The first thing we felt after arriving in Sydney, was that we really wanted to know everything about this country. We wanted to learn the way people live their life, how they are thinking, and about their culture and habits as well. One of my friends suggested reading Down Under by Bill Bryson, which was actually a really good idea. Meanwhile more of our friends - mainly non-Australians either - were also talking about stories told in this book. It is a relatively well known and popular work of Bill Bryson both among Australians and among travelers. Unfortunately we have not read other books of him yet, but we certainly can recommend you this one. Bill Bryson has a good sense of humor, and gives quite a lot of information about places and the local life, general habits, etc. You feel as if you were there and as if he tells exactly the same as what you felt in those places/situations.

If you wish to laugh while reading about his journey through Australia - from Sydney through Perth to Darwin and Queensland, etc. - then take this book and start it. We are looking forward to your opinion and we are curious to hear your stories too.

Here are some quotes to get you in the mood:

“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 from London 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 never reached me.” (p. 15.)

“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 world`s first non-governmental atomic bomb on its mainland and almost four years would pass before anyone noticed. Clearly this is a place worth getting to know.” (p.18.)

“Five hundred miles from any real town to east or west, a hundred miles from he nearest paved highway to the south and over a thousand to the north, Cook (pop. 40) exists solely to water, fuel and otherwise service the trains that pass through. Beside the track stood a sign that said: `No Food or Fuel for Next 862 Kilometres` - rather a daunting thought, what?” (p. 61.)

“But all of these are as nothing compared with the delicate and diaphanous box jellyfish, the most poisonous creature on earth. We will hear more of the unspeakable horrors of this little bag of lethality when we get to the tropics, but let me offer here just one small story. In 1992, a young man in Cairns, ignoring all the warning signs, went swimming in the Pacific waters at a place called Holloways Beach. He swam and dived, taunting his friends on the beach for their prudent cowardice, and then began to scream with an inhuman sound. It is said that there is no pain to compare with it. The young man staggered from the water, covered in livid whip-like stripes wherever the jelly-fish’s tentacles had brushed across him, and collapsed in quivering shock. Soon afterwards emergency crews arrived, inflated him with morphine, and took him away for treatment. And here’s the thing. Even unconscious and sedated he was still screaming.”(p. 84)

(Bill Bryson, 2000: Down Under)

• Bill Bryson was born in Des Moines, Iowa, in 1951. He is a best selling author of humorous books on travel, the English language and on Scientific subjects. Some of his famous titles are “The Lost Continent”, “Made in America”, “Notes from a Small Island” and “A Short History of Nearly Everything”. Down Under is also published as “In a Sunburned Country”.
• More information can be found on the official Bill Bryson website, or on Wikipedia

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