Baywatch with Cricket!! (Down Under - Bill Bryson)

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Product:	Down Under - Bill Bryson
Date:	23/03/01 (20 review reads)
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Advantages: The best and funniest travel writter around

Disadvantages: I need more now!

I’m totally hooked on this guys non pretentious easy going writing and advise you to pick up one of his travel biogs as soon as is physically or fiscally possible.
He doest try to be erudite with long wandering words every second paragraph (although still don’t know what lugubrious means), or flood you with over descriptive narrative’s when you least want them. He just literally says what his thinking and makes you chuckle and snigger at just the right time.

He tells us of the Aussie serving Prime minister who went for a swim in a notorious rip tide channel and was never seen again to the first explorers who discovered the lad who struggled against all odds to bring us one of the worlds most beautiful countries.

He mixes sharp and sardonic humor with an educational insight into the country he’s exploring, in the case of Down Under he snoops in every nook and cranny of the arid and fascinating country of Australia.
The book covers four different segments of his quest beginning with his arrival in Sydney and finishing in the stunningly crisp city of Perth.

The first taste of OZ for our intrepid yank is boogie boarding on Bondi beach where he has his first dreaded encounters with the countries notorious wildlife. And the hospitality that only Aussies can offer on their hidden paradise.

He takes a 2200-mile train trip from Sydney to Perth via the sizeable mining town of Broken Hill and the subsequent slog of a three-day rail journey over some of the planets most hostile and vacant landscapes.

He dares to venture into the notorious coach class where there are no beds or buffet cars in a see of glum and emaciated faces. Or getting to grips with why new Aussies have no time for Abos (Aboriginals).

The second sector trip is from Adelaide to Melbourne where he discovers cricket on the radio and foreteen gear off road vehicles with every contraption known to man. (Essential Ozzy off roading
bush mobile).
He tells a lovely story of a young three-year-old girl who would help the rough Aussie builders and brickies building their house extension in a very middle class area of young professionals etc..

She would bring nails for the guys and struggle to help carrying the cups of coffee and tea etc adorned in corkscrew curls and summer dresses. Everyday the little angel would carry out her duty before and after school.
At the end of the job the guys give her a special little wage packet with a silver Aussie dollar in it which mum decided was worthy of a trip to the local Citibank to open an account.

The little girl’s eyes are peeping over the counter in the queue as the cashier asks what did you get that for. The little girl replies,”for building a house this week”. Oh and are you building one next week replies the cashier.. The little girl looks up as she picks her floral dress and says”Only if we can get the f*****g bricks.

That’s the sort of anecdotes the book is peppered with and that essential sums up the Australian class system, non exsistant.The author is so good at finding the flavor of a country to add to the taste of his books.

His next trip is an East Coast oddessy done by a million students from Sydney to Darwin via the Stuart and Bruce highway. Mr. Bryson tells you all about the guys the highways are named after with very interesting stories to go with them.

He also meets people on the road trip who are drawn to Australia’s obsession with large fiberglass figures, ranging from 40ft high Lobsters to cafes hidden inside Pineapples.
Ive been there and seen them and they are not the least bit fascinating. Or as the author puts it. Only to Japanese Tourists with cameras and forklift drivers who still live with their mum.

I lived in Australia for a year and must say they will do anything to have some sort of tourist trap or National park to avoid th
eir real heritage of which is the Aboriginals that they really cant tolerate.

As he sails through Brisbane (Everyone does don’t they) with a journalist friend for support and back up as he gets to grips with tropical Queensland and the home to the most poisonous sea creatures in the world ,let alone the crazy locals.

Australia has nine of the ten worlds most venomous snakes with half of them are in this State,let alone the Redback spider and the particularly annoying Cone Shell armed with an exocet missile for unsuspecting non flip flop tourists.Let alone the toxic grog(beer).

He goes in to detail of how Australia became to be discovered because Capt. Cook in Endeavor had come 12,000 miles to seek away through to the silk islands and Indo China.Instead he literally ran into undiscovered Australia when the boat hit a reef near a strange and fertile land.

Luckily the crew were able to spring the leek with a technique using their main sail as two French expeditions who were also seeking the elusive sea channel through to the silk route were soon to sail past that very spot.

IF Cook had sunk then the French would have claimed Australia for the French Empire to this very day. But the author quite rightly says, As catastrophically ghastly as that may sound, we wouldn’t have had to endure 423 episodes of Home and Away.

Cape Tribulation is the actual spot where Cook claimed it for the Queen and the Empire although the indigenous population had been there since the beginning of mankind on Earth.

The intrepid two continue their trip north through the world’s wettest rain forests and on to the once lawless northern city of Darwin in Ozs salubrious Northern Territory.

They rest up and take a real Aussie drive over the desert to Alice Springs visiting little mining towns and little known significant landmarks not seen by 99 percent of Australia’s population.

Another wonder
ful story he tells about the old Aussie pioneers is the tale of the head of the fledgling Australian Air authority who wanted to prove to early settlers that air travel was pretty darn safe.

Harold C Brumwood the said gentleman boarded a flight to Indonesia which preceded to crash on take off, but with no injuries to him or the rest of the passengers and crew bar cuts n bruises. The next day he got on a KLM flight to again prove airworthiness of the steel birds. Again it crashed on take off, sadly killing five locals.

Two months later after recovering from series injuries with confidence understandably very low in him and The Australian Air authority. He took off with BOAC …………..Yep you guessed it. Only his hat was found which is now proudly displayed in a small outback aviation museum in the rarely explored arid desert lands of the Northern Territories.

Of course all travelers visit Ayres Rock, and our Author is no different as he mesmerized by this extroidanary monolith in the middle of nowhere. We also both agree that its color change reputation leaves a lot to answer for.

The guys then drive to the baron West Coast as their trip nears its epic end via a few hostelries and a cold beer or two. Such is the extreme environment out here that you can pick up meteors as the soil is completely different color to space debris amongst the rotting bone of cattle and worse.

Their journey ends in the pristine city of Perth where Bill has just enough time to explore the bottom left corner where he makes his most monumentous discovery of all. The Stromatalittes.

On a long twisting walkway out to a picture postcard sheltered bay just below the surface lies these extraordinary crustaceans that out date EVERY living thing on the planet today.

They are literally the organisms that created life by texturing the very first oceans with the ingredients of life so mankind could wreck the place 20 mil
lion years later. That’s how old these living organisms are.
They have seen it all notes our author. From the Dinosaurs to the Ice Age and the last funny episode of The thin blue Line.

The locals even have a museum to record and monitor these unique creations found in only two places on the globe that are untouched enough to allow evolution to take a break..In the little museum they proudly boast the worlds only Stromataliite in captivity as it slowly bubbles away, with another 20 million years of bubbling to come.

Bill had been wandering around Perth for the past three days and had caught the sun badly (English red head). As he was poking the wanderous creature an American tour bus full off elderly tourists clanked their way down the walk way with to inspect the said miracles.

One particular annoying American gal announced in her whiny voice,”Is this what we came half way across this God dam continent for”. Bill feeling non-plussed and exasperated over the ladies ignorance of what miracle lay before her proceeded to explain the extroidanary significance of this marine legend.in an extremely intelligent and detailed way Americans struggle with.

The woman’s face dropped as she listened intently to the authors monologue. She stared at him with an expression if she had just learnt that Bill was indeed her long lost brother. Then she opened her dry lips and said”Excuse me Mr. but you have terrible sunburn.

This is a seriously funny and refreshing slant on the wonderful country of Australia and if you have been you will love and if you haven’t yet been, you will love it more.

I will leave you with this thought that according to the Australian land and satellite survey. Only 2 percent of the country has been surveyed and none really knows what could be still out there, how ever weird and wonderful it might be.

If you ever get to go to this unaffected country you will dis
cover a land totally devoid of any religious constraints and politic. And has been isolated for so long that evolution has continued unaffected until the arrival of man and the disease he bought here not two hundred years ago.
It truly is unique in that way and it’s probably why it’s so much fun to live and work there.










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