Dubai is host to an amazing mix of nationalities and in the fifth of a series on the communities of Dubai, Al Shindagah profiles the Australians. By Zac Sharpe

Most of the country is desert but about 90 per cent of the population live on the coast. The summer's are scorchers and the national salute is the semi-conscious swish at the flies trying to crawl up your nose.

Modernity has come relatively recently and all the world's leading economic indicators, from GDP to the Big Mac Index, rate it as one of the safest, wealthiest and friendliest countries on the planet to call home.

Scores of different nationalities flock to its shores to make a better life for themselves while at the same time making their own indelible imprint on the national psyche.

On the busy city streets shish kebabs compete with Szechuan dishes for the favour of passers-by. Those lucky enough to settle in this splendid country enjoy an almost unrivalled outdoor lifestyle. Tennis, football, cricket, horse racing and golf are the national pastimes for those who dare to leave the television and air -conditioning. And if you don't manage to make it to the court, ground, track or course then you can generally pop along to a nearby venue to watch those who know how show off their talents in some world class event on your door-step.

The country is Australia. But the above description could just easily serve as a summary of why expatriate Australians adapt so well to their new surrounds upon arrival in the United Arab Emirates.

An estimated three thousand Australians have made that adaptation, the vast majority of them based in Dubai. While the number pales against other expatriate communities, the relationship forged between Australia and the UAE is a particularly strong one.

In the international arena Australia and the UAE both, in boxing parlance, punch above their weight. Small in population terms (about 20 million and 2.5 million respectively), both countries are rich in natural resources and strategically positioned geographically Ð Australia in the Pacific and the UAE in the Gulf. Trade between the two distant countries has taken on such significance that the UAE has this year opened an embassy in Australia. In return, Australia's government has announced its present consular representation in Dubai will be bolstered with the opening of an embassy in Abu Dhabi in 1999.

Australia's business people in the UAE do much of their networking under the umbrella of the non-profit business group ABIG - Australian Business in the Gulf.

The Dubai office of the Australia Trade Commission, Austrade, is the regional centre for national trade with the Middle East.

The balance of trade between the two countries fluctuates annually although it has swung slightly in Australia's favour over the past couple of years. Crude petroleum products form the bulk of the UAE's exports while cars powered Australian exports to the UAE during the last financial year jumping an astonishing 60 per cent to more than a billion Australian dollars (454 million dirhams).

More than 50 Australian businesses have a presence in the UAE. It is business which invariably leads Australians to the Gulf and the UAE in particular. The growth in exports of meat, dairy products, fruit and vegetables, minerals, telecommunication equipment and, of course, motor vehicles, has fuelled the growing exodus of Aussies from their homeland to the UAE. Along with banking and software development, another Australian service industry has developed significantly over the past few years. Education is a key area of growth as more and more UAE and expatriate students opt to study in Australia's top-notch universities.

Indeed the only foreign university to actually operate in the UAE is an Australian University. The University of Wollongong is arguably the most recognisably Australian trading entity in the UAE.

According to Martin Van Run, director of the University of Wollongong, even the giants of Australian industry such as construction company Multiplex and mining heavyweights BHP, do not wave the flag as vociferously as his campus near the Al Mulla Plaza Shopping Centre.

Van Run, an Australian Rules Football fanatic from Melbourne, has been in Dubai for six years pushing Australian education generally, and the Wollongong university specifically, as a viable study alternative to the United States and United Kingdom.

"In 1987 the federal government in Australia slashed university budgets," said Van Run by way of explaining how a Melbourne university administrator found himself in the Arabian Gulf. "The universities were forced to look for full fee paying international students in a bid to provide a greater share of their operating budget. The decision to expand overseas meant we could either become another university trying to compete in South-East Asia or we could look to new markets," he said.

"We chose Dubai and six years later we have a campus offering undergraduate and post graduate course, 350 local students and a strong profile in the local community," said Van Run.

For Van Run himself, the move to Dubai represented an opportunity to kick start a major project under his own direction. But working jaunts in Europe could not quite prepare him for what lay in waiting in the UAE.

"At that stage I probably didn't realise the exact size of the job. Internationally Australian education is well rated but in the Middle East six years ago it was largely unheard of," he said. "To get prospective students to identify with us, we had to create a context for ourselves. First we had to promote Australia, then we had to promote Australian education, then Australian higher education and then we could begin to market the University of Wollongong."

The job at hand may have been easier, he acknowledges, if the university had a more readily identifiable name to promote. Wollongong is a beachy cum industrial city about 100 kilometres south of the more popularly acclaimed capital of the state of New South Wales, Sydney.

"Yes, that was a factor as well. Wollongong is not exactly Sydney or Melbourne in terms of international recognition. But through acting as unofficial ambassador for Australian education as a whole we have managed to achieve success." The campus has also achieved the university's original aim of turning a profit through its MBA, business and computing degrees and English language courses while employing about 50 teachers, administrators and staff. "Wollongong has come here and invested its own money locally - the only western university to do so. And I don't believe a student can get a greater guarantee of quality assurance than that," he said emphatically.

Van Run's personal investment in Dubai, made with his wife and two young children, has borne rich rewards as well.

"The lifestyle here is something we have enjoyed immensely. There are things here like weekends in the desert and it is a lot of fun for the kids as well," he said.

Despite the recent media brouhaha surrounding the segregation policies of populist politician Pauline Hanson, Van Run is, like Australians who pride themselves on being egalitarian, 'down to earth'.

"In Australia we are brought up to respect people whatever their nationality. That is something I think we bring here with us personally as well as professionally and I think it is something that is really appreciated here," he said. But ultimately home is where the heart is and in Van Run's it is firmly planted in the middle of Victoria Park, the home ground of his beloved Aussie Rules football club, Collingwood.

"I guess I'd like to go home within the next few years so my children can be brought up as Australians. My eight year old son is already a dyed-in-the-wool Collingwood supporter," he laughed, "but my daughter was born here."

"Oz is a good place to be. It is safe and the education system is good. Culturally and socially there is just so much to do. I think it is a good place for our kids to grow up."

Education
Raising children is something another Australian family in Dubai is learning all about in a hurry. Andrew and Yvette Foley have been in Dubai for about two years Ð about 1.8 years longer than their daughter Jet. Yvette, a journalist with a Dubai newspaper, is contemplating how best to juggle the roles of career woman and mother while Andrew prepares for a new managerial position with a luxury car manufacturing company after a prolonged stint as Mr Mum.

"Anyone who tells you motherhood is easy and comes instinctively I don't think has been a mother. It is a major learning curve everyday," said Yvette while Jet eavesdropped in her arms.

The same learning curve has seemingly applied to adapting to the new life in the Dubai.

Yvette and Andrew both hail from Dubbo in rural New South Wales, which is bigger than a country town but smaller than a city. While Dubbo and Dubai are close to each other an the atlas index, they are continents apart on the maps and world's apart in most other respects.

"We grew up in the same town but never actually knew each other until we were in our twenties," said Yvette. "The first we ever heard of Dubai," continued Andrew, "was when someone rang up about an advertisement in the newspaper I had responded to saying they were calling from Dubai. I had twice been told I'd been shortlisted for the overseas job but was never informed where it was."

Yvette then picked up the tale, explaining that, "When we first heard the word Dubai we both just looked at each other and said Dubai?".

The name still prompts friends and relatives back home to ask after their safety whenever the Middle East features in a news report.

"Everyone seems to think we are in some sort of war zone. If there is trouble in the West Bank or Iraq they think it is the same distance away as Sharjah because the media tend to focus on the situation in the Middle East," laughs Andrew looking anything but stressed by his situation.

But despite the financial benefits offered by Dubai's tax-free status and the active sporting, social and recreational life the couple enjoy there were teething problems to be dealt that had nothing to do with Jet's milk teeth.

"I think certain problems are inevitable when you first come here, whether it is adjusting to a new life or dealing with the bureaucracy," explained Andrew. "But overall the opportunities here are definitely good."

"You have access here to opportunities that you just would not get back home," he said.

"I think it's good and bad," concurs Yvette. "You gain personally and culturally because you are exposed to such an interesting array of cultures."

"Australia is a multi-cultural society, but here you have to think outside the square. At home you take a lot for granted because you can read society easier. Here though, if you live a blinkered life I think you could become very alienated," she said.

"One of the strangest things here is fending off the question, 'Are you going to get a maid?' I'd like Jet to grow up with as much of an Australian identity as possible and it just happens that most of the people willing to help with baby-sitting are also Aussies, which is good," said Yvette. "After Dubai, who knows. Maybe Europe," Andrew concluded.

Australians have always been an itinerant bunch. But in past decades most have looked towards the colonial mother country, Britain, when seeking opportunities abroad. But as the global village has forged new international trade links between countries that never knew the other existed, people have ventured beyond the traditional destinations.

Design manager Martin Baerschmidt is one beneficiary of Australia's search for new trading partners. The 31 year old Melbourne native arrived in Dubai via Singapore, at the hub of the Asian economy Australia has coveted. Four years later and he now finds himself playing a pivotal role in the construction of the Emirates building project on Sheikh Zayed Road, Dubai.

The epic scale of the project has ensured Baerschmidt and his English wife Sarah, a corporate brand manager, will be in Dubai until the Sydney Olympics.

Speaking before jetting off to Italy to inspect stone for the Emirates project, Baerschmidt described the project as challenging and complex. "As things become more specialised and construction management comes in more and more, you find more and more layers of management developing."

"This can make it easier in some respects and more difficult at other times because you have more duplication and bureaucracy," he said. The rewards here are the equivalent to Singapore although the lifestyle is completely different, he said.

"We still get into sport like we did there but tend to play more golf and enjoy more water sports here. The hot weather doesn't phase me at all - in fact year-round summer is fine. The sailing's great, I get down the golf course a fair bit and even some I don't think the outdoor life is really curtailed that much," he said.

As enjoyable as the Dubai lifestyle is, Australia still holds its allure as the place to call home. "It's a tough call but the job is scheduled for completion before the Sydney Olympics which seems as good a time as any to head home," Baerschmidt said. Irrespective of how attractive life in the Gulf may be, family and friends remain the major force drawing expatriates back home.