Many Australians make wonderful travellers; gregarious, fun to be with and eager to learn about new cultures. But then there are the sorry few that give the rest of us a bad name. Australian consular staff have to deal with tales of drunken debauchery in Muslim nations, wedgie obsessives at Oktoberfest and petty theft in Thailand as our worst bogans leave their mark on the planet. But some behaviour is far too bad to be dismissed as high-spirited japes. Take this little lot for example…
The bomb hoax steward
Australian airline steward Matthew Carney made himself tremendously popular with the passengers on Emirates flight EK-011 from Dubai to London Gatwick in March.
Carney left a note in one of the plane’s toilets claiming that the Taliban had put a bomb in the cargo hold. The plane, ten minutes from landing, had to put in an emergency call. Passengers and fellow crew members were held up for ten hours while they were interviewed by police.
Eventually police found a hand-written note saying “Cargo contains explosive” in Carney’s luggage, which matched the one found in the toilet.
The London graffiti crew
Six Australians who decided to treat London’s somewhat underwhelmed populace to regular demonstrations of their ‘art’ caused over £70,000 ($140,000 of damage).
The spray paint six called themselves AMF – short for Australian Mother F**kers – and embarked on a six-month graffiti campaign on London’s tube trains and underground stations.
They were eventually caught in the early hours of Boxing Day morning, 2008, with neither police, prosecutors nor magistrates agreeing that their masterpieces were anything other than mindless vandalism.
The over-affectionate passenger
Three glasses of wine combined with arthritis medication proved to be the undoing of Terrance George when he made an utter tool of himself on a Qantas flight from Singapore to London.
After continually making unwanted advances towards another passenger, stewards asked him to cut it out. He punched two and bit one in a display that showed the object of his affections just what she was missing.
The crew thought about diverting the flight, but eventually decided to have George restrained for ten hours until the plane landed at London Heathrow.
The rugby rogues
If we really want to eliminate abominable antics abroad, then the first step should probably be ceasing all rugby union tours to South Africa.
It seems as though our rugby internationals can’t set foot on the continent without getting into trouble.
In 2000, five ACT Brumbies players – including internationals Joe Roff and Owen Finegan – set the ball rolling with a marvellous display in Cape Town. They were thrown out of a bar following a charm offensive that included drawing on tables with tomato sauce and running around with their pants down and butts exposed.
They then ripped the meter out of a taxi and refused to pay the fare.
This performance was followed up by fellow Wallaby Matt Henjak, who was sent home for bad behaviour in a nightclub, which included throwing a drink over another reveller.
The statue vandal
Bogan behaviour abroad isn’t necessarily a recent phenomenon. One classic example occurred in 1972 during mass in St Peter’s Basilica in Rome. Australian geologist Laszlo Toth escaped the attention of the guards, leapt over a balustrade and started attacking Michaelangelo’s famous Pieta statue with a hammer.
He managed to hack of the bottom of one arm, and cause damage to the nose and an eyebrow before he was saved from angry worshippers by the very guards he’d eluded.
Toth was deemed to not be in a sufficient mental state to be charged with the crime, and painstaking work by a team of restoration experts nursed Pieta back to health.
The ANZAC day brawlers
Phuket in Thailand is fast getting the reputation as the bogans abroad epicentre, and the behaviour of a group of Aussie males on ANZAC Day 2008 did nothing to dispel this.
The pack of package tourists let the alcohol and the heat get the better of them, and kicked off in a bar on Patong Beach. The bar was wrecked, other punters were forced to do a runner rather than get caught up in the melee and three locals took a bashing.
Not content with this, the group decided to pin it on one of their number. The fall guy woke up in a police cell, unable to talk until nearly midday the next morning because he was so drunk, and had to phone his parents to get the money required to repair the bar.
The others had all got their flight home, and left their cohort’s luggage and passport at the police station.
The ANZAC day drinkers
More famous ANZAC Day incidents have taken place at Gallipoli in Turkey. Increasingly bad behaviour over the years has seen a strict alcohol ban imposed at Gallipoli Cove – and it’s largely aimed at the Aussies who had been treating the near-sacred site as just another stop on the European party tour.
With the drinking ban and an alternative site set up for a memorial service nearby, ANZAC day proceedings at Gallipoli have largely returned to their previous dignified status – but it’s no thanks to the backpacking bogans who saw it as a slightly more exotic Oktoberfest.
Unpalatable antics included leaving the site strewn with rubbish and sleeping up against war graves.
This article was originally written for Ninemsn.
Copyright David Whitley
