Thanks

Aborigines have been known to attack people randomly. It is commonly the result of substance abuse.

I am, of course, not generalizing. There are decent Aborigines who deplore this behavior.

I’ve been to Australia four times, as I have family there, but only saw Aborigines in Queensland. Admittedly, they looked pretty miserable, but I had no idea that they were prone to random violence.

As for people not stopping to help the two backpackers, that is also really weird. It doesn’t fit in with my view of Australians as one of the nicest peoples on the planet.

Come to think of it, at dinner several years ago in a restaurant on the Morningside Peninsula, south of Melbourne, my mother collapsed after a bad reaction to some wine she had sipped (no, she wasn’t tipsy or drunk). I think the staff helped, with no real warmth, but no one at the neighboring tables so much as turned around or said anything. That did strike me as strange at the time. In New York, where I live, I am pretty sure that there’d be offers of help, expressions of concern, and lots of people offering well-meant (and contradictory) advice. Maybe not every time, but often enough.