As the Exmouth rain teems another 3 carload of travellers arrive to the site behind us. An old 80 series Cruiser pulls up on the grass, along with a couple of other old fourbies and a tribe of people tumble out.
Raucous laughter and rough Aussie accents fill the site behind us and we cringe and roll our eyes as we look at each other, just waiting for the Acca Dacca to crank up.
We are coping with the rain, but now we have the bogan neighbours to contend with. They erect their tents, squabbling, shouting, laughing and making light of the fact they are getting drenched. Their ability to keep positive is a feat in itself.
When they have finished there are so many tents it’s like a small city has appeared in our backyard. Are you really allowed that many people on a site we wonder…The cartons of Emu export get dragged into the kitchen gazebo and they have all the outward appearances of being difficult neighbours, the ones you hope you wouldn’t be stuck next to for a week.
And while we sit in our van listening to them and passing judgements I realise that they will be those people. While we stand at a distance we will make them into people to despise, to avoid and to treat differently.
And as we demonise and fear those we are unfamiliar with, I am reminded that we simply replicate what our nation does on a larger scale. Inwardly I am chastised by my own foolishness and darkness and yet for some reason I want to be right. 
Maybe if I’m ‘right’ it means I don’t have to engage with them… Maybe if I’m ‘right’ I can fob them off as losers and disregard them. I can see them as an imposition – as a disruption to my desire for peace and quiet. I can call them ‘stupid bogans’ and chuckle with superiority at them.
There is only one solution – to move sites… 
Or… to walk over and open a conversation, to get to know ‘the other’ and in so doing they will cease to be ‘other’ and become people – real people…
And so we chat, and they are folks on holiday from the city, seeking the same things we are, but just expressing themselves a little differently. They don’t seem to be much for conversation and I could take that as confirmation that they really are knobs, or I could accept that they are busy trying to dismantle a gazebo that has been damaged in the night and don’t really have time for me. I can choose offense or I can choose common sense.
I can choose to despise those who are other or I can accept that at heart they are just like us… and their difference is not a cause for treating them poorly. The fact that I ‘should know better’ is no deterrent to my prejudices kicking in. My double standards are justified (I tell myself), but perhaps small steps in the other direction will negate my natural hypocrisy and help me become the person I think we should all become.