In a Sunburned Country offers the best of all possible introductions to what may well be the best of all possible nations.

The dangerous riptides of the sea and the sun-baked wastes of the outback both lie in wait for the unwary.Īustralia is an immense and fortunate land, and it has found in Bill Bryson its perfect guide. In fact, Australia has more things that can kill you in extremely nasty ways than anywhere else: sharks, crocodiles, the planet's ten most deadly poisonous snakes, fluffy yet toxic caterpillars, sea shells that actually attack you, and the unbelievable box jellyfish (don't ask). And despite the fact that it is the most desiccated, infertile and climatically aggressive of all inhabited continents, it teems with life. The Chinese appeared to be more diligent and cooperative than their European counterparts, so they seemed to have found more gold in the eyes of others. Its aboriginal people, a remote and mysterious race with a tragic history, have made it their home for millennia. In April 1860, a discovery of gold set off a gold rush at Lambing Flat, and among 22,000 diggers, 2,000 Chinese men joined in at the chance of striking gold too. It's a place where interesting things happen all the time, from a Prime Minister lost - yes, lost - while swimming at sea, to Japanese cult members who may (entirely unnoticed) have set off an atomic bomb on their 500,000 acre property in the great western desert.Īustralia is the only island that is also a continent, and the only continent that is also a country. It is a terrible burden to bear.Deliciously funny, fact-filled and adventurous, In a Sunburned Country takes us on a grand tour of Australia. Then I shriek once or twice in a piercing and effeminate manner and wake up to find that all motion within five hundred feet has stopped and all children under eight are clutching their mothers’ hems. For long periods I grow unnaturally still, in a way that inclines onlookers to exchange glances and lean forward in concern, then dramatically I stiffen and, after a tantalizing pause, begin to bounce and jostle in a series of whole-body spasms of the sort that bring to mind an electric chair when the switch is thrown. And I snore, hugely and helplessly, like a cartoon character, with rubbery flapping lips and prolonged steam-valve exhalations.

From time to time, like one of those nodding-duck toys, my head tips forward to empty a quart or so of viscous drool onto my lap, then falls back to begin loading again with a noise like a toilet cistern filling. Whatever is inside-tongue, uvula, moist bubbles of intestinal air-decides to leak out.

My legs fall open in a grotesque come-hither manner my knuckles brush the floor. His previous excursion along the Appalachian Trail resulted in the sublime national bestseller A Walk in the Woods. I sleep as if injected with a powerful experimental muscle relaxant. Every time Bill Bryson walks out the door, memorable travel literature threatens to break out. Most people when they nod off look as if they could do with a blanket I look as if I could do with medical attention. “I am not, I regret to say, a discreet and fetching sleeper.

In a sunburned country sparknotes