Not too many people here appear to want to hear it, but this is yet another result of the debacle of 1989 - when we first saw instances of
'Welcome aboard folks for **** flight 1234 Wagga to, sorry Wagga Wagga, to Sid-e-ney. Your Captain today is Chuck and the S/O is Mohammed.
but the "Wagga Wagga" then was "Sydney" or "Melbourne" and the aeroplanes were somewhat bigger than a Saab.
And I hate to cruel the pitch for those bemoaning the "hordes" of Ozmates now flying in Europe, for even if most of those "Ozmates" have the coarse, barbaric accent of the Antipodes, the
fact is, the vast majority (if not all) of them would not be able to work in Europe unless he or she had right of abode in Europe, either by holding an EU passport as well as his or her Oz passport, or by having an EU citizen grandparent, giving him or her right of return.
I was one of "them" who went to Europe eighteen years ago and got all the same "what are you doing here?" grief, the questioners conveniently forgetting the many Brit and European charter pilots
(in some cases, THEM***ingSELVES!!!) who damn near tripped over each other in their haste to get out to Australia in 1989 to have a very well paid working holiday, thus ensuring the dispute in Australia would linger on and not be resolved, as it would have to have been if they had stayed away.
Anyone flying for a living in Australia today who says we need to put that year behind us and get on with life (as many seem to do) has to cop this and whatever else is handed out to them in the industry
without complaint.