In a Sunburned Country/ Down Under

Travel Guide

If you are not stung or pronged to death in some unexpected manner you may be fatally chomped by sharks or crocodiles.

Now if that isn’t a Bill Bryson sentence we don’t know what is. Not your usual tourist advice or observation but then it’s something you’ll take with you to Australia that’s for sure!

This is Bill’s fifth trip and he does it in style – across the Indian Pacific Railroad from Sydney to Perth, through New South Wales, South Australia, Western Australia. It From Sydney, it travels through the Blue Mountains and tracing the Darling River to the Murray River, then on towards Adelaide before crossing the Nullarbor Plain, Kalgoorlie before ending up in Perth.

Bill Bryson also loves Australia, and it shows. He also loves to laugh at and with the locals, marvel at the habit of eating meat pies in mint soup, the obsession with cricket and marvel at the madness that are kangaroos.

Mixing stories of his own, those of early settlers, explorers and even tourists, Bill shows you a side of australia you won’t get elsewhere. History, landscape, culture, danger; it’s all here as is the heartstopping moment he comes face to face with a ‘bluey’, a blue bottle jellyfish.

“A swollen stinger that could give him 20 minutes of agony and, if he’s unlucky, an unsightly allergic reaction to carry on his torso for his life.”

There’s wonder at the Great Barrier reef, respect and admiration for the Aborigines and their ability to survive in such harsh landscapes, explorers who have taken on this hostile land over the years, and the amazing mental image conjured when he says about the south Victorian coast

“If you took all the water away, you would see 1,200 ships lying broken on the seabed, more than almost anywhere else in the world.”

Vividly evocative images  of a journey you will never forget