The vanity portraits of today's young ego-trippers. The focus? Forget about the journey or the destination. It's them, themselves and their friends.

For me, travel has always been about the destination and the journey: there and getting there. And then once there it's about the culture and people as much as the place. But I'm wondering how important either are to today's youngest travellers, those in their late teens to very early twenties. Driving along the Great Ocean Road, considered to be one of Australia's Great Drives, a few days ago, we stopped at The 12 Apostles, striking limestone rock formations considered to be a highlight of the scenic route. I'd visited them before, but that doesn't explain why this time I was struck more by the groups of young tourists visiting the site than the rock stacks themselves. In our three months on the road in Australia, it was the first time since Uluru that we'd seen tour bus after tour bus pull up to the site and witness such large groups of tourists. But these groups were different. They'd troop off the bus, charge to the viewing platform, whip out their cameras or mobile phones, and take photos of... themselves. With barely a glance at the rocks, they'd position themselves in front of the view, hand their camera or phone to their friend, and pose. Paris Hilton-stances seemed to be preference of the North American girls while peace signs proved perennially popular with the young Japanese. Once they'd checked the shot was to their satisfaction (believe me, there were a lot of re-shoots taking place), they'd swap cameras and positions with their friend and return the favour. Then, without so much as a glance at the sight, they'd move on to the next vantage point, and snap pics of themselves all over again. Down on the beach below was an extreme example of this phenomenon: two girls in bikinis spent an excruciatingly long amount of time posing and taking turns to shoot each other's photos as if they were swimwear models on a fashion shoot. Admittedly, Victoria's iconic tourist attraction wasn't looking too pretty against the foggy grey skies, but I don't know about you, I still like to take time to take the vistas in and appreciate the scene for what it is. These young travellers seemed more intent on using the setting merely as wallpaper for their vanity portraits. Of course I'm generalising now, but is it just me or does this young generation of ego-trippers (is it Gen Y or Z, I can't keep up) seem far more interested in documenting themselves than the world around them?

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