In a Sunburned Country
by Bill Bryson
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Book Summary Information
Author: Bill BrysonEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2001-05-15
ISBN: 0767903862
Number of pages: 352
Publisher: Broadway
Product features:
- ISBN13: 9780767903868
- Condition: New
- Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!
Book Reviews of In a Sunburned Country
Book Review: I'm Wild About In a Sunburned Country
Summary: 5 Stars
Having traveled through many countries, including Australia, as a journalist, photographer, explorer and teacher, I can honestly say that I have simply never enjoyed a travel book so much.
Bryson pulls you in from the very first page. He explains that Australia is a country so vast that in 1967, they lost their Prime Minister, Harold Holt. "I mean, come on!" He plunged into the surf in Victoria and simply vanished.
Bryson talks about the various ways you can bite it in Australia, including being bitten by poisonous snakes and of course, sharks and crocodiles. Then there are the boxer jellyfish. Bryson explains that one young man was stung by such a creature and even while unconscious and sedated with morphine he was screaming in agony.
Bryson's trek on the luxury train across The Outback was filled with humor. He speaks of notes that he'd scrawled on the back of coasters for later use; "G attacked by camel in lav. Alice Springs, 1947. Great!"
Australia only has 18 million citizens and China increases in size every year more than that. (Despite the one child policy, forced abortion and slave labor laogai gulags to make our Christmas toys - perhaps the subject of Bryson's next book?) Australia is the world's sixth largest country, the only continent that is a country, the world's largest island and the only nation that began as a prison. Australia, Bryson explains, spends US$ 7.3 billion every year on gambling. The Simpson Desert, which covers an area of 100,000 square miles, didn't even receive its name until 1932.
And I bet you didn't know that Sydney was originally supposed to be called "Albion."
Can you imagine hearing them say; "Welcome to the Albion Olympics?"
Mr. Bryson's work is peppered with clever terms like "rent with" and "want hanging," and "you'll be apples" which are unusual and demonstrate his true gift as a writer. (I prefer the British term "trolleyed" meaning "being very drunk" as my own personal favorite, though this term didn't make the cut in Bryson's book.)
His notation on the probability that Japan's Aum Shin Rikyo doomsday cult may have set off the world's first non-governmental nuclear bomb in the Australian Outback back in 1993 was the stuff of pure journalism. (This was reported in the New York Times. As an aside, I myself published a well-received article on Aum Shin Rikyo for WND.com several years ago. However, like most people, I was shocked to learn about the Aum-A bomb connection.)
Yet Bryson's talents as a researcher cannot be confined to any single genre. He is also a true fan of history it seems. (I am as well and this is what makes In a Sunburned Country such a treat for any reader who shares that love of history.)
For example, Bryson tells the reader that back in 1931, that a proto-ant called "Nothomyrmecia" which lived over 100 million years ago, was "(re)-discovered" in the nether reaches of Australia.
His review of Burke and Wills famous trek across Australia, as well as Captain Cook's expedition (which was featured in an old but very brilliant National Geographic article which it appears Bryson studied) are nothing short of masterful.
There are other delicious nuggets sprinkled in the book along the way.
In 1935, a 14-foot shark was captured and placed in an aquarium in the town of Coogee, north of Sydney. After two days the shark vomited up Jimmy Smith's arm. Jimmy, standing there at the aquarium, may well had gotten the second greatest fright of his life.
In 1938 at Bondi Beach, four giant, rouge waves swept in out of the blue and carried off 200 people out to sea. The waves were 25 feet high. Fortunately, Bryson explains, 50 lifeguards were on hand and saved 194 people. Only six perished. (Today scientists have begun studying rouge waves in earnest.)
Bryson introduces the reader to mariners like Luis Vaez de Torres and Abel Tasman who played key roles in Australia's discovery, or near discovery through the years.
According to Bryson, Joseph Banks, who sailed with Captain Cook, collected so many specimens of plants that the National Museum of History in London is still busy cataloging them. (They need to hire a few interns!)
Bryson's finest moments as a historian and humorist come when describing the early prison colonization of Australia. One of the prisoners sent to Australia was charged with stealing 12 cucumber plants. Another man had stolen a book called "A summary account of the Flourishing State of Tobago." Those were rough times in England, Bryson tells us. A person could be hung for over 200 offenses including "impersonating an Egyptian."
In a hilarious recounting, Bryson recreates the encounter Captain Arthur Phillip, who led the colonization at Botany Bay in 1787, had with a French mariner, Count Jean-Francois de la Perouse. Perouse had sailed into Australia on the very heels of Phillip and his party. When they met, Phillip had to explain to Perouse that he'd just sailed 15,000 miles to build a prison for people who "had stolen lace ribbons, some cucumber plants and a book on Tobago."
Says Bryson, the look on the Frenchman's face, "must have been one of the great looks in history." The Frenchman sailed away as a good sport, unable to "save Australia from 200 years of English cooking" and later sank and drowned off of New Hebrides.
You just don't recover from a loss like that.
Bryson also visits interesting towns like Broken Hill, which may lead the reader to conjure images of Mel Gibson riding around The Outback in a dune buggy wearing ice hockey pads on the outside of his clothes, sporting a Geiger Counter and wrestling with "Master Blaster" in a cage which Tina Turner looks on with the aplomb of a queen tossing aside a drumstick at a Thanksgiving feast.
If you love traveling and or Australia, I cannot recommend In A Sunburned Country highly enough. This terrific book has made this writer want to travel back to Australia and pick up where Bryson left off.
Summary of In a Sunburned Country
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 curiousity.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.
Bill Bryson follows his Appalachian amble, A Walk in the Woods, with the story of his exploits in Australia, where A-bombs go off unnoticed, prime ministers disappear into the surf, and cheery citizens coexist with the world's deadliest creatures: toxic caterpillars, aggressive seashells, crocodiles, sharks, snakes, and the deadliest of them all, the dreaded box jellyfish. And that's just the beginning, as Bryson treks through sunbaked deserts and up endless coastlines, crisscrossing the "under-discovered" Down Under in search of all things interesting.
Bryson, who could make a pile of dirt compelling--and yes, Australia is mostly dirt--finds no shortage of curiosities. When he isn't dodging Portuguese man-of-wars or considering the virtues of the remarkable platypus, he visits southwest Gippsland, home of the world's largest earthworms (up to 12 feet in length). He discovers that Australia, which began nationhood as a prison, contains the longest straight stretch of railroad track in the world (297 miles), as well as the world's largest monolith (the majestic Uluru) and largest living thing (the Great Barrier Reef). He finds ridiculous place names: "Mullumbimby Ewylamartup, Jiggalong, and the supremely satisfying Tittybong," and manages to catch a cricket game on the radio, which is like
listening to two men sitting in a rowboat on a large, placid lake on a day when the fish aren't biting; it's like having a nap without losing consciousness. It actually helps not to know quite what's going on. In such a rarefied world of contentment and inactivity, comprehension would become a distraction.
"You see," Bryson observes, "Australia is an interesting place. It truly is. And that really is all I'm saying." Of course, Bryson--who is as much a travel writer here as a humorist, naturalist, and historian--says much more, and does so with generous amounts of wit and hilarity. Australia may be "mostly empty and a long way away," but it's a little closer now. --Rob McDonald
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