That's been my experience as well. I've visited Sydney twice, and both times I've been asked to light up my devices. Granted, I was on work trips requiring three separate laptops which does probably look suspect, but once they were booted they did not request to browse anything and were satisfied to see them working.

All the more reason to dual boot into a decoy OS. Does not stop a targeted investigation, but lets you pass a cursory examination where some thug might want to rifle through your data.

Edit: now I am gleefully thinking about how I would craft my decoy desktop persona. What gives me the most effective non interesting profile.