'How do you like Australia?' Ozzies often ask me. And one of the things I like about it, is that they seem interested in the answer. I usually reply something sociable, but between you, me, and my laptop- the question deserves better.

Let me start with the actual country. It's truly a continent. It not just is big, it feels big. The tourist brochures usually paint all of Europe into a map of West Australia with room to spare- but that's just geography. I was staying with people in a Sydney suburb. Sydney's a famous seaside city, with beautiful beaches and the waterways of the harbour would take weeks to explore. This suburb of Sydney was almost an hour's drive from the sea.

And I thought: Utrecht or Norwich would qualify as seaside resorts by Australian standards. That's one way in which it is big. I suppose that big, large and vast are almost synonymous, but I get a sense of vastness in driving from Perth to Carnarvon. That's about a thousand k's.

If you stick to the road, there's one traffic light- in Geraldton, and one village apart from that- Northampton- to break the monotony of bush, fields and hills. Starting from Groningen on my motorcycle, I'd be driving south to cross the Rhine and Meuse. To camp in the Ardennes and use Belgian money. Next day, through the Northern French lowlands, with its villages mainly consisting of war memorials. Metz with its grand cathedral. Camping in the Vosges. Lakes, and almost mountainous. Disused ski lifts in summer. On via Mulhouse to the Jura- the oldest mountains in Europe? from where I'd look down on the Great Swiss lakes. Camping beside one, and on through the sheer-sided Swiss valleys, the snow-capped Alps on either side. Climbing the Simpson Pass to get out of sterilized Switzerland- 56 hairpin bends. The stunning road to Lago Maggiore in Northern Italy, with the road almost buried in the mountainside. The clock would hit 1000 k's just before entering former Yugoslavia after another days' drive through the Dolomites.

I've only mentioned geography. Never mind the 5 countries, currencies, and 6 languages. And every European village worth its' salt with a museum, pub and picturesque centre. I've skipped about a thousand of them!

To bring a rather tiresome story to it's end: although the suburbs of my ego allegedly have their own poscode, Australia's too big, vast, remote and huge for me to comment. Just rest assured that it is overwhelming.

Now in this sizeable land live a paltry 18 million Ozzies. Roughly speaking, they come in two varieties: City and Country. Firstly, there's the City-ozzies who are like the rest of us. They complain about traffic jams and rising criminality. Having land aplenty, they prefer to stack side-by-side in humongous villa suburbs rather than engage in the vertical proximity so common in Europe. Getting to work involves a lot of driving which they do in large 4WD's. Having a bit more elbow room than their Parisian counterparts, I get the impression that their socio-political outlook is very much determined by the NIMBY philosophy: as long as it's elsewhere, it's cool and OK. The West Australian ( a newspaper distributed in an area compareable Europe all the way to beyond Moscow) devotes two of its 40 pages to world affairs- the other 38 cater to the 'man-bites-dog' variety of newsgathering.

The country Ozzies are a different kettle of fish altogether. Working on 'stations' which are easily the size of a Dutch province, a many hours drive from the nearest pub creates a type of people I only knew from Karl May stories.

Anyway. My website is mainly about weekends, and holiday stuff. Most of my days are spent in a cosy private practice. Working hours are flexible like plasticine, so both Andi and myself take time off to fly- did I mention that I've become a 1/4th owner of a microlight aircraft? We both feel that we should be the friendly face of modern medicine, so appointments are long and we burn soothing aromatherapy oils in our surgeries.

On top of that, I have admission rights. This is a foreign concept on Holland and the UK, but essentially it means I can admit people into the local hospital under my own care. For me, it means that I keep my mind nimble in the care for the iller patient. I also do on-calls in the hospital, which essentially means that I have to deal with whatever walks, or gets wheeled into the door. Although that's a bit frightening at times, all the clever brains in Perth are only a phone call away, and more than willing to help out the moment I mention that I'm stuck in the bush.

Thirdly, I work for Public health in the Remote Aboriginal Community Burringurrah once a fortnight, and am looking at doing a bit of work in the Aboriginal Medical Services again. These two jobs really deserve a webpage to themselves, which I hope to write one of these fine days.

Altogether- Australia's been good to me so far. I embrace the lifestyle and love the country and its people. The concept of 'friend' is always a hard one to define, but I reckon I've made a few in this outpost of civilisation. It's come to the point that I almost look down on the citizens of Perth - with dust in my nostrils and salt in my hair I feel more Ozzie than them.