I remember Australians being friendly, but I’m surprised at just how friendly they (we?) are. I’m staying with friends in Hornsby, almost the northern limits of Sydney’s metropolitan area and catching the train into town whenever I need to. The first time, just a couple of days after I arrived back, I was walking down a small back road when an old man came out of his house and headed to his car. ‘You off to the station?’ I grunted a reply, wondering what business of his it was or if this was just modern small talk. ‘Wanna lift?’ He had no idea who I was, but that didn’t matter.
Just today, I was in a queue in the supermarket with my mother, who I’m helping house sit for a friend up the coast from Sydney. The woman at the customer service desk who takes returns had no customers, so she picked out a couple of the people in the queue with us who had few items and asked them to come around to her counter. That would never happen in Bhutan or Belgium.