If immigration is an English fixation, emigration isn’t far behind. The lifestyle sections are constantly telling us why people are fleeing “broken Britain”.
According to an Adam Smith Institute poll, one in four Britons aged 18-30 say they may leave the UK. Unaffordable housing and job insecurity for the young shame the system. Older wealth hoarders are grumbling their way to Malta and Dubai.
But there’s one big happy exodus this winter. Old and young are racing to Australia, for a while at least. An estimated 40,000 have poured leisure cash into the most promising Ashes series in Australia for 15 years: one that features a true England pace attack and a dodgy Australian batting line-up. For once it shouldn’t all be over by Christmas.
England’s run of played 15, lost 13, drawn two since the 2010-11 series win confirms a structural flaw in the greatest rivalry. Overwhelmingly conditions dictate Australia’s supremacy at home: the pitches, the ball, the bounce, the heat and the hostility, which tends to be more political than in England, where it mostly relies on old convict jokes.
It’s not known how many of the 40,000 are running away from Britain, and how many are just running towards 25 days of Test cricket, with sun, beaches, and vineyard tours to punctuate a road tour from Perth on Friday (21 November), through Brisbane, Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney, ending by 8 January – just before FA Cup third-round weekend here, when everyone is skint, on dry January and craving light.
Dom Dickens, 35, who runs his own business, is among the masses heading south. He is attending three days of the Melbourne Test, then travelling round Tasmania before going on to the concluding Sydney Test. “The MCG [Melbourne] tickets are £30, which is amazing. We got three days’ worth for a hundred quid,” he says. “I went to some of the Tests this summer [in England] and they’re £130 for a day. I really enjoy watching cricket anyway, especially Test cricket, because it’s a really good vibe and a fun thing to do. The way my friends sold it to me is a once-in-a-lifetime trip because I don’t have kids – so either do it now, or do it when you’re retired.”
It hardly needs repeating that the British are world leaders in sports tourism. A restless spirit and an urge always to “be there” have made British sporting patriotism endlessly exportable. About 40,000 converged too on this year’s British and Irish Lions tour of Australia, where it was sometimes hard to know the Wallabies were at home.
The end of Covid constraints renewed the expeditionary zeal. And with major pension tax changes pending, travel is one of the favoured outlets for older people burning cash pleasurably before HMRC can seize it. According to the investment platform AJ Bell, more than £70bn was withdrawn from pension pots in 2024-25 – up 36% on the previous year.
Many England fans are already on the ground. Australia’s Department of Home Affairs reports that 1.1 million people born in the UK are now living in Australia, in a population of 28 million. This is the advance party for the Barmy Army, which started as 30 backpackers on the 1994-95 tour and has grown into a travel and entertainment agency, complete with commercial director. Almost all of its many travel packages for this series are sold out.
This legion of self-styled eccentrics is no place for introverts. “The Barmy Army will be taking over Perth with a packed calendar of events,” its blurb runs (it’s the “taking over” bit that’s sometimes problematic, even if cricket crowds aren’t belligerent).
Borrowing from those package holidays where you’re told to meet in reception 10 minutes after getting to your room, so you can listen to a one-hour talk about the week’s itinerary, the Barmies promise: “Ultimate Ashes parties, pre-Test parties, Barmy brunch, Christmas Day lunch [Melbourne only] and New Year’s Eve [Melbourne and Sydney only].”
The England and Wales Cricket Board oversees the more soberly named fan club, We Are England Cricket Supporters, with no visible trace of barminess.
When the cricket actually starts, the Barmy Army songbook is led by adaptations of Everywhere We Go, The Lion Sleeps Tonight, The Great Escape, He Bowls to the Left [aka the Mitchell Johnson song] and Is This the Way to Amarillo? The aim is to airlift crucial elements of British life into overseas lands, so it feels like Headingley or Edgbaston.
For balance, the travel literature recommends breaking out of the bubble. In its guide to Perth, “Australia’s sunniest city”, it talks of “sunsets over Cottesloe Beach”, swimming with dolphins, and Margaret River wine and wildlife tours. And this is where an Ashes tour of Australia grabs the prize of best sporting holiday money can buy. It has five, five-day episodes of intense, cerebral confrontation, between ancient rivals, in five cities, with plenty to do between Tests.
Modern tourism can feel like a conveyor belt of tick-box, bucket-list, Instagrammable moments. But here the cricket is the real stuff. Personal experience says that the walk to an Ashes Test, with a sun-buttered stadium up ahead of you, and primeval combat a certainty, is a blessing you never forget.
However far you travelled, and however much it cost you, you know you’re where a large part of the heart most wants to be.
Photograph by Ian Waldie/Getty Images