Why are we travelling so much? Powderfinger holds the answer

You’re going to have to stick with me here. I swear, today’s newsletter has a travel perspective, and I will get to it. First though, I’m going to talk about music. Hi there friends, and welcome to another edition of the Food + Travel Edit, I hope you’re all well and planning an adventure somewhere amazing. This week I’m back home in NSW, recovering from a crazy couple of weeks moving from Kenya to Sydney to Adelaide and then back to the Central Coast. In that time I also tried – and failed – to buy a ticket to see one of Powderfinger’s reunion shows, which has got me thinking about what the hell is going on there. Stick around to the end of the newsletter, too, to read about a killer anchovy snack that Jess came up with, and some weirdness at Dubai airport.

I don’t have a ticket to see Powderfinger play next year. I tried. I did all the things I was asked to do.

I signed up to the fan club, I registered for the artist pre-sale, I kept my eye on the announcements of more shows. But still, as things stand I will not be going to see the Brisbane band’s big reunion tour in September and October next year, because every time I tried, whoosh, the tickets just disappeared.

Some people will be going to see Powderfinger. Many people. But I won’t be one of them.

I got to pondering this while I sat in front of my laptop and considered what it means to have more than 25,000 people in the “queue” in front of you. What is going on here? What is the mania that has infected seemingly every single Australian between the ages of about 35 to 55? Is Powderfinger even that popular?

I’ve never been that big a fan. Certainly at the time of their best albums, in the late 1990s and early 2000s, these guys were on the periphery for me, a sometimes band that I would put on at a barbecue or when my parents came over because it’s music that most people find unoffensive.

And I grew up in Brisbane, the home of Powderfinger. I hung out on Vulture Street. If anyone was going to be a massive fan it should have been me.

But I was more into Regurgitator, if we’re talking about Brisbane bands. I was far more interested in seeing the Living End or Bodyjar, Silverchair or Grinspoon, if I was going to shell out some bucks on an Australian act. I never loved Powderfinger, passionately and deeply.

So why, oh why, am I suddenly so obsessed with seeing Bernard Fanning and co play live? Why is everyone so obsessed?

The band has sold out 26 massive shows in the space a few minutes, essentially, of on-sale time. They’re playing six open-air gigs in Brisbane, six in Sydney, seven in Melbourne. All sold out in seconds. This is a Taylor Swift level of insanity we’re talking here, surely unprecedented for an Australian act.

What is going on here? Why the level of desperation? Why the sudden obsession with going to see a band that were Triple J darlings and Triple M occasionals and never really made it on the international stage?

I think it’s a deep sense of nostalgia, and a genuine longing for the period in time that Powderfinger represents. A period in our own lives, but in the collective consciousness of Australia and the world as well.

Because a lot of things suck right now, if we’re honest. There’s war in Ukraine, genocide in Gaza, slaughter in Sudan, and the most intensely stupid conflict that has perhaps ever been wrought upon us by the US in Iran.

Petrol prices are skyrocketing, and with that inflation, and with that interest rates. Cost of living – a hellish phrase in itself, when you think about it – seems out of control. House prices are crazy. Social media is breeding intense polarisation and political violence. AI might steal all our jobs, or it might wipe us off the face of the planet.

And when you protest about these things you get shut down, sometimes arrested, sometimes worse.

Is it any wonder we’re pining for a time when “My Happiness” seemed a reasonable thing to sing about? When “these days turned out nothing like I had planned” just seemed an innocent lament about lost love? When we were all just friends who went out and saw bands and drank $1 schooners on a Tuesday night?

We need Powderfinger right now. We need to get together in a field somewhere and sing at the top of our lungs about sunsets and waiting for the sun and baby I’ve got you on my mind. What could be better?

Nostalgia is back. Nostalgia for easier times, an escape to a moment when none of us had a mortgage and the world wasn’t a total dumpster fire.

And so then, I got thinking about travel, as I often do. If we crave nostalgia and escapism in music right now, what do we need from travel? What is the travel equivalent of a Powderfinger reunion? What is the experience we’re all chasing?

And I realised: it’s travel itself. Not to a specific place or in a particular style, but just travel. We just need to travel.

Because look at the stats. Recent data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics shows the number of trips Australians took last financial year is up 4 per cent on the year before. It’s up a colossal 32 per cent on 10 years ago.

More and more people are travelling. We’re taking more and more holidays. And this despite the cost-of-living crisis, despite the interest rate rises, despite fuel prices and the knock-on effect on airfares.

Travel is getting more expensive and Australians have less money to spend on it and yet we’re still travelling more than we ever have before.

Part of the appeal is escapism, I’m sure. Why wallow in misery at home when you can fly to Bali for next to nothing and have massages every day? We’re a nation of travellers, this is how we enjoy ourselves, and everyone needs a little enjoyment right now.

It’s also nostalgia, I think. So many of us have been travelling since Powderfinger’s halcyon days, and we remember exactly what it was like: the feeling of being cut off from reality, with no phones or internet to tether us to home, with no responsibilities or cares.

Of course you want to tap back into that feeling, you want just a little more of that freedom, that unadulterated joy.

This goes across the generations, too, not just mine. Those who have retired and paid off their mortgages are of course travelling because they can – many of the economic forces we’re talking about here affect them less than others. But young people are travelling more too, because they feel that the dream of home ownership is just too far-fetched, and so what’s the point of even trying?

Might as well go on holiday and live it up.

I probably won’t be going to see Powderfinger next year, unless more shows are announced and I find myself in an online queue with only 5000 or so people ahead of me. But I will be travelling, as far and wide as possible, because it’s just so joyous, so freeing, so nostalgic of an easier time.

My happiness, slowly creeping back.

WHAT WE’VE BEEN EATING THIS WEEK

OK team, here’s a simple, achievable and absolutely delicious snack for you to slip into the rotation. It’s a creation of Jess’s, though it’s nothing too out-of-the-box. Take a slice of sourdough, nice and thick-cut, and lightly toast it. Spread that toast with a thick smoodge of stracciatella, which is essentially shreds of mozzarella curd, creamy and delicious. Next, take the highest-quality Spanish anchovies you can find and layer them on the cheese, and then shave some lemon zest over the top and add a few cracks of pepper. Finish with a good drizzle of extra virgin olive oil, and pair with a crisp white wine (or, as we did, a Lillet Blanc on ice). And enjoy!

WHAT I’M LOVING THIS WEEK

• Melbourne Airport’s international terminal is getting a much-needed facelift, with designs unveiled this week for its expansion.
• Just two weeks now until the announcement of the World’s 50 Best Restaurants 2026, which will be unveiled in Peru. This list, like all lists, is inherently flawed, but it’s also a great way to gauge the health of the global dining scene (and see if any Australians made the cut).
• Sydney has a new restaurant, Ame, serving Nikkei cuisine. This is a style that has been done before in Australia but not well. However, reading the menu at Ame, I’m really excited to give it a try.

WHAT I’M NOT LOVING

• Sitting in online queues for Powderfinger tickets, obviously.
• Travelling through Dubai airport last week, I sailed through customs and immigration in next to no time without even having to show my passport, because my face is now on file and is enough for me to enter the country. This is both great and also entirely dystopian and frightening – and surely a sign of how travel will work in the future.
• The absolutely exorbitant fees that hotels charge for laundry - $5 for a pair of socks? That I could just wash in the sink? Get in the bin.