"In a Sunburned Country" by Bill Bryson (ISBN 0-7679-0385-4)

Bill Bryson has produced a thoroughly enjoyable travel narrative with "In a Sunburned Country". The country is Australia and Bryson is not out to "sell" us anything or play "chamber of commerce spokesman"; just to share his enthusiasms, experiences, and impressions of this vast, mostly empty and parched, but interesting part of the world.

Bryson has a talent for getting facts across without sounding like a lecturer and his choice of material is delicious. Where else would you expect to learn that Australia has "lost" a prime minister, had a possible clandestine nuclear explosion, more poisonous snakes than anywhere else and the longest stretch of straight railroad track in the world (297 miles). He also is not afraid to look into more serious questions like the status of the aborigines or the penal colony origins of the country. All this is done with obvious affection and an understanding that real places are sometimes confusing and messy.

He is not out to dissect the country, however, he takes neither himself nor his experiences too seriously. The descriptions of himself asleep in a car or his escape from a pack of dogs are laugh out loud funny. He also has a talent for descriptive phrases; listening to a cricket match on the radio is like "having a nap without loosing consciousness". His itinerary is eclectic, including some obvious tourist attractions as well as some obscure off beat sites. The attitude seems to be that there is no point to traveling to a distant land just to see and do the same things you can do at home. Indeed at times he seems to welcome the problems and last minute changes in plan that are inevitable on any ambitious journey. He also understands that the best way to get to know a country is on foot and that walking from a tour bus to a motel does NOT count. Bryson instinctively knows that getting to know a place takes time, effort and occasional dead ends, but that both the process and the results are rewarding.

"In a Sunburned Country" continues the tradition of travel writing in the manner of Mark Twain's "The Innocent's Abroad", "A Tramp Abroad" and "Roughing It". He is an intelligent, witty, interested, articulate, and keen observer that lets us travel with him in absentia. He has managed to have me add to my "lottery fantasy" list a trip to Australia.

JGD