Thing is, Claire that the OP going to Australia is a mere pinprick on the unimaginably vast surface of catastrophic climate disaster. When you think of the factories in poor countries, yes the ones that supply Primark/Zara/H&M/M&S ad infinitum, simply pouring out all of their chemical waste into rivers and streams, or consider the effects on the planet every time someone shops at Aldi or Lidl or basically anywhere that isn’t sourcing locally, which we all do - don’t we? That’s where the issues really are. Big businesses flying their staff around for meetings that should have been emails. Cars in cities with absolutely brilliant public transport that renders them entirely unnecessary, piles and piles of rubbish because we’re all always bloody thirsty and hungry.
I get that air travel has a massive impact, I really do, but unless you’re going to start campaigning against the use of everything that keeps you in your own comfort zone, then you don’t have enough of an argument. I promise you I apply this to myself, too. I try my best to buy locally, buy ethically, but sometimes I do grab a Snickers from the corner shop and then realise something. I don’t know where the chocolate came from and if they used child labour, was the chocolate shipped for a thousand miles, then processed, along with all the other components, mixed with palm oil, packed off again to be sold having done goodness knows how many more miles in the process? I feel guilty and worried and all of those panicked feelings of impending doom that lots of people probably do, but the OP is not the problem here. It’s all of these rich industries that rely on our rampant consumerism and what we have come to understand as our ‘needs’.
Ask yourself what you’ve eaten today, what you’ve used and where you’ve been. Trace it all back and make some changes in your own life.
There’s a whole island in the Maldives covered in rubbish, half of which could have been recycled, that the big hotels use as their bin. People all over the world still burn their rubbish, plastic and all. Companies like Nestle destroy entire ecosystems and the communities and animals that rely on them, for profit. Watch a documentary about Chinese factories and then look at where your stuff comes from. I’m not saying this to one person I’m saying it to everyone that thinks us as individuals are the main culprits. I choose local, I cut down consumption, I recycle, but I also donate to organisations that fight it all in a much wider scale, I write letters and emails to companies and go to protests. Who knows if it helps, but it’s the big companies and corrupt systems that are your villains in all of this, not the OP.