I wondered whether they would understand the peculiar chemistry of an Australian tour group. What I’ve learnt from guiding Australians is that good travellers aren’t defined by how many countries they have visited. The best bring openness, humour, patience and appetite to the road. Aussies mostly bring all four.