It doesn't have coups, recklessly overfish, arm disagreeable despots, grow coca in provocative quantities, or throw its weight around in a brash and unseemly manner. Those who read Bill Bryson’s travel books must end up in two minds about whether or not they would like to be his travelling companion for one of his journeys: or indeed, one of the people he meets, chats with, or whose conversations he overhears and records. His previous excursion along the Appalachian Trail resulted in the sublime national bestseller "A Walk in the Woods. The upshot is that scientists puzzled over the incident for a day or two, then filed it away as an unexplained curiosity--the sort of thing that presumably happens from time to time.

is top of the hardback bestsellers list; it has just been read on Radio 4; the man can clearly do no wrong. we meet many of the strange and unique animals, fish, and plants that have developed that haven't changed since even before the dinosaurs. Then, having nothing better to do, I leafed through the index and amused myself, in a very low-key way, by looking for ridiculous names, of which Australia has a respectable plenitude.I am glad of the opportunity for reading this book because I learned so much about a Country and its people for which and for whom I have a great affection and previously had little knowledge. From its defiantly dreary title onwards, Down Under feels like a journey taken at too great a speed on a road well-worn by other, more intrepid travellers, not to mention millions of ordinary, non-writing tourists.

This book shows its roots - in a colour supplement commissioned by The Mail On Sunday, padded out with some A-level history and lots of twee observations of a country crossed at speed. We use Google Analytics to see what pages are most visited, and where in the world visitors are visiting from. His new number one Sunday Times bestseller is The Road to Little Dribbling: More Notes from a Small Island. He reviewed the new Bryson alongside another book about Australia, Michael Davie's Anglo-Australian Attitudes.This part of the journey covers the Great Barrier Reef, the cities of Cairns, Darwin, and Alice Springs, and the mighty monolithic rock Uluru. On my first visit, some years ago, I passed the time on the long flight 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. The seismograph traces didn't fit the profile for an earthquake or mining explosion, and anyway the blast was 170 times more powerful than the most powerful mining explosion ever recorded in Western Australia.

These are Bryson's two best books because they sprang from a powerful sense of identity that gave them a shape. We are experiencing delays with deliveries to many countries, but in most cases local services have now resumed. The people are cheerful, extroverted, quick-witted and unfailingly obliging: their cities are safe and clean and nearly always built on water; the food is excellent; the beer is cold and the sun nearly always shines. Spiky conversations with his English producer friend as they drive to Ayres Rock, the sighting of a rotary clothes-line in the depths of the outback, confrontations with receptionists and waiters, a beer-drinking man at the bar of the Nambucca telling him "Dining room's closed mate. I doubt Bryson would top anyone's list of people to be stuck in a lift with, and yet you can't help hanging on his every word and ascribing it the status of the gospel truth.Now living in the UK, Bill Bryson made his name with his iconic, insightful and very, very funny books of travel writing including: The Lost Continent, Neither Here Nor There, Notes from a Small Island (voted the book that best represents Britain in a national poll) A Walk in the Woods and The Road to Little Dribbling: More Notes from a Small Island. The world those first Englishmen found was famously inverted-- its seasons back to front, its constellations upside down--and unlike anything any of them had seen before even in the near latitudes of the Pacific. Leaving no Vegemite unsavored, listeners will accompany Bryson as he dodges jellyfish while learning to surf at Bondi Beach, discovers a fish that can climb trees, dehydrates in deserts where temperatures leap to 140 degrees F, and tells the true story of the rejected Danish architect who designed the Sydney Opera House. Its sports are of little interest to us and the last television series it made that we watched with avidity was Skippy. So many of the oldest objects ever found on earth-- the most ancient rocks and fossils, the earliest animal tracks and riverbeds, the first faint signs of life itself--have come from Australia.

He arrives at his destination, finds a hotel, meanders around the neighbourhood, has a couple of drinks, eavesdrops on a conversation or two, then goes to bed. He reserves his funniest writing for those occasions when he encounters total frustration and annoyance. The most characteristic of them didn't run or lope or canter, but bounced across the landscape, like dropped balls. Taking listeners on a rollicking ride far beyond packaged-tour routes, IN A SUNBURNED COUNTRY introduces a place where interesting things happen all the time. You almost don't feel like you don't need to go and see the Sydney Opera House or journey through the Outback, because Bryson has told you all you need to know.You will get a sense of the enormity of the country, the central undeveloped land that larger than most countries and how lifeless it seems, but at the same time you discover life that has adapted to the extreme heat (140 degrees, F. Just in time for the 2000 Olympics-the bestselling quthor of A Walk in the Woods takes listeners on a truly outrageous tour Down Under.