To paraphrase Merriam Webster: a collection of backpackers endowed with a rapid rotary motion around an axis. It’s unavoidable in this part of Australia and it is a situation into which I was irresistibly drawn.

The Vortex is the pernicious industry that has grown up, not to cater to backpackers, but to harvest them, slowly. It’s like cutting the bark on a maple tree for the sap to slowly drip into a bucket. It’s not a service so much as it’s a processing system, with as much empathy for its subjects as a meat processing plant.

The streets are lined, not dotted, with tour operators, all selling the same tours. Ironically the result is to limit your options, and since backpackers are not discriminating, those options are basic at best.

Australia’s unique “Australianess”, has been lost. You’ll find the same clubs, force-fed fun, Irish Pubs, and Ice Cream shops in Alice Springs, Darwin, Cairnes, and all the way down the east coast, Nothing Australian about any of them. You could as easily be in Cancun, Tijuana or Miami. It must be human nature, that when we have something good, we then push, twist and squeeze until it’s not good anymore.