After that, Adelaide, the southernmost of the four great cities of the Boomerang Coast, where citizens seem to go out of their way to tell Bryson that the city, which has lost much of its former commercial success to Sydney, is dying. From Sydney, Bryson visits the rather bucolic Canberra, capital of Australia and a city lost within a park. On his second trip, Bryson takes a driving tour of the Boomerang Coast, the crescent of inhabited area along Australia's southeastern shore that contains the bulk of its people and its four largest cities. Next, he and photographer Trevor Ray Hart hop the famous Indian Pacific railroad for a ride across the bottom half of the continent to Perth.

In vain, he attempts to boogie board at a local beach, then finds himself stupefied by the glitz of the local gambling club.

Coverage of political news from Australia is scant in western presses, and social news from the continent is almost nonexistent, despite its size and prominence in world affairs, both as a land of immense resources, and as a unique fighting force in the great wars of the twentieth century.īryson's first trip takes him to Sydney, where he walks the town, admiring the famous Sydney Opera House and the Harbor Bridge.

Australia, a land of extremes representing almost every climate on Earth and filled with more unique flora and fauna than any other continent, is largely ignored by the rest of the world. It is a terrible burden to bear.Journalist and humorist Bill Bryson takes three trips down under to tell the story of the forgotten continent. 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. I sleep as if injected with a powerful experimental muscle relaxant. 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.

Bryson in a sunburned country