In a Sunburned Country

by Bill Bryson

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7,040 ratings, 3.99 average rating, 993 reviews (more data...)

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published

May 15th 2001 (first published 2000) by Broadway

binding

Paperback, 352 pages

isbn

0767903862 (isbn13: 9780767903868)

description

Also released as "Down Under."

Bill Bryson follows his Appalachian amble, A Walk in the Woods, with the story of his exploits in ...more

[close] Also released as "Down Under."

Bill Bryson follows his Appalachian amble, A Walk in the Woods, with the story of his exploits in Australia, where A-bombs go off unnoticed, prime ministers disappear into the surf, and cheery citizens coexist with the world's deadliest creatures: toxic caterpillars, aggressive seashells, crocodiles, sharks, snakes, and the deadliest of them all, the dreaded box jellyfish. And that's just the beginning, as Bryson treks through sunbaked deserts and up endless coastlines, crisscrossing the "under-discovered" Down Under in search of all things interesting.

Bryson, who could make a pile of dirt compelling--and yes, Australia is mostly dirt--finds no shortage of curiosities. When he isn't dodging Portuguese man-of-wars or considering the virtues of the remarkable platypus, he visits southwest Gippsland, home of the world's largest earthworms (up to 12 feet in length). He discovers that Australia, which began nationhood as a prison, contains the longest straight stretch of railroad track in the world (297 miles), as well as the world's largest monolith (the majestic Uluru) and largest living thing (the Great Barrier Reef). He finds ridiculous place names: "Mullumbimby Ewylamartup, Jiggalong, and the supremely satisfying Tittybong," and manages to catch a cricket game on the radio, which is like

listening to two men sitting in a rowboat on a large, placid lake on a day when the fish aren't biting; it's like having a nap without losing consciousness. It actually helps not to know quite what's going on. In such a rarefied world of contentment and inactivity, comprehension would become a distraction.

"You see," Bryson observes, "Australia is an interesting place. It truly is. And that really is all I'm saying." Of course, Bryson--who is as much a travel writer here as a humorist, naturalist, and historian--says much more, and does so with generous amounts of wit and hilarity. Australia may be "mostly empty and a long way away," but it's a little closer now. --Rob McDonald

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03/30/08

Collette rated it:

(review of isbn 0767903854)

bookshelves: history

Read in September, 2008

recommends it for: people that yearn to see the world.

Ok! First of all I'm here to tell you that non-fiction is normally not my bag. I think I got this book because I forgot to send in the "do not send" notice in a book club. That said..... I'm soooo happy that I didn't and I "made" myself read this. OMG!!! I lost track of how many times I laughed until there were tears running down my cheeks and how many smiles and chuckles it rang out of me!
This is a book about Bryson's trips (I believe he combines a few trips to "...more

Like this review? yes (6 people liked it)

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05/26/08

Martine rated it:

(review of isbn 055299703X)

bookshelves: history, non-fiction, travel-writing

Read in May, 2008

I developed a taste for Bill Bryson last year when I read his Short History of Nearly Everything, an ambitious attempt to trace the history of life, the universe and everything in just 574 pages. While many of the scientific discoveries outlined in the book were a little beyond me, I thoroughly enjoyed Bryson's descriptions of the larger-than-life personalities behind the discoveries, which really brought the science described to life. So when I found out that he had also written a travelogue of...more I developed a taste for Bill Bryson last year when I read his Short History of Nearly Everything, an ambitious attempt to trace the history of life, the universe and everything in just 574 pages. While many of the scientific discoveries outlined in the book were a little beyond me, I thoroughly enjoyed Bryson's descriptions of the larger-than-life personalities behind the discoveries, which really brought the science described to life. So when I found out that he had also written a travelogue of a journey across the country I may soon call home -- Australia -- I simply had to read it.

Australia, for those of you who have never been there, is one of the most colourful places on earth. It has a history so bizarre that it makes China's seem normal by comparison. It has insane expanses of the most arid desert imaginable, as well as some of the world's most beautiful beaches, where unfortunately you can't swim due to the prevalence of sharks, crocs, box jellyfish, stingrays and murderous rip currents. It houses beyond a shadow of a doubt the world's most interesting flora and fauna, including twelve-foot earthworms and living fossils. (And you thought kangaroos were exotic. Ha.) And if all that weren't interesting enough, the locals are slightly mad. They eat meat pies floating in pea soup, are crazy about cricket and consider shorts and knee-length socks proper attire for middle-aged bus drivers. In short, it's a unique place and I love it. I look forward to moving there in a few months' time.

Bill Bryson also loves Australia, and it shows. While he likes to remind his readers of the country's amazing collection of deathly animals (over and over again) and poke fun at the locals and their weird habits, his affection for the place shines through in every chapter, and it's quite infectious. By describing his own travels and those of early settlers, explorers and naturalists, he provides the reader with an appreciation for how vast and unwelcoming the country is, and how utterly unique. He provides background information on events of which few non-Australians will have heard (such as the fact that a nuclear bomb may have been detonated in the outback without anyone noticing, and that an Australian Prime Minister once vanished, never to be seen again), waxes lyrical on trees and animals so bizarre that you'll want to hop on the first plane to Australia to check them out for yourself (again, kangaroos are only the beginning), explains why you should go and see Ayers Rock even if you've already seen hundreds of photos of it, and intersperses all this useful information with a winning combination of self-deprecating humour, bizarre anecdotes, absurd dialogue and entertaining accounts of encounters with fellow travellers and locals. The resulting book is not only completely recognisable to anyone who has visited Australia, but hugely appealing to anyone who hasn't. I doubt anyone can read this book without wishing to book a flight to Oz immediately afterwards.

If I have any complaint about Down Under, it is that there is too little of it. While Bryson's writing is entertaining and informative, his choice of places to visit and describe seems rather random and limited. I wish he had done more travelling, gone further into the interior of the country and left all traces of luxury behind him for a while, so as to emulate the pioneers and explorers whose exploits he relates with such gusto. I also think the book would have benefited from slightly more rigorous editing, as parts of it seem rather hastily written. For all its small flaws, though, Down Under (released in the US as In a Sunburned Country) is a fascinating read which has whetted my appetite for more Bryson travelogues. And for a return to Oz, but that's another story.
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02/11/08

Robert Beveridge rated it:

bookshelves: finished, owned-and-gave-away

Read in July, 2000

Bill Bryson, In a Sunburned Country (Broadway, 2000)

I originally encountered the writing of Bill Bryson in a small article he wrote for National Geographic on the Orkney Islands a year or so ago. By the time I had finished the article, I was (and still am, to an extent) seriously considering relocating to the Orkney Islands. Well, I've now finished In a Sunburned Country, Bryson's travelogue of Australia-- and I never, ever want to go there.

Bryson gives us the world's forgott...more Bill Bryson, In a Sunburned Country (Broadway, 2000)

I originally encountered the writing of Bill Bryson in a small article he wrote for National Geographic on the Orkney Islands a year or so ago. By the time I had finished the article, I was (and still am, to an extent) seriously considering relocating to the Orkney Islands. Well, I've now finished In a Sunburned Country, Bryson's travelogue of Australia-- and I never, ever want to go there.

Bryson gives us the world's forgotten continent (really, how many of you who don't live there can name Australia's Prime Minister?), mixing personal experience, history, and bewilderment in roughly equal doses. While the history does bog down in places, I found myself-- especially in the book's first section-- glad that I was the only person in the room while reading it, since I might well have been committed involuntarily for laughing so hard in stretches. The most disturbing thing is that I was laughing about the sheer number of things in Australia which are capable of killing human beings. This is not a place you should go if you fear death. "The sea snakes are especially unnerving, not because they are aggressive, but because they are inquisitive. Stray into their territory and they'll come to check you out, all but rubbing against you in the manner of cats seeking affection. They are the most sweet-tempered creatures in existence. But cross them or alarm them and they can hit you with enough venom to kill three grown men." Not only will the unfriendly creatures kill you, the friendly ones will as well!

Those who have read more Bryson than I have hastened to say that this is a less humorous book than his others. I'm not sure I could stand the others, for I might die of asphyxia before reaching the end of chapter one. This is good stuff, funny most of the time, sobering on rare occasions, and always edifying. And don't be concerned if you forget three quarters of what's in here by the time you're finished, including the name of Australia's present prime minister (or the name of the silicon-tipped grass I've been wracking my brain for for a week now). According to Bryson, there's something about Australia that causes people to forget it exists, so as long as you remember there are seven continents on this planet, you're ahead of the game. *** (less)

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01/03/09

April rated it:

Read in June, 2008

This book is so funny, so well-written, and so interesting I couldn't stop reading it, even when I had to use a caver's headlamp and stuff my pillow into my mouth to keep from waking my family with my laughter. Bryson is a master writer, and hilarious. His tour of Australia is interesting, and he does not gloss over the "problem" of the relationship between European Australians and the Aborigines. Though I was occasionally put off by seemingly random sexist comments, I still enjoyed th...more

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08/14/08

Bob rated it:

Happy Bryson—book review
August 16, 2008 · No Comments

Finally finished Bill Bryson’s huge book on Australia—”In a Sunburned Country.” I started it months ago and read only a paragraph or so a day. Bryson is a happy writer and a jovial soul. I wonder that he’s not more rotund but then I haven’t seen a recent photo of him. He put the book together about ten years ago out of a number of trips he had taken to Australia.

The Chapter on Ayer’s Rock is r...more Happy Bryson—book review
August 16, 2008 · No Comments

Finally finished Bill Bryson’s huge book on Australia—”In a Sunburned Country.” I started it months ago and read only a paragraph or so a day. Bryson is a happy writer and a jovial soul. I wonder that he’s not more rotund but then I haven’t seen a recent photo of him. He put the book together about ten years ago out of a number of trips he had taken to Australia.

The Chapter on Ayer’s Rock is remarkably good. Gives a great sense of how impressive it must be—or might be. And he does the same consistent job for all the other sights he sees, both ordinary and exceptional. The exceptional are mainly natural phenomena.

I’m so used to reading Paul Theroux that when I’m in a Bryson book I start to miss Theroux’s usual grumpiness. Bryson is so steadily pleased with everything and everyone. He fills us in on things in great detail, so you can’t fault the info flow. He has interesting encounters with people and places. So what’s to fault? Well, nothing. But if he asked me to accompany him on a jaunt somewhere I might not go or want to go. He’s too even-keeled, so content with things that at times you wonder whether he is very interesting, really.

He loves Australia and gives it great press in every possible way. Yet after reading the whole book I’m glad to have had the bit of history, the amazing tales of human folly and adventure, the suspicions confirmed about all my impressions—the vastness, the emptiness, the beauty, the dangers. But the book has not increased my interest in ever actually going to Australia. In fact just the opposite. I’ve never been that curious to go and now that I’ve done my duty with the book I can now check it off as a place I need never have any worry about not wanting to visit.

Somehow that is not a comment a publisher would want to put on the back cover of this really good book. But I had a similar reaction years ago in reading another of Bryson’s bestsellers—I do of course envy him his sales and his income—the book on the Appalachian trail. “In These Woods.” Is that the title? Bryson hikes the Trail and gets way much farther along than most, including many of my former students who have set out to do it. But he doesn’t do the whole trail. He shuts down somewhere in Maine before Kahtahdin. Bummer. Now Theroux would never have done that I think to myself. Theroux would have figured some way to have finished the darned thing or he would have put the manuscript back in a drawer and written another book.

It is unfair of me to compare Bill this way. But he lost one of my votes some years ago. He lived for a short while a bit west of here in Hanover, NH. He had lived in England for years and said in print somewhere he wanted to come back to the states to see what’s what. In truth he wanted to put his kids through American high school and get them into American colleges. One of my students who grew up in Hanover knew one of Bryson’s kids and met Bryson on an occasion or two. But again, in print, Bryson said he looked around the country to find a place to live and he had always wanted to live in a typical New England town (he grew up in Kansas & likes Australia because it reminds him so much of Kansas in the 50s), so he chose to live in Hanover, NH.

That’s where he lost my vote. Living in Hanover, NH as a “typical NE town” is a bit like choosing to live in Monaco because you’ve always hankered to sip espresso in a typical Mediterranean village.

I checked a number of times and was dumbfounded each time to realize that nowhere does Bryson mention, even mention, what just might be the finest book ever written about Australia, Bruce Chatwins "The Songlines."
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07/20/08

Tiffany rated it:

Read in July, 2008

Like most Americans, I have never really given much thought to Australia. It's an island where the seasons are backwards, there's a famous opera house, my ex husband's ex girlfriend is expating it up there, and there are loads of gorgeous men running around shirtless, drinking Fosters and saying "No worries, mate" in a delicious Crocodile Dundee sort of accent. Nothing too exciting, right?

Wrong! Australia is fascinating, and Bill Bryson has done an excellent job of tell...more

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03/09/08

Lauren rated it:

recommends it for: everyone, especially those planning to visit me in Australia!!

I re-read this one in preparation for my move to Australia, and, for the first time, realized that there was a good possibility that I could be eaten by a crocodile while working in the rivers here! The book also alerted me to the many other dangerous creatures and long-distance driving that have now become a normal part of my life. Oh, and he was dead on with his description of Canberra. Most boring city ever (though, surprisingly, there are good Ethiopian restaurants there. Yum!). Thanks, Bill...more

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05/23/07

Solomon rated it:

Read in June, 2001

This was a bit disappointing considering it being a rendition of a travelogue -- my favorite genre -- of my most favorite continent ever. Bryson, generally extremely adept at mixing humorous personal narrative with informative and insightful commentary on the subject of his travels, just didn't seem to appreciate Australia enough. Or perhaps Bryson's white, overweight, middle-aged stature was just not up for the job. More damaging was his superficial treatment of race relations concerning Aust...more

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06/05/09

Kim rated it:

Read in May, 2009

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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03/08/09

Linda rated it:

I found a recommendation for Bill Bryson on someone's list of 'funniest books I've read.' Bryson is an engaging writer; he has that Calvin Trillin, Maarten Troost-style self-deprecating humor that I enjoy so much. There were segments of this book where I was literally writhing with laughter. It is the story of Bryson's infatuation with and travels to Australia, a strange, strange place in so many ways...

Interestingly, I read this book just after attending an Art for Lunch lecture at ...more

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05/08/09

Leftbanker rated it:

bookshelves: travel

Read in May, 2009

The audio version of this book is read by the author and I had the pleasure of listening to it during almost a week’s worth of very long bike rides. He sounds remarkably like John Malkovich. I’ve had my complaints about Bryson in the past but I found this book to be a lot of fun and I found myself laughing out loud on several occasions or admiring Bryson’s deft wordplay.

I’ll admit that I knew next-to-nothing about Australia before this book. I did read Robert Hughes’ clas...more

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12/21/08

Generic rated it:

bookshelves: australia-new-zealand, five-star-nonfiction, history, nonfiction, to-be-read-again, travel-adventure

Read in December, 2008

recommends it for: Everyone who knows how to read

How do I love this book? Let me count the ways...Better yet, read it for yourself and you'll discover your own reasons to love it. I honestly cannot think of one person to whom I would not recommend this book. It's fascinating, funny, and fact-filled. I'd bet even native Aussies could learn a thing or five they didn't know about their country.

Australia is an even more interesting place than I thought. Let Bill Bryson give you an entertaining and educational tour. He researched m...more

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08/13/08

Melissa rated it:

My favorite Bryson book so far. I was reading this book in bed and scared the crap out of my dog. I was laughing so hard, tears streaming down my face and kicking my legs. My dog had no idea what was going on. I re-read my favorite chapter in the book in the London airport and had to restrain myself from not rolling on the ground. In the UK the book goes by the title "Down Under."

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03/24/09

Kelly rated it:

Read in March, 2009

I'm going to quit making sweeping statements about they genres of books I like because each time I declare that I don't care for fantasy or travelogues, I find myself up until five a.m. reading the Twilight series or laughing hysterically at Bill Bryson's In a Sunburned Country.

This guy can write from the depths of his lilly white, Yankee toes. He is a skilled humorist who captures Australia and his experiences with exacting language and wit. Although this is an entertaining read...more

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02/14/09

Teagan rated it:

recommended to Teagan by: Mom
recommends it for: anyone with a sense of humour, people who like Australia

Such a wonderful book. It's technically a travel book, but Bill Bryson looks at everything with wit and humour, including the many and various toxic creatures of Australia, riptides, crocodiles, and desert.

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06/04/09

Lizz Daley rated it:

Read in January, 2009

I just finished a 350 page book about the dangers, wonders and comedy of the forgotten country of Australia. It's by the author of "The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid" which I enjoyed reading, but doesn't hold a candle to "In a Sunburned Country." I've always looked for a book that combines enough comedy, with the right amount of information without being daunting and overwhelming. I found that in this book.

I found myself being so intrigued by the subject m...more

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04/13/09

Jaclyn rated it:

bookshelves: books-i-own, non-fiction, travel

Read in October, 2008

Bill Bryson is a wonderful writer. I found myself laughing out loud at some of his stories and perspectives. I appreciate his natural curiosity and the amount of research he seems to do for his books. He gives a well-balanced account of the history of a place and his perspective on it. You don't get the feeling that you're reading a travel guide when you read this book, but you come away with a strong desire to visit the places he's been and an understanding deeper than you would get from a ...more

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02/28/09

Joe rated it:

Read in February, 2009

Despite never having been to Australia, and it being fairly unlikely I'll go there any time soon, I have read this book a number of times in the past few years. Bryson is such a great writer, and really transmits his likes and dislikes about a place well. One thing I like in particular is that he doesn't stay with the well-traveled tourist places, but instead seeks out off the beaten path things to see, sometimes missing the standard stuff entirely. He also has a wry, sarcastic sense of humor, a...more

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10/27/08

Tara rated it:

(review of isbn 038540817X)

bookshelves: humour, own, travel

Read in January, 2004

recommends it for: People wanting to visit Australia

Some parts of this book are admittedly less interesting than others, but I will always love it for the fact that it records the true horror of our native species ;)

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02/19/09

Claire rated it:

Pretty good, though not my favorite of Bryson's travel books. Maybe I've just read too many in a row? For a writer of his skill, I found far too many sections ending with some variation of "I couldn't wait to see more," or "Trust me, this is an interesting place." Honestly, Australia is home to wallabies, platypus, kangaroos, and Uluru (Ayers Rock); I don't need encouragement to be convinced that it's a continent worth exploring.
Still, he relates some hysterical expe...more

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"It is not true that the English invented cricket as a way of making all other human endeavors look interesting and lively; that was merely an unintended side effect. ...It is the only sport that incorporates meal breaks. It is the only sport that shares its name with an insect. It is the only sport in which spectators burn as many calories as the players-more if they are moderately restless." More quotes...