What does it matter if people are affluent or not? The affluent travel in
air-conditioned comfort and pay guides to take them to the best places, stay
in comfortable accommodation and help to keep the economy going by spending
their money. But do they have as much FUN as the penniless young people who
travel on a shoestring budget, sleep in their well-worn sleeping bags under
a tree or in a flee-ridden hostel, find all the birds themselves and end up
becoming guides to take all the 'affluents' around.
Maybe the Affluent are Older, and Poor are Young, this is a fairly normal
state of affairs, is it not?
Val Curtis
-----Original Message-----
From:
Behalf Of Tony Russell
Sent: Monday, March 17, 2003 10:35 AM
To: Syd Curtis
Cc: birding-aus
Subject: Re: Affluent twitchers - oxymoron ?
Actually you know I've found that a lot of twitchers I run into have to be
relatively affluent in order to be spending money on birding trips the way
they do. Their expenditure on these trips is often way above what your
average working person or retiree can afford, and similarly the amounts they
spend ( or should I say are allowed to spend by their partners) on optical
equipment is often above average too.
I think a more "accurate" oxymoron would be to speak of a "poor twitcher".
In fact though I suppose there are grades of twitchers from those who can't
afford even a weekend away birding, perhaps these are the "un-affluent
twitchers", through those who travel around Oz birding as best they can
( regular twitchers ?), to those migratory egotists who float around
ephemerally from one country to another spending money like water in their
birding pursuits. These latter I term the "effluent twitchers".
Actually I find myself quite disdainful of the latter types, partly because
lots of them are yanks pretending to be nice people - but mainly because for
me, birding overseas has a disloyal aspect to it - a bit like I would feel
if I went to Melbourne to barrack for one of their crummy footy teams, or if
someone in Brissie decided to support the Crows.
Love. Tony.
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