Down Under

Product Description

It was as if I had privately discovered life on another planet or a parallel universe where life was at once recognizably similar but entirely different. I can't tell you how exciting it was. Insofar as I had accumulated my expectations of Australia at all in the intervening years I had thought of it as a kind of alternative southern California a place of constant sunshine & the cheerful vapidity of a beach lifestyle but with a slightly British bent
- a sort of Baywatch with cricket...' Of course what greeted Bill Bryson was something rather different. Australia is a country that exists on a vast scale. It is the world's sixth largest country & its largest isl&. It is the only island that is also a continent & the only continent that is also a country. It is the driest flattest hottest most desiccated infertile & climatically aggressive of all the inhabited continents & still it teems with life
- a large proportion of it quite deadly. In fact Australia has more things that can kill you in a very nasty way than anywhere else. 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. 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 irresistable currents or left to stagger to an unhappy death in the baking outback. Ignoring such dangers
- yet curiously obsessed by them
- Bill Bryson journeyed to Australia & promptly fell in love with the country. & who can blame him? The people are cheerful extrovert quick-witted & unfailingly obliging; their cities are safe & clean & nearly always built on water; the food is excellent; the beer is cold & the sun nearly always shines. Life doesn't get much better than this.