After going out to celebrate a friend’s birthday, Rachael White woke up in a South American hospital bed – alone.  Attached to an oxygen tank, she struggled to remember how she got there. In fact, she couldn’t remember anything beyond arriving at a Cuzco bar the night before, not far from the village where she volunteered with other Australian gap year students.

When her doctor finally appeared, he told her she’d been drugged with an unknown substance.  She’d also contracted salmonella – an infection almost unavoidable in Peru.
“Apparently I was whacking my head on the toilet seat, I was really violent,” she said.

“I was vomiting blood. When the doctor came and found me – I was struggling to breathe, I was shaking uncontrollably, and was in a really, really bad state.The first thing the doctor said to me when I woke up was ‘You almost had a heart attack.’”

Rachael, 19, is among a tide of young Australians heading overseas. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the number of travellers under the age of 25 has doubled in the past decade. In that time, the number of Australians arrested, hospitalised or killed overseas has also doubled. In 2011-2012, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) dealt with over 14,500 cases – including 1,250 hospitalisations and 1,138 deaths overseas.

Alex Oliver, a research fellow at the Lowey Institute for International Policy, said the proportion of Australians seeking consular assistance remains small.  But with the number of travellers rapidly increasing, the burden on DFAT could become unmanageable.

“The cost of international travel combined with the strength of the Australian dollar has meant that international travel is accessible to a much broader range of Australians than it was a couple of decades ago,” she said.  “What we don’t want to happen is, as the numbers increase, for the Department to be put under more and more pressure to provide services to more and more people . . . in more and more types of strife.”

Ms Oliver said young Australians must be aware of what the Department can and can’t do for them overseas. As a starting point, travellers should register their travel plans and contact details on Smartraveller, now available as an iPhone app.

“I think some Australians are becoming a little bit more reliant on government in tandem with an increasing reliance on social welfare services generally,” she said.

“Take advantage of all the services the department offers in terms of information – inform yourself, insure yourself and let us know what you’re doing so that we can help you if you get into trouble.”

Australians are also visiting increasingly ‘adventurous’ locations – with India, Thailand, and Vietnam among the fastest growing destinations. Despite this, travel insurance is reasonably low in Australia compared with other countries, like the UK.

“Younger Australians tend to be travelling to different destinations,” said Dr David Beirman, Associate Fellow at the Australian Institute of Travel & Tourism. “Because we do have direct flights between say, Sydney and Santiago in Chile, places people didn’t used to go to are now more accessible than they used to be.” He said young, budget travellers can’t expect the government to foot their hospital bills.

“It’s a simple fact: if you can’t afford travel insurance then you really can’t afford to travel,” he said. “If you’re going to less developed countries . . . where medical assistance might be difficult to get or costly – that’s really where travel insurance comes into its own.”

According to the World Youth Student & Educational Travel Confederation (WYSETC), young travellers represent one of the fastest growing sectors in the industry worldwide. Seventy per cent of 16-29 year olds travel in order to study, learn a language, or work and volunteer abroad.

“Young people are less likely to be deterred from travelling by terrorism, political and civil unrest, disease or natural disasters,” said Laura Daly, special advisor to the WYSETC director general.  “[They] see travel as an essential part of their everyday lives, rather than just a brief escape from reality.”

Rachael suspects her drink was spiked by the bartender. Fortunately, her friends stayed with her the entire night and she had access to a private medical clinic organised by her program. Home safe and well, she said the incident was a minor part of the experience.

“We were prepared for it and it’s just part of living over there,” she said.  “I’m not at all turned off by South America now – I just fell in love with the place.” Now studying at Macquarie University, she’s already planning to spend a semester abroad. “I gained so much independence, so much maturity,” she said.  “Even though I didn’t go to uni, I think I learned a lot more that year than I would have
at university.”