Almost inevitably, the person who rents you your skis, puts you on the chairlift, serves your meal, pours your beer and fixes the broken dishwasher in your room will be Mark from Mudgee or Michelle from Maroubra.
http://www.smh.com.au/sport/winter-olympics/a-touch-of-sydney-brings-games-to-the-people-20100321-qo4m.html
Australians - including veterans of Sydney's 2000 Games - are also strongly represented on John Furlong's Games staff, with some holding senior positions. Furlong says the Vancouver Games wouldn't have been the success they have been without borrowing Australian know-how and spirit, and drawing inspiration from what happened in Sydney 10 years ago
This writer met with Tim Morrison the General Manager of the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics and Paralympics twelve months ago, when as an IOC volunteer consultant on Olympic Villages Religious Services, speak of young Australians.
In a previous position, managing a Canadian ski resort, Tim Morrison explained how he had 40 young Australians employed at the resort in Canada's winter ski season.
On our flight into Canada from Los Angeles this writer and his wife sat with a young Australian who said that she was on contract at Whistler at a ski resort.
Young Australians are known across the world for their travel. Part of this is a sense of coming of age, another is to see first hand where their parents or grand-parents came from (catching up with family links), another is that of youth tourism such as the UK and European tours and of course Gallipoli, let alone Asian holidays and experiencing North America – US and Canada.
There is an estimated one million Australians working in the UK at any one time and that 85% of those are young Australians.
Another group of young Australians that are on the move travelling around the world as those associated with Christian Mission.
Young Australians associated with Youth With A Mission (YWAM) can be found almost anywhere across the globe. Many church groups have their young people on short term missions around the world. Global InterAction (Australian Baptist Missionary Society) is one such Missions organisation engaged in this.
Such Mission travel by young Australians provides a new lease of Christian mission zeal and vision and is one of the key reasons why Australian evangelicalism retains such passion and commitment to the cause of Christ.