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In a Sunburned Country (Paperback)
by Bill Bryson
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| MSL Pointer Review:
America's finest travel writer scores again! This book is hugely entertaining and conversational, and is definitely one of Bryson's best. |
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Author: Bill Bryson
Publisher: Broadway
Pub. in: May, 2001
ISBN: 0767903862
Pages: 352
Measurements: 8 x 5.3 x 1 inches
Origin of product: USA
Order code: BA00582
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- Awards & Credential -
A New York Times Bestseller, very well received on Amazon.com ranking # 623 as of November 29, 2006. |
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- MSL Picks -
Compared to his Australian excursions, Bill Bryson had it easy on the Appalachian Trail. Nonetheless, Bryson has on several occasions embarked on seemingly endless flights bound for a land where Little Debbies are scarce but insects are abundant (up to 220,000 species of them), not to mention the crocodiles.
Taking readers on a rollicking ride far beyond packaged-tour routes, In a Sunburned Country introduces a place where interesting things happen all the time, from a Prime Minister who was lost at sea while swimming at a Victoria beach to Japanese cult members who managed to set off an atomic bomb unnoticed on their 500,000-acre property. Leaving no Vegemite unsavored readers will accompany Bryson as he dodges jellyfish while learning to surf at Bondi Beach, discovers a fish that can climb trees, dehydrates in deserts where the temperatures leap to 140degreeF, and tells the true story of the rejected Danish architect who designed the Sydney Opera House.
Published just in time for the Olympics, In a Sunburned Country provides a singularly intriguing, wonderfully wacky take on a glorious, adventure-filled locale.
Bill Bryson is a fantastic travel writer, probably the funniest travel writer out there. His wry comedic style and self-deprecating humor make himself as much a part of his travel narratives as the places he visits. His ability to find interest in the mundane, absurdity in the commonplace, and value in almost every aspect of his travels is wonderful. He has a particularly amusing knack for describing people, both historical figures and people he meets along the way. He has a great appreciation for the eccentricities of human behavior. He also seems to thrive on describing in great detail all the dangers of the world-things that could maim and/or kill you. While he has a great love for nature, he's also quick to point out that nature, more often than not, wants to kill and eat us. These make Australia perfect for Bryson. It's a land of eccentric people and dangerous animals and landscapes. It's like the entire country was made for Bryson's talents.
Bryson wanders well off the well-worn tourist trail, visiting small towns and unheard-of museums along the way. But in truth it doesn't matter where he goes because he could describe dirt for thirty pages and it would be entertaining. Still, his timing is perhaps his greatest strength. Just when you might be tiring of his day, he interjects some history or some interesting facts. He knows exactly how much is enough and not too much. While this isn't my favorite Bryson (A Walk in the Woods), it's certainly right up there at the top. And I have yet to read anything by him that I didn't like. I was only in Australia once for a short time, but everything Bryson says rings true, and it makes me want to go back. Bill Bryson is best known for writing very humorous travel books, and In a Sunburned Country is indeed a funny account of his travels in Australia. Those who love Bill Bryson's books for their humor won't be disappointed.
But unlike most people, I like Bill Bryson best when he's NOT trying to be funny, and my appreciation of this book is mostly due to the great amount of very interesting information presented.
Bill Bryson amazes you with loads of information about the geology, the animal life, the plants and insects, the history, the statistics, the folklore, etc., etc. The many dangers: poisonous snakes, poisonous insects, poisonous jellyfish, crocodiles, sharks, and rip currents - they're all out to get you. The inhospitable deserts, the beautiful beaches, the huge distances; Bill Bryson gives you a feeling of what it's all like.
The book goes into detail about many aspects of Australian life that are fairly unknown, including the discovery (and re-discovery) of Australia, the settlement by British prisoners, the early expeditions to explore the interior, the gold rushes, the outlaws, and the devastation caused by rabbits and other imported animals and plants. Bill Bryson talks about the many unusual animal species found only in Australia, including giant earthworms that grow up to 1 meter (and can be stretched to 4 meters) and the platypus, a cross between a reptile and a mammal. He talks about Australians and the Australian society, and the situation regarding the native people, the aboriginals.
Bill Bryson doesn't cover all of Australia from the geographical point of view, and the parts he does cover are somewhat random. But that doesn't matter because he captures the spirit of the whole country based on the parts he does visit and the general information he includes.
A very positive aspect is that Bill Bryson makes it clear that he loves Australia. The feeling is infectious, and it makes you want to pack your bags and head "down under" for a long leisurely trip so you can do your own exploring.
If I were to mention two things I was less happy about, it would be the occasional excessive attempts to be funny and the lack of contact with Australians. One of the best parts of the book is about his traveling together with an Australian couple for 3-4 days, but other than this passage Bill Bryson is mostly playing the typical tourist, with little or no contact with Australians. And despite a fairly long discussion about the aboriginal situation he does not ever get into contact with any aboriginals. Why not?
A final note regarding the unabridged audio version of the book, read by Bill Bryson himself: Most authors are poor readers, but Mr. Bryson does a very good job here, almost on a par with a professional reader. Recommended. (From quoting Publisher, Bosil and Rennie Peterson, USA)
Target readers:
General readers
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Bill Bryson's many books include, most recently, I'm a Stranger Here Myself, as well as A Walk in the Woods, Lost Continent, Notes from a Small Island, and Mother Tongue. Born in Des Moines, Iowa, in 1951, he lived in England for almost two decades. He now lives in Hanover, New Hampshire, with his wife and their four children.
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From the Publisher:
Every time Bill Bryson walks out the door, memorable travel literature threatens to break out. His previous excursion along the Appalachian Trail resulted in the sublime national bestseller A Walk in the Woods. In A Sunburned Country is his report on what he found in an entirely different place: Australia, the country that doubles as a continent, and a place with the friendliest inhabitants, the hottest, driest weather, and the most peculiar and lethal wildlife to be found on the planet. The result is a deliciously funny, fact-filled, and adventurous performance by a writer who combines humor, wonder, and unflagging curiosity.
Despite the fact that Australia harbors more things that can kill you in extremely nasty ways than anywhere else, including sharks, crocodiles, snakes, even riptides and deserts, Bill Bryson adores the place, and he takes his readers on a rollicking ride far beyond that beaten tourist path. Wherever he goes he finds Australians who are cheerful, extroverted, and unfailingly obliging, and these beaming products of land with clean, safe cities, cold beer, and constant sunshine fill the pages of this wonderful book. Australia is an immense and fortunate land, and it has found in Bill Bryson its perfect guide.
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Chapter 1
I
Flying into Australia, I realized with a sigh that I had forgotten again who their prime minister is. I am forever doing this with the Australian prime minister - committing the name to memory, forgetting it (generally more or less instantly), then feeling terribly guilty. My thinking is that there ought to be one person outside Australia who knows.
But then Australia is such a difficult country to keep track of. On my first visit, some years ago, I passed the time on the long flight reading a history of Australian politics in the twentieth century, wherein I encountered the startling fact that in 1967 the prime minister, Harold Holt, was strolling along a beach in Victoria when he plunged into the surf and vanished. No trace of the poor man was ever seen again. This seemed doubly astounding to me - first that Australia could just lose a prime minister (I mean, come on) and second that news of this had never reached me.
The fact is, of course, we pay shamefully scant attention to our dear cousins Down Under - not entirely without reason, of course. Australia is after all mostly empty and a long way away. Its population, just over 18 million, is small by world standards - China grows by a larger amount each year - and its place in the world economy is consequently peripheral; as an economic entity, it ranks about level with Illinois. Its sports are of little interest to us and the last television series it made that we watched with avidity was Skippy. From time to time it sends us useful things - opals, merino wool, Errol Flynn, the boomerang - but nothing we can't actually do without. Above all, Australia doesn't misbehave. It is stable and peaceful and good. It doesn't have coups, recklessly overfish, arm disagreeable despots, grow coca in provocative quantities, or throw its weight around in a brash and unseemly manner.
But even allowing for all this, our neglect of Australian affairs is curious. Just before I set off on this trip I went to my local library in New Hampshire and looked Australia up in the New York Times Index to see how much it had engaged our attention in recent years. I began with the 1997 volume for no other reason than that it was open on the table. In that year across the full range of possible interests - politics, sports, travel, the coming Olympics in Sydney, food and wine, the arts, obituaries, and so on - the Times ran 20 articles that were predominantly on or about Australian affairs. In the same period, for purposes of comparison, the Times ran 120 articles on Peru, 150 or so on Albania and a similar number on Cambodia, more than 300 on each of the Koreas, and well over 500 on Israel. As a place that caught our interest Australia ranked about level with Belarus and Burundi. Among the general subjects that outstripped it were balloons and balloonists, the Church of Scientology, dogs (though not dog sledding), Barneys, Inc., and Pamela Harriman, the former ambassador and socialite who died in February 1997, a misfortune that evidently required recording 22 times in the Times. Put in the crudest terms, Australia was slightly more important to us in 1997 than bananas, but not nearly as important as ice cream.
As it turns out, 1997 was actually quite a good year for Australian news. In 1996 the country was the subject of just nine news reports and in 1998 a mere six. Australians can't bear it that we pay so little attention to them, and I don't blame them. This is a country where interesting things happen, and all the time.
Consider just one of those stories that did make it into the Times in 1997, though buried away in the odd-sock drawer of Section C. In January of that year, according to a report written in America by a Times reporter, scientists were seriously investigating the possibility that a mysterious seismic disturbance in the remote Australian outback almost four years earlier had been a nuclear explosion set off by members of the Japanese doomsday cult Aum Shinrikyo.
It happens that at 11:03 p.m. local time on May 28, 1993, seismograph needles all over the Pacific region twitched and scribbled in response to a very large-scale disturbance near a place called Banjawarn Station in the Great Victoria Desert of Western Australia. Some long-distance truckers and prospectors, virtually the only people out in that lonely expanse, reported seeing a sudden flash in the sky and hearing or feeling the boom of a mighty but far-off explosion. One reported that a can of beer had danced off the table in his tent.
The problem was that there was no obvious explanation. The seismograph traces didn't fit the profile for an earthquake or mining explosion, and anyway the blast was 170 times more powerful than the most powerful mining explosion ever recorded in Western Australia. The shock was consistent with a large meteorite strike, but the impact would have blown a crater hundreds of feet in circumference, and no such crater could be found. The upshot is that scientists puzzled over the incident for a day or two, then filed it away as an unexplained curiosity - the sort of thing that presumably happens from time to time.
Then in 1995 Aum Shinrikyo gained sudden notoriety when it released extravagant quantities of the nerve gas sarin into the Tokyo subway system, killing twelve people. In the investigations that followed, it emerged that Aum's substantial holdings included a 500,000-acre desert property in Western Australia very near the site of the mystery event. There, authorities found a laboratory of unusual sophistication and focus, and evidence that cult members had been mining uranium. It separately emerged that Aum had recruited into its ranks two nuclear engineers from the former Soviet Union. The group's avowed aim was the destruction of the world, and it appears that the event in the desert may have been a dry run for blowing up Tokyo.
You take my point, of course. This is a country that loses a prime minister and that is so vast and empty that a band of amateur enthusiasts could conceivably set off the world's first nongovernmental atomic bomb on its mainland and almost four years would pass before anyone noticed.* Clearly this is a place worth getting to know.
* Interestingly, no Australian newspapers seem to have picked up on this story and the New York Times never returned to it, so what happened in the desert remains a mystery. Aum Shinrikyo sold its desert property in August 1994, fifteen months after the mysterious blast but seven months before it gained notoriety with its sarin attack in the Tokyo subway system. If any investigating authority took the obvious step of measuring the area around Banjawarn Station for increased levels of radiation, it has not been reported.
And so, because we know so little about it, perhaps a few facts would be in order:
Australia is the world's sixth largest country and its largest island. It is the only island that is also a continent, and the only continent that is also a country. It was the first continent conquered from the sea, and the last. It is the only nation that began as a prison.
It is the home of the largest living thing on earth, the Great Barrier Reef, and of the largest monolith, Ayers Rock (or Uluru to use its now-official, more respectful Aboriginal name). It has more things that will kill you than anywhere else. Of the world's ten most poisonous snakes, all are Australian. Five of its creatures - the funnel web spider, box jellyfish, blue-ringed octopus, paralysis tick, and stonefish - are the most lethal of their type in the world. This is a country where even the fluffiest of caterpillars can lay you out with a toxic nip, where seashells will not just sting you but actually sometimes go for you. Pick up an innocuous cone shell from a Queensland beach, as innocent tourists are all too wont to do, and you will discover that the little fellow inside is not just astoundingly swift and testy but exceedingly venomous. If you are not stung or pronged to death in some unexpected manner, you may be fatally chomped by sharks or crocodiles, or carried helplessly out to sea by irresistible currents, or left to stagger to an unhappy death in the baking outback. It's a tough place.
And it is old. For 60 million years since the formation of the Great Dividing Range, the low but deeply fetching mountains that run down its eastern flank, Australia has been all but silent geologically. In consequence, things, once created, have tended just to lie there. So many of the oldest objects ever found on earth - the most ancient rocks and fossils, the earliest animal tracks and riverbeds, the first faint signs of life itself - have come from Australia.
At some undetermined point in the great immensity of its past - perhaps 45,000 years ago, perhaps 60,000, but certainly before there were modern humans in the Americas or Europe - it was quietly invaded by a deeply inscrutable people, the Aborigines, who have no clearly evident racial or linguistic kinship to their neighbors in the region, and whose presence in Australia can only be explained by positing that they invented and mastered ocean- going craft at least 30,000 years in advance of anyone else, in order to undertake an exodus, then forgot or abandoned nearly all that they had learned and scarcely ever bothered with the open sea again.
It is an accomplishment so singular and extraordinary, so uncomfortable with scrutiny, that most histories breeze over it in a paragraph or two, then move on to the second, more explicable invasion - the one that begins with the arrival of Captain James Cook and his doughty little ship HMS Endeavour in Botany Bay in 1770. Never mind that Captain Cook didn't discover Australia and that he wasn't even yet a captain at the time of his visit. For most people, including most Australians, this is where the story begins.
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Chicago Tribune (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-31 00:00>
What the indefatigable, keenly observant Bryson did a few years back for the Applachian Trail with A Walk in the Woods... he does now for the generally undiscovered land Down Under. |
The New York Times (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-31 00:00>
Vastly entertaining... If there is one book with which to get oriented before departure or en route to Australia, this is it. |
Kirkus Reviews (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-31 00:00>
Just in time for Sydney's upcoming Olympic Games, this travel narrative from veteran wanderer Bryson (I'm a Stranger Here Myself, 1999, etc.) provides an appreciative, informative, and hilarious portrait of the land Down Under. And so once more to the wandering road, declares Bryson - which is music to the ears of his many deserving fans. This time it is Australia, a country tailor-made to surrender just the kind of amusing facts Bryson loves. It was here, after all, that the Prime Minister dove into the surf of Victoria one day and simply disappeared - the prime minister, mind you. There are more things here to kill you than anywhere else in the world: all of the ten most poisonous snakes, sharks and crocodiles in abundance, the paralytic tick, and venomous seashells that will not just sting you but actually sometimes go for you. A place harsh and hostile to life, staggeringly empty yet packed with stuff. Interesting stuff, ancient stuff, stuff not readily explained. And Bryson finds it everywhere: in the Aborigines (who evidently invented and mastered oceangoing craft 30,000 years before anyone else, then promptly forgot all about the sea), in the Outback (where men are men and sheep are nervous), in stories from the days of early European exploration (of such horrific proportions they can be appreciated only as farce), and in the numerous rural pubs (where Bryson learns the true meaning of a hangover). Bryson is still open to wonder at the end of his pilgrimage: the grand and noble Uluru (once known as Ayer's Rock) reaches right down into his primordial memory and gives it a stir. I'm just observing that if I were looking for an ancient starship this is where I would start digging. That's all I'm saying. Bryson is a real traveler, the kind of guy who can be entertained by (and be entertaining about) a featureless landscape scattered with rocks the color of bad teeth. Fortunately for him and for us, there's a lot more to Australia than that. |
Susan Wakefield (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-31 00:00>
My first foray into the world of Bill Bryson's work has left an indelible mark on me - I am in love with it, and cannot get enough of it. It's hard enough to try to get to know and write about such a great expanse of land when you're not Australian -but Bryson for the most part successfully does so. As an Australian who has lived in the US for the past 8 years, I cannot say i would be able to write as comprehensively and accurately about his country as he has about mine!
A sharp wit combined with a wonderful sense of humor made this a real page turner; Bryson accurately captures the essence and feeling of Australia - he comes not only to appreciate and understand us, but in the little pub in Daly Waters, I believe he becomes one of "us." Bryson captures all the beauty, irony, sadness, history, and geography that makes up this beautiful place I call home, and his gentle blend of fact and humor and anecdote makes this an unforgettable read. To elaborate: his ability to point out the inherent irony in "losing a prime minister" and subsequently naming a public swimming pool after a man who drowned is something that has always baffled me too, and I'm Australian! Or the fact that our national volume of history is only written up to the year 1935 made me question just how "modern" Australia really is. Bryson reports several times throughout that "it feels like 1951" - and that was interesting to learn, given that it is his American perspective. So too, i can similarly say as much about America when I see an antiquated wood- paneled wagon pass me on the most advanced road system in the world, or people signing checks at the supermarket check out (checks are no longer in use in Australia), which makes Bryson's alien perspective on Australia all the more interesting!
I enjoyed how Bryson gently touched on sensitive points too - our general lack of confidence and identity for example - I never knew how confused we were, when Bryson accurately noted that we're not sure if we're Brits or Yanks, even in the green room!
My only criticisms would extend to Bryson's implication that Aussies are "self absorbed" - something which I would strongly argue as false, given that much more international news reaches Australia's four paltry television stations than it does any of the 400+ cable TV/news media in the US.
Another point of contention: the implication that Australia tends to exist on the peripheries of the planet, outside of the "known world"(p. 238). I personally found this to be offensive. Bryson's claims that "[in Australia] it is easy to forget... that there is a world out there" (p. 239) is blatantly untrue; in fact, I find that most Australians are very much engaged in world affairs both internally and abroad, and I would go so far as to say that I think they are more well informed on most international matters than are Americans. I tend to think it is Americans who are more "disconnected," to quote Bryson here, and it is not the implied "distance" which is the cause, but a very controlled and closed media. The reason you don't hear anything about Australia in the US is simply because it is not of interest, it is not reported. Every Australian knows the name of the US President or the capital; however, ask the average American who is Australia's Prime Minister or where Canberra is and all you will get is a blank look in return. My only other quibble is that of the voice; I'm puzzled why Bryson would lend an Australian tone and slang to a book written from an obviously American perspective? I would have preferred to hear "sweater" not jumper etc. as this lends to the authenticity of the author's work.
Overall, a beautifully written, comprehensive and detailed account of Van Diemans Land. Bryson sure has done a lot of hard homework in between beers, and it, as well as his love for Australia shows. Further, I am sure all Australians will be thankful to him for many years to come for documenting this place I call home. |
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