Down Under

Title: Down Under

Author: Bill Bryson

Publisher: Black Swan 2001 (First published 2000)

ISBN: 978-0-552-99703-4

Pages: 422

With Bryson’s works like At Home – A History of Private Life, and A Short History of Nearly Everything already reviewed in this blog, you become his fan for life. A great travel writer and a commendable author in every way, Bryson’s book on Australia is entertaining at its best. This work is a roundup of the author’s many travels to that continent-cum-nation, alone or with companions. With a perfectly unconventional itinerary, Bryson ends up in places a very few had gone before and go through adventures fewer still had even dreamed of. Officially, this book may be classified as a travelogue, though it is anything but! True, it narrates the author’s travel across the length and breadth of the country in every possible mode of journey like train, car and plane, yet at the end of the day the reader would definitely wonder if another person would follow his route or mode of travel. His excursions are purely borne out of his immense love for Australia and her people. It is only to personify his great admiration for the country with equally great prose that Bryson travelled to little known places, that too, by road traversing thousands of kilometres.

Australia is the dryest, hottest, flattest, most infertile and climatically aggressive of all inhabited continents in the world. Only Antarctica comes behind Australia in this regard. Its population is confined to narrow strips of fertile territory along the eastern, south-eastern and western coasts. All of its cities are located along coasts and the interior is a giant and deadly desert, locally called the outback. Very few roads cross the desert and sure death awaits any soul who is stranded it for any reason. All help will be days or weeks away with nothing but scalding hot, dry earth resembling martian landscape to keep him company. To obtain a feel of the outback, many of Bryson’s travels were through it in rented cars of train. Also, he recites many anecdotes of people who got lost in the desert, most of them gruelling. Australia, being the sixth largest nation on the globe and due to its complicated geography of the cities placed only along the coast, makes up enormous distances between the cities. Cities like Perth, Darwin, Brisbane, Sydney and Adelaide are established at the end of a long road cutting across mostly uninhabited regions where nature takes the sole responsibility to entertain the weary traveller. With such an exotic setup, Australia is a paradise for adventure-seekers.

Though a travelogue, Bryson probes into the nitty-gritty of the country he is visiting and lays out the whole history, sociology, politics and geography in very interesting asides. Who would have thought that Australia has lost a serving prime minister at sea? The author not only gives the finer details, he specifically goes for it. Whenever he descends on a city, he immediately sets out for long walks along its streets to muster little first-hand experiences which would invariantly crop up in a free society. This was in no way helped more by the natives who are cheerful, extrovert, quick-witted and unfailingly obliging, as observed by him. Bryson’s bold comments are sometimes sharp-edged but they are warranted for the inequity of the circumstances. He mocks at the gullibility of early Australians in the belief that their real home was the United Kingdom, who would come to their rescue in their hour of need. However, the second World War extinguished all such hopes as Britain ordered Australian troops to be moved to India to save her endangered empire from Japan, when in fact Japan had set its sights on Australia itself. The country’s transformation as a nation began around this period, as a consequence.

However, whenever we think of Australia, the foremost consideration which leaps to mind is its racial relationship. Discrimination against coloured people including its own aborigines constitute a deep stain on Australia’s character and is not likely to be cleaned up in the near future. Especially relevant was the recent spate of attacks against Indian students in many cities across its length and breadth. The nation which began its existence as an open prison for criminals from England continued its policy of White Australia, right up to 1970 at which time only whites were allowed to migrate and settle in the country. Migrant workers were treated badly and often successful ones were selectively assaulted to serve their white colleagues’ jealousies. Even today, the aborigines lead a wretched existence among the whites, with their civil liberties guaranteed only a few decades before. Their children used to be taken forcefully from the parents by the state in a vain bid to instil a different mindset in the young minds. Siblings were indiscriminately distributed to far off stations and they were made orphans with living parents – the worst aspect was that there was no legal recourse to such highhandedness.

The book is eminently funny and readable. His comments on hearing a cricket commentary on car radio is witty in the extreme, as “It is not true that the English invented cricket as a way of making all other human endeavours look interesting and lively; that was merely an unintended side effect”, also, “It is the only sport in which spectators burn as many calories as the players (more, if they are moderately restless)” (p.155). It is really a page turner and readers are compelled to finish it as soon as they can. Each new adventure is very interestingly presented and attract genuine excitement. Readers also gape in wonder at the supreme handling of geographical and biological wonders like Great Barrier Reef and living stromatolites.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 3 Star