Shane Hegarty's encyclopaedia of modern Ireland
They huddle at the airports, crowd the ports. They are refugees from economic success. They carry only the bare possessions: a two-tog sleeping bag, five pairs of combats, a GAA jersey and a 30-litre backpack so full that it's in danger of exploding and showering the airport with four types of mosquito repellent. They leave with little cash and only a few thousand in traveller's cheques tucked into the travel belts that are strapped around their waists. (They also have emergency supplies in their shoes, in case they're mugged.)
They are a new generation of emigrants, quite unlike those who went before them. They have chosen to flee the riches of their homeland for lands whose streets are paved with dirt. It starts at Usit, a company more responsible for mass emigration than anyone since the governments of the 1970s. From there, backpackers follow a trail tramped down by millions of Westerners before them, through the jungles of northern Thailand, the counterfeit-watch stalls of China and the beaches of Fiji.
Surviving only on a diet of local beer and banana pancakes, they swap tales of extreme adventure, of haggling 30c off a pair of fake Gucci sunglasses in Kuala Lumpur, of getting sick in their snorkels while scuba-diving with hangovers. And all this while in search of the holy grail of the modern traveller, that place of backpacking fable: an empty, pristine, undiscovered internet cafe.
And from these places they reach out for the land of opportunity: Australia. It is a country with more Irish nurses per square metre than any Irish hospital. One of the largest, most geographically awesome nations on earth, yet a place where twentysomethings are guaranteed to bump into at least half the people they have ever met.
It is the one country where you might be swallowed up by the vastness of the desert plains, yet, when you finally find an oasis, the only other person there will be a guy you used to sit next to in third class.
Australians, happily, have engaged in an exchange programme with the rest of the planet. It's a great deal, and we're glad to oblige, because there is no greater privilege than being able to emigrate for the sheer fun of it.
We continue to send into the world our tired, poor, huddled masses. Well, our slightly jet-lagged masses. Almost maxed out on the credit card. And, if not huddled, exactly, those two-tog sleeping bags aren't always as warm as they'd like.