"In a Sunburned Country'" by Bill Bryson

In a Sunburned Country by Bill Bryson, (New York, Broadway Books, 2001)

ISBN 0-7679-0386-2.

Bill Bryson's In a Sunburned Country (also titled Down Under in some markets) is an account of his travels in Australia in the 1990's. The title, as Bryson acknowledges, is taken from a poem much beloved in Australia, but hardly known elsewhere. The fact that this poem is largely ignored and overlooked outside Australia is very appropriate considering that Bryson's book is about a largely ignored and overlooked country. The world outside Australia knows that its there yet, for the most part, considers it not worth of its attention. This is quite understandable when you consider that Australia is a largely and empty country. Its also a long way from nearly everywhere, making access difficult, expensive and time consuming. Its population is small by world standards and its place in the world is largely peripheral. Its sports are of little interest, and it doesn't cause trouble or upset other nations. Bryson's view is that we are all the poorer for our ignorance of Australia: to him its a fascinating place populated by good-natured people where interesting things happen. Bryson takes it upon himself to evangelise to the world with a message that we should pay a lot more attention to this ancient and distant land.

Bryson's recalls a series of journeys. In the first section, he spends a few days in Sydney prior to traveling to Perth by train on the Indian-Pacific Railway, the second longest train journey in the world after the Trans-Siberian Railway. He breaks his train trip at the old mining town of Broken Hill, and makes a side journey by four wheel drive vehicle to the opal mining town of White Cliffs, notable for its inhabitants' tendency to live in underground accommodation dug into the hills, done primarily to escape the oppressive heat.

In his second narrative, Bryson explores Sydney and its surrounds, before traveling west by car through the Blue Mountains to various agricultural and horticultural areas. He drives onward to Canberra (Australia's unusual capital city), Adelaide (the only major city not to be settled convicts), and then to Melbourne, where he is joined a former newspaper colleague who shows him the sights of the region.

Bryson then travels by car from Sydney to Surfer's Paradise. During this journey north up part of Australia's ridiculously long east cost, he detours to visit the site of an Aboriginal massacre, a place even ignored or forgotten by Australians. After a plane flight to tropical Cairns, he "dives" on the Great Barrier Reef. After another plane flight to Darwin, he and a colleague drive south through the Northern Territory to Alice Springs, and then to Ayers Rock/Uluru. His final narrative comprises an account of his exploration of the Perth region, and his exploration of the coast of Western Australia north of Perth.

It would not surprise readers familiar with Bryson's other book to know that he again excels at meshing his pithy, humourous and sometimes sarcastic observations with a wide and detailed reading of history (both recent and not so recent), which place many events in context, and gives rise to occasional hilarity. For example, Bryson was startled to read that in 1967, the then Australian Prime Minister (Harold Holt), while one day walking along the beach, plunged into the surf for a swim and was never seen again. Bryson was both astounded that a county could have a Prime Minister that could just disappear, and that news of this event had failed to reach him. He later views Holt's official portrait in Canberra, and visits the beach where he vanished. Upon leaving the beach, a guide almost as an afterthought, tells him that a memorial was built to honor Holt, and the memorial was a municipal swimming pool.

Bryson's incurable curiosity, wide reading, enthusiasm, optimism and openness to the unfamiliar is engaging and effective. His genuine enthusiasm and love for Australia and makes this book immensely enjoyable and makes every reader want to pay more attention to this exciting, isolated and overlooked destination.