The DFAT site is supposed to alert travellers to any difficulties that are being experienced overseas.I suspect however that they don’t really know what’s going on outside the embassy, and in countries like Bolivia and Ecuador, outside the embassy means the streets of Santiago Chile.
So, before we go on a big trip to countries where it’s likely to get hairy, I usually monitor the Thorntree on the Lonely Planet site to see what is happening on the ground. I didn’t really want to read this but forwarned is forarmed isn’t it ?
on the list of countries that dfat currently advises australians to get the fuck out of, we find afghanistan, burundi, iraq, liberia, pakistan and somalia. i suppose you could say that “one of these things is not like the others”. incidentally, there are countries in a state of actual civil war that, for some reason, don’t appear on this list.
Be cool to see that go on the DFAT scale of how safe a country is. From “nice place to visit but I prefer to live here in Oz” all the way to “get the fuck out, don’t stop to pack!”
Bugger DFAT. As with all bureaucrats these days, their stuff is only accidentally related to the truth, being written primarily with an eye to the government not being able to be held liable if they turn out to be wrong. With the diplomatic-briefing arm still being mainly arts graduates, their stuff is a smidgen more readable than most … but, on a completely different topic, Lonely Planet isn’t a bad start if you’re actually into getting some idea of the real-world-right-now department.