#3 Bryson - Down Under

'Australia is mostly empty and a long way away. Its population is small and its role in the world consequently peripheral. 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. It is stable and peaceful and good. It doesn't need watching and so we don't. But I will tell you this: the loss is entirely ours.'

 

What I thought I knew about Australia:

1. G'day mate

2. Kangaroos and Koalas

3. Hot

4. Crazy killing-machine animals 

5. Far away

6. Began its inhabited life as a prison

How wrong and conventionally dismissive was I. 

 

What I know about Australia:

1. You will fall in love with the idea of it

2. We really don't know all that much about it

3. Crazing killing-machine animals (amongst beautifully rare native animals, of course)

The predominant message I gathered from Bryson's exploration of The Land Down Under was that despite it being a developed country, with many Brits longing to migrate there (Random comment: I had a slight obsession with watching Wanted: Down Under. Normal teenage behaviour, right?), we know a limited amount about it and all too often disregard it.

Fun fact: What remains to be mapped and explored? Not merely the conventional 'the ocean, obviously' answer, but much of Australia.

 

'Australia is the driest, flattest, hottest, most desiccated, infertile and climatically aggressive of all the inhabited continents. (Only Antarctica is more hostile to life.)'

 

'You wouldn't think that something as conspicuous, as patently there, as Australia could escape the World's attention almost to the modern age, but there you are. It did. Less than twenty years before the founding of Sydney it was still essentially unknown.'

 

Bryson interlaces his travelling experiences and findings with comical stories and snippets of illustrative Australian history, taking you vividly through the Australian outback and states with such veracity and character that at the conclusion of the final line you feel as though you are being forced to say goodbye to a dear friend and close the door on a whirlwind romance with a place you've never been to.

 

I found it fascinating and actually quite humbling just how little we know of this infamous land. It is a land abounding in undiscovered species of plants and animals, indigenous to its uniquely harsh environment, teeming with beautiful views and entertaining names for places (e.g. Tittybang) moreover posing as home for perhaps the oldest civilised group of people ever - the Aborigines, thought to have first inhabited Australia up to 60,000 years ago.  

 

Encountering the wonders of Australia's environment was what enamoured me most within this book; be it the presence of Stromatolites, the awe-inspiring Great Barrier Reef, or the distinctive animals, I was overwhelmed with the beauty of nature itself. Living in a country which is vastly urbanised and developed, with a temperate climate lending itself to no particularly eccentric organisms, I find it easy to forget the true power and awe-inspiring magnificence of the world. It was eye-opening too, to see so explicitly demonstrated man's lack of dominance over nature no matter how egotistically we may think ourselves able to control it, in the form of a bushfire.

 

Side note #1: Stromatolites are the organisms credited with creating life on Earth, and making our planet habitable for us - found only in The Land Down Under. ...That sounded like some cheesy commercial advertising a weekend getaway - from only £29.99, and kids go free!

 

'It was during a heat wave so bad that department store mannequins' heads actually started to melt. Can you imagine that? That one burned up most of Victoria.'

'So how much at risk are you here?'

He shrugged philosophically. 'It's all in the lap of the gods. Could be next week, could be ten years from now, could be never.' He turned to me with an odd smile. 'You are totally at the mercy of nature in this country, mate. It's just a fact of life. But I tell you one thing.'

'What's that?'

'It sure makes you appreciate something like this when you know it could all go up in a puff of smoke.'

It was equally eye-opening to recognise the planet's invisible people, the Aborigines, and just how amazing and more recently pitiful their history really is. As Bryson so stresses, when was the last time you actually read anything about the Aborigines, let alone Australia, in more depth than a few dismissive lines?

 

I don't want to write anymore for fear of ruining the experience of the book for you. But honestly, Down Under is one of the most enjoyable books I have ever read, regarding both fiction and non-fiction.

 

Side note #2: read it.

 

Time to start saving for a plane ticket.

C