Down Under

Forget Crocodile Dundee, Castlemaine XXXX and the 2000 Sydney Olympics - Bill Bryson is the man to put Australia on the map. Bill Bryson has traversed the length and breadth of Australia to bring us his first major new book since "A Walk in the Woods." Bryson is a household name, synonymous with laugh-out-loud humour, uncontrolled sniggering and spontaneous outbursts of chortling. Down Under will reinforce his reputation as the best-loved travel writer and humorist of our day. No worries! What greeted Bill Bryson when he visited Australia was rather different to what he'd imagined. It is a country that exists on a vast scale. the driest, flattest, hottest, most dessicated, infertile and climatically aggressive of all the inhabited continents, and still it teems with life, a large proportion of it quite deadly! A country where even the fluffiest of caterpillars can lay one out with a toxic nip, where seashells will not just sting but GO for one! One may be fatally chomped by sharks, or crocodiles, or carried hopelessly out to sea by irresistible currents, or left to stagger to an unhappy death in the baking outback. Bill Bryson ignored such dangers, and promptly fell in love with the country! And who can blame him? The people are cheerful, the food excellent, the beer always cold, the sun nearly always shines. Life doesn't get much better.