We are a young couple planning a trip to Australia in March. We are kind of scared about travelling by ourselves (which we always prefer) after recently hearing news about students/Tourists being attacked/killed in Australia. Such news have been surfacing since past 12 months and such incidents have only increased in number.

Three of us old farts drove all over in September\October,both on an off roads, cities, towns and rural areas, 97% of the people we encountered were great. The other 3% you will find anywhere in the world including your own back yard so to speak. While way to old to be students with back packs, though we do have them <g> it was pretty clear we were green, green tourists to Australia to anyone with open eyes. Go for it!

Australia is by international standards a peaceful and law-abiding country.

I'm not aware of any evidence that crimes against students and tourists are out of line with overall crime statistics. If they are, it would be purely because young backpackers have a greater tendency to put themselves in more risky environments where binge drinking and associated violence is common. Overseas students taking jobs on the "graveyard shift" in 7/11 stores and service stations may be another factor.

I'd be interested to know - are you reacting to the recent murder of an Indian student in Melbourne that has generated such a hysterical over-reaction about "racial violence" in the Indian media? If so I can only say that murders do happen in Australia, as they do everywhere. The police investigation is continuing and there are no grounds to assume that the unfortunate young man's ethnicity was a factor in his murder.

I was in ( or near) India when the first reactions to so called " racial violence" was being played out in their media and my reaction was of surprise at their suggestions that Australia was racist because of that and then anger at their ( the Indian Media) racist insinuations and statements against Australia regarding these issues. Their slant was that they send these pure, chaste and holy saints from India to Australia which is a racist and Indian hating country and here they get beaten up and/or killed because they are Indian. Now I find that insulting in the extreme especially from a country where racism and prejudice is amongst the worst in the World. So Piya if you are from India and believe what your media say then perhaps you would be better going somewhere else because I for one am sick and tired of dancing to the tunes of some foreign media's over reaction and racist statements about our country. Perhaps our Government wishes to play games about these things but some of us do not and there are plenty of people in the World who do not have a hidden agenda like the Indian press.

It's also worth noting that Chinese, not Indians, are the largest group of foreign students in Australia, and I haven't heard any of their representatives complain of racism or mistreatment. On the contrary, the Chinese student we hosted for six months was full of praise for the kindnesses he'd experienced in Australia.

One possible factor is that a large number of Chinese students are female, whereas the Indian student body is overwhelmingly male. In Australia, and I think most countries, young males are more likely to be the victims of violent crime than females because they're more likely to place themselves in dangerous situations.

I should add that on occasions Australians have been killed while travelling in Asia. I don't recall anyone accusing Indians or Thais of being racist because of a few random acts of criminality.

One last point: all this blew up last year when a number of young Indians were assaulted in Harris Park, a western Sydney suburb that had been experiencing gang violence for some time. It's been stated in the New South Wales parliament (http://www.smh.com.au/national/harri...0610-c2z0.html) that the perpetrators were young men of Middle Eastern background, and their victims had included Anglo-Saxon Australians. I mention this only to make the point that these things don't lend themselves to simplistic answers.

(Piya, for the record, unless you get lost in the weirdest of ways, the chances of finding yourself in Harris Park are very close to zero.)

I'm also curious about the strong reaction last year and this year on the part of the Indian media. Watching Jenny Brockie's Insight program on this topic last year on SBS, it seems that many of the Indian students, unlike the Chinese and SE Asian ones, are coming to Australia to do slightly dodgy courses run by private education providers that are claimed to help the students attain permanent residency.

I wonder if the Indian government is doing this to stop a perceived brain drain?

I think that, compared to most of Asia, Aus is a safe place. Sure, there is occasional violence.

But we don't have the bus smashes, train wrecks and aircraft "incidents" that plague many places.

Oh, and there are fewer guns, which makes it safer too.

The Australian media has helped to feed the hysteria, and the government's servile reaction hasn't helped matters either, our higher education sector being now addicted to the revenue contributed by foreign students - a bit like our state governments being hooked on gambling revenue.

And yes, Peter, much of what passes as higher education is nothing more than a sophisticated but mostly legal immigration racket.

That said, in some areas I think we are short-changing both our own interests and our foreign students. The Chinese student we took in - a bright, personable and exhaustingly inquisitive young guy - had the initiative to use his time in Australia to learn more about Australia and its people by seeking out a local family to board with. As he rises up the ranks we'll have at least one Beijing government official with a fair insight into what makes us tick and a great affection for our country.

His colleagues, all from the same department, lived, ate and socialised together on campus - as I think do most such students. I met the whole group at their graduation and found them impressive youngsters, a credit to their country. But their isolation from Australian life meant that we lost opportunities to build closer ties and greater mutual understanding, and both they and we are the poorer for that. I think they went home with a good opinion of Australia, but much more could have been achieved.

Unlike the farsighted Colombo Plan of the post-war period, we now seem to be driven by nothing more than the lure of the dollar.

End rant.

For those interested in some stats on this situation, these were released in the Sydney Morning Herald today:

In 2007, according to India's National Crime Records Bureau, 32,318 people were murdered in India. Another 3644 were victims of ''culpable homicide'', roughly equating to manslaughter. In a category of its own, 8093 brides or their relatives were killed in ''dowry deaths'' - murdered by greedy grooms and in-laws angry over the amount of dowry paid by the bride's family. And there were a further 27,401 attempted murders.

By contrast, in 2007, the Australian Bureau of Statistics reports, 255 people were murdered in Australia. Another 28 were victims of manslaughter, and 246 survived attempted murders. No dowry deaths were recorded.

India, of course, is a very big country. But the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime estimates that relative to population, its homicide rate is more than twice that of Australia. It is a country in which violent crime is commonplace - so commonplace that every day more than 100 Indians are murdered by other Indians, yet their TV news channels treat this as humdrum unless it involves some celebrity or unusual features.


Indian student murder furore. Photo: Spooner

Yet when an Indian is murdered overseas, these news channels whip themselves and their viewers into a froth of indignation at the country concerned. How can this happen?, they thunder. How can any civilised nation fail to protect its residents? What kind of racist country is this?

How does this happen? Well, it happens because human beings are imperfect creatures. They can be selfish, they can be hateful, they can enjoy hurting, even killing, other humans. It happens here, it happens in India, it happens everywhere.

Governments can't stop it because they can't control what their citizens do 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Governments can't monitor every suburban park in Melbourne at night to ensure that no teenagers with knives have gathered for an illegal drinking binge. They can't monitor every dark street in India's cities, or every home in its villages, to stop people killing each other.

Australians instinctively know that their parks are not safe places at night, and avoid using them as short cuts. Tragically, Nitin Garg did not know that. And so he has become another victim of our epidemic of alcohol abuse, our tolerance of extreme violence in films and screen games - and yes, of Romper Stomper racism that seems to live on among teenagers in the western suburbs, now directed against Indians instead of Vietnamese.

Does that mean Australia is unsafe? No. Relative to most countries, it is very safe. But you can be unlucky. Like Nitin Garg, you can be in the wrong place at the wrong time - and come up against the worst characteristics of a society.

This was highlighted in the calm, sensible advisory notice on Tuesday by India's Ministry of External Affairs. It warns intending students of the rise in violent attacks on the streets of Melbourne. But it notes that these are occurring all over Melbourne ''without any discernible pattern or rationale behind them . . . often accompanied by verbal abuse, fuelled by alcohol or drugs''. The offenders are ''mainly young people in their teens or early 20s''.

Importantly, the ministry points out that most Indian students ''have a positive experience of living and studying in Australia''. So rather than urging Indians not to come here, it urges them to take ''certain basic precautions'': don't travel alone late at night, and try to stick to ''well-lit, populated areas'', conceal expensive items and tell others where you're going.

It is street-smart survival-kit stuff, as relevant in Delhi or Mumbai as Melbourne. And thank God for some common sense after all the hyperventilating by the humbugs on India's news channels or by the Minister of External Affairs, S.M. Krishna, who called the murder a ''heinous crime against humanity''.

Well, yes. But what of the 32,318 murders, 3644 culpable homicides and 8093 dowry deaths committed in his own country in 2007? Are they not equally ''heinous crimes against humanity''? What is Mr Krishna doing about them? What are the Indian TV networks doing about the huge death toll of Indians killed in India itself (where the annual road toll is now tipped to reach 150,000)?

The networks don't have to make a direct comparison. Urban Delhi spills into the state of Haryana, which is relatively well-off and with a population slightly larger than Australia's. In 2007, Haryana had 1252 homicides/manslaughters/dowry deaths, compared with 283 in Australia. More people were murdered in Haryana over dowries than in Australia for all causes.

Why aren't India's TV networks campaigning against the epidemic of death all around them? Why does it take a murder of an Indian overseas to stir their moral outrage?

Were they equally outraged 10 years ago when Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two sons were burnt alive in their car by Hindu extremists in Orissa? Or in 2004 when Australian tourist Dawn Griggs was robbed, raped and murdered by two taxi drivers after arriving late at night at Delhi airport?

Those murders don't mean India is unsafe for Australians. Rather, we all need to be wary, wherever we are. This time last year, I was in India with the family on holiday, and the worst danger we faced was trying to cross the road. I hope Indians thinking of studying in Australia listen to their diplomats, not to their TV humbugs.

Perhaps I am missing something but where exactly did the OP connect the supposed attacks to racism?

crellston, this started because the OP's post coincided with the current furore in India over the murder of the Indian student in Melbourne (I did ask the OP whether that was the cause of her/his concerns but there's been no response).

As will happen on Fodors, in the absence of any further input from the enquirer the discussion then took on a life of its own. That's all.

[Parenthetically, the OP's screen name is a Hindi word that can be translated as 'beloved'. Please treat this as Today's Useless Information rather than prrof that the OP is from India.]

Neil, perhaps you think that this is "todays useless information" but I just wanted to put this in perspective, not only for people who enquire about racism in Australia but for all Australians who are being called racists because of the attempts of the Indian press to make it sound so. Its all very well for you to say in one item that the people who did this or that were Middle Eastern but that gets burried in the rest of the written Press's frenzy to make their point. It looks as though the OP is from the USA and it looks like the whole issue has been in the press there as well which is a shame. Have you read some of the comments from Indians on this situation, it is not nice and all I can say is that it seems to me that the Indian press are really trying hard to stir up racism within the Indian community against Australians for whatever reason they have for doing so. Some of the comments are very unflattering to say the least.

Piya,
You will be as safe, and possibly even safer, in Sydney and Melbourne than in your own home town, provided you take the normal precautions that any sensible person would. NeilOz makes the point well about younger people getting into more trouble - because they're more likely to be around popular areas, pubs/nightclubs etc., late at night. These are also the venues, here and everywhere else in the World, where the mix of alcohol/drugs/testosterone can be an unfortunate and tragic one. And we, like everywhere else, have some random acts of crime. But, for the 20m+ of us who live here, and our many millions of visitors, it's an extremely rare thing to be involved in anything other than peacefully going about our business.

Good News has never sold newspapers or television, whether it's in the News or Drama section. Media the world over will grab anything it can and blow it out of proportion. If we in Australia believed the news reports we hear about the US were representative of every day life there, we'd never venture across your borders. Neither would anyone else, I suppose. We do though, in droves, and I'd venture to say the vast majority return home happy, healthy and unscathed from this supposed country of gun-toting, trigger happy people. Even within the US, I see posts " Is it safe in NYC?" Darned if I know, but I've never had a problem, and I've walked from the Theatre on 8th to 63rd after a show by myself.

"Is (insert name of your home city/country)safe?" is pretty much guaranteed to put most locals at least a little on the defensive. Politicians in Australia have an unfortunate habit of reacting to every criticism from the outside and this, of course, plays into the media's beat-up. This is apt to annoy the locals who don't see the same reaction from other countries' heads of state to similar events in their countries.

I noticed that South & Central America are also on your radar and wonder whether your safety concerns extend to these areas?

inbe - the phrase "todays useless information" referred solely to the (or an?) English translation of the Hindi word "pria".

As for the identification of a particular group of no-hopers as being of Middle Eastern provenance, normally I'd avoid the risk of being accused of targeting particular ethnic groups.

But I think it's fair to say that when people talk about racism on the part of "Australians", they're thinking about "white", specifically Anglo-Celtic Australians. And this is just as gross a slur as the idea as any other race stereotype. As I'm sure you'd agree. All I meant to do was point out the fact that crime and racism aren't confined to any one ethnic group. We're all collectively guilty of that.

Australia's transition into a tolerant, peaceful multicultural and multiracial society in just a few decades has been a remarkable success story, one that isn't well appreciated in most parts of the world. Nor is the complex nature of immigrant societies like ours.

As an example, my interesting but somewhat frustrating discussion with our Chinese student boarder, mentioned above. This came about because he saw Senator Penny Wong on TV and couldn't understand how a Chinese woman could be an Australian government minister. He had a lot of difficulty getting his head around the fact that as far as most of us are concerned she may be of Malaysian-born and ethnically Chinese, but she's as Australian as our Australian-born prime minister Kevin Rudd, our Welsh-born deputy prime minister Julia Gillard or the Ohio-born premier of New South Wales, Kristina Keneally. In a largely monocultural nation like China, where race and nationality amount to the same thing, this is a baffling concept.

And therein lies a considerable barrier to our explaining ourselves to the rest of the world.

Good points made above.

A few more facts - there have been three murders of Indians in Australia in the last few weeks -

The sad case of Mr Garg in Melbourne - no indication as yet who the murderer was - could be an Anglo, Islander, Asian, or a fellow Indian for all we know.

An Indian woman in Sydney who had her throat cut and whose Indian husband fled interstate and has been charged with her murder.

An Indian farm worker in country NSW - fellow Indian farm workers to whom he owed or was owed money appear to be the main suspects.

And at the risk of doing the subject to death (but it IS interesting), the latest murder rate figures and world rankings I could find (homicides per 1,000 population) are:

USA 0.043 (#24)
India 0.034 (#26)
Australia 0.015 (#43)

This is not meant as finger-pointing, just to inject some facts.

In fairness, in the same tables India ranked much lower than the USA and Australia in physical assaults:
USA 7.57 (#6)
Aust 7.02 (#10)
India 0.22 (#49)

Disclaimer: I'm not in a position to make any claims as to the authenticity of these numbers, or for that matter the national reporting systems they presumably reflect.

wow..what a response..people have all the time in the world to debate and fight over a simple question/concern based on some current incidents..
ivenotbeeneverywhere - has completely overreacted...but i can understand if i have hurt somebody's sentiments which i did not mean to do here.
I posted this question to get some response from people who have recently travelled, to have them share their experience in terms of safety while touring the country.

I hope to get such detailed/well researched responses for my itinerary related questions..

I'm glad you returned, Piya. Actually I don't think you hurt anyone's feelings - well, not mine, anyway - and as you'll have seen the thread spun off into a more general discussion rather than a very direct answer to your question.

What most Australians would be offended by is not your question, but the ridiculously overblown foreign media coverage thta caused you to ask it. If that's what you're seeing I can understand your caution.

I will make the general observation that the media in all countries mostly give us a very distorted, sensationalised picture of any other country. I strongly endorse Bokhara2's comments in this regard.

The Australian media's coverage of the US is much the same, even if it's much more comprehensive than the coverage the US media gives about Australia (virtually none).

Because of this some of my family members and friends were aghast when we told them we planned to do a road trip in the USA. When most of what you see of the US in the media, especially the low end, consists of mass murders, natural disasters, snake-handing religious maniacs and the like, why wouldn't you be nervous?

In the event we drove America's highways, byways and back streets, walked around her cities and only once felt nervous (unnecessarily). As anywhere, the key is to exercise common sense, follow your instincts and use a little forethought to avoid dubious situations and localities.

The views of a local may not count for much, but I'm confident that like the vast majority of the millions of people who visit Australia every year you'll find your fears groundless.

(In fact the only actual visitor to Australia - the rest of us are locals - to have responded helpfully to your enquiry has been JoanneH. Hopefully others will chime in.)

Piya, I cut and pasted something from our newspaper and I don't think that my reaction was a "complete over-reaction" as you put it, but somewhat of an explanation of your questions which was " We are kind of scared about travelling by ourselves (which we always prefer) after recently hearing news about students/Tourists being attacked/killed in Australia. Such news have been surfacing since past 12 months and such incidents have only increased in number ". If you think that a full explanation to you is an over-reaction then please ask for condensed and abridged replies without any details in the future and request an exclusion of comments by Australians.
I will be in your country in 3 weeks and I am feeling much more nervous about flying there and getting around your country than doing anything, anywhere in Australia.

I will be in your country in 3 weeks and I am feeling much more nervous about flying there and getting around your country than doing anything, anywhere in Australia.

inbe - if you're talking about travelling to the US, refer my comment above and relax. Unless you have specific plans to explore the South Bronx on foot at night, or something equally eccentric.