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Martin's Reviews > In a Sunburned Country
In a Sunburned Country
by
by
Martin's review
bookshelves: travel, humour, recently-reviewed, history
Feb 10, 2019
bookshelves: travel, humour, recently-reviewed, history
Read 2 times. Last read April 10, 2019 to May 1, 2019.
I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding plains
otherwise known as Australia
Join Bill Bryson as he explores this vast island continent from his American viewpoint.
Australia doesn’t misbehave. It is stable and peaceful and good. It doesn’t have coups, recklessly over-fish, arm disagreeable despots, grow coca in provocative quantities, or throw its weight around in a brash and unseemly manner. And Americans know nothing about it
It has more things that will kill you than anywhere else. Of the world’s ten most poisonous snakes, all are Australian. Five of its creatures—the funnel web spider, box jellyfish, blue-ringed octopus, paralysis tick, and stone-fish—are the most lethal of their type in the world. This is a country where even the fluffiest of caterpillars can lay you out with a toxic nip, where seashells will not just sting you but actually sometimes go for you. Pick up an innocuous cone shell from a Queensland beach, as innocent tourists are all too wont to do, and you will discover that the little fellow inside is not just astoundingly swift and testy but exceedingly venomous. If you are not stung or pronged to death in some unexpected manner, you may be fatally chomped by sharks or crocodiles, or carried helplessly out to sea by irresistible currents, or left to stagger to an unhappy death in the baking outback. It’s a tough place.
Somehow Bill survives these dangers and is able to tell us all about this amazing country in his humorous style.
I often feel that he is not just writing a book, but personally telling funny tales from his life. And so I can refer to Bill as my friend. Listen to him and see if you too want to be friends.
Enjoy!
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding plains
otherwise known as Australia
Join Bill Bryson as he explores this vast island continent from his American viewpoint.
Australia doesn’t misbehave. It is stable and peaceful and good. It doesn’t have coups, recklessly over-fish, arm disagreeable despots, grow coca in provocative quantities, or throw its weight around in a brash and unseemly manner. And Americans know nothing about it
It has more things that will kill you than anywhere else. Of the world’s ten most poisonous snakes, all are Australian. Five of its creatures—the funnel web spider, box jellyfish, blue-ringed octopus, paralysis tick, and stone-fish—are the most lethal of their type in the world. This is a country where even the fluffiest of caterpillars can lay you out with a toxic nip, where seashells will not just sting you but actually sometimes go for you. Pick up an innocuous cone shell from a Queensland beach, as innocent tourists are all too wont to do, and you will discover that the little fellow inside is not just astoundingly swift and testy but exceedingly venomous. If you are not stung or pronged to death in some unexpected manner, you may be fatally chomped by sharks or crocodiles, or carried helplessly out to sea by irresistible currents, or left to stagger to an unhappy death in the baking outback. It’s a tough place.
Somehow Bill survives these dangers and is able to tell us all about this amazing country in his humorous style.
I often feel that he is not just writing a book, but personally telling funny tales from his life. And so I can refer to Bill as my friend. Listen to him and see if you too want to be friends.
Enjoy!
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Quotes Martin Liked
“I'm quite certain that if the rest of the world vanished overnight and the development of cricket were left in Australian hands, within a generation, the players would be wearing shorts and using the bats to hit each other, and the thing is, it'd be a much better game for it.”
― In a Sunburned Country
― In a Sunburned Country
“No one knows, incidentally, why Australia's spiders are so extravagantly toxic; capturing small insects and injecting them with enough poison to drop a horse would appear to be the most literal case of overkill. Still, it does mean that everyone gives them lots of space.”
― In a Sunburned Country
― In a Sunburned Country
“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.”
― In a Sunburned Country
― In a Sunburned Country
“As the saying goes, it takes all kinds to make the world go around, though perhaps some shouldn't go quite so far around it as others.”
― In a Sunburned Country
― In a Sunburned Country
“Australians are very unfair in this way. They spend half of any conversation insisting that the country's dangers are vastly overrated and that there's nothing to worry about, and the other half telling you how six months ago their Uncle Bob was driving to Mudgee when a tiger snake slid out from under the dashboard and bit him on the groin, but that it's okay now because he's off the life support machine and they've discovered he can communicate with eye blinks.”
― In a Sunburned Country
― In a Sunburned Country
“The people are immensely likable— cheerful, extrovert, quick-witted, and unfailingly obliging. Their cities are safe and clean and nearly always built on water. They have a society that is prosperous, well ordered, and instinctively egalitarian. The food is excellent. The beer is cold. The sun nearly always shines. There is coffee on every corner. Life doesn't get much better than this.”
― In a Sunburned Country
― In a Sunburned Country
“But don't worry," she continued. "Most snakes don't want to hurt you. If you're out in the bush and a snake comes along, just stop dead and let it slide over your shoes."
This, I decided, was the least-likely-to-be-followed advice I have ever been given.”
― In a Sunburned Country
This, I decided, was the least-likely-to-be-followed advice I have ever been given.”
― In a Sunburned Country
“Perhaps it’s my natural pessimism, but it seems that an awfully large part of travel these days is to see things while you still can.”
― In a Sunburned Country
― In a Sunburned Country
“In the morning a new man was behind the front desk. "And how did you enjoy your stay, Sir?" he asked smoothly.
"It was singularly execrable," I replied.
"Oh, excellent," he purred, taking my card
"In fact, I would go so far as to say that the principal value of a stay in this establishment is that it is bound to make all subsequent service-related experiences seem, in comparison, refreshing."
He made a deeply appreciative expression as if to say, "Praise indeed," and presnted my bill for signature. "Well, we hope you'll come again."
"I would sooner have bowel surgery in the woods with a a stick."
His expression wavered, then held there for a long moment. "Excellent," he said again, but without a great show of conviction.”
― In a Sunburned Country
"It was singularly execrable," I replied.
"Oh, excellent," he purred, taking my card
"In fact, I would go so far as to say that the principal value of a stay in this establishment is that it is bound to make all subsequent service-related experiences seem, in comparison, refreshing."
He made a deeply appreciative expression as if to say, "Praise indeed," and presnted my bill for signature. "Well, we hope you'll come again."
"I would sooner have bowel surgery in the woods with a a stick."
His expression wavered, then held there for a long moment. "Excellent," he said again, but without a great show of conviction.”
― In a Sunburned Country
“[About Uluru] I'm suggesting nothing here, but I will say that if you were an intergalactic traveler who had broken down in our solar system, the obvious directions to rescuers would be: "Go to the third planet and fly around till you see the big red rock. You can't miss it." If ever on earth they dig up a 150,000-year-old rocket ship from the galaxy Zog, this is where it will be. I'm not saying I expect it to happen; not saying that at all. I'm just observing that if I were looking for an ancient starship this is where I would start digging.”
― In a Sunburned Country
― In a Sunburned Country
“Dogs don't like me. It is a simple law of the universe, like gravity. I am not exaggerating when I say that I have never passed a dog that didn't act as if it thought I was about to take its Alpo. Dogs that have not moved from the sofa in years will, at the sniff of me passing outside, rise in fury and hurl themselves at shut windows. I have seen tiny dogs, no bigger than a fluffy slipper, jerk little old ladies off their feet and drag them over open ground in a quest to get at my blood and sinew. Every dog on the face of the earth wants me dead.”
― In a Sunburned Country
― In a Sunburned Country
“We wanted proper outback: a place where men were men and sheep were nervous.”
― In a Sunburned Country
― In a Sunburned Country
“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.”
― In a Sunburned Country
― In a Sunburned Country
“Australians are the biggest gamblers on the planet – one of the more arresting statistics I saw was that the country has less than 1 per cent of the world’s population but more than 20 per cent of its slot machines”
― In a Sunburned Country
― In a Sunburned Country
“It’s interesting that Melburnians don’t tell jokes about Sydney. They tell jokes about their beloved footy. To wit: A man arriving for the Grand Final in Melbourne is surprised to find the seat beside his empty. Tickets for the Grand Final are sold out weeks in advance and empty seats unknown. So he says to the man on the other side of the seat: ‘Excuse me, do you know why there is no one in this seat?’ ‘It was my wife’s,’ answers the second man, a touch wistfully, ‘but I’m afraid she died.’ ‘Oh, that’s terrible. I’m so sorry.’ ‘Yes, she never missed a match.’ ‘But couldn’t you have given the ticket to a friend or relative?’ ‘Oh no. They’re all at the funeral.”
― In a Sunburned Country
― In a Sunburned Country
“Life in Australia would go on, and I would hear nothing, because once you leave Australia, Australia ceases to be.”
― In a Sunburned Country
― In a Sunburned Country
“Describing his experience with the sting of an extremely toxic jellyfish, he did something you don't often see a scientist do: he shivered.”
― In a Sunburned Country
― In a Sunburned Country
“In January of that year, according to a report written in America by a Times reporter, scientists were seriously investigating the possibility that a mysterious seismic disturbance in the remote Australian outback almost four years earlier had been a nuclear explosion set off by members of the Japanese doomsday cult Aum Shinrikyo.”
― In a Sunburned Country
― In a Sunburned Country
“This is comfortable and clean and familiar. Apart from a tendency among men of a certain age to wear knee-high socks with shorts, these people are just like you and me.”
― In a Sunburned Country
― In a Sunburned Country
“An Australian fly will try to suck the moisture off your eyeball. He will, if not constantly turned back, go into parts of your ears that a Q-tip can only dream about. He will happily die for the glory of taking a tiny dump on your tongue. Get thirty or forty of them dancing around you in the same way and madness will shortly follow. And”
― In a Sunburned Country
― In a Sunburned Country
“For 2 billion years this is all the life there was on earth, but in that time the stromatolites raised the oxygen level in the atmosphere to 20 percent—enough to allow the development of other, more complex life-forms: me, for instance. My gratitude was real.”
― In a Sunburned Country
― In a Sunburned Country
“Pilchard begins his long run in from short stump. He bowls and … oh, he’s out! Yes, he’s got him. Longwilley is caught leg-before in middle slops by Grattan. Well, now what do you make of that, Neville?’ ‘That’s definitely one for the books, Bruce. I don’t think I’ve seen offside medium slow fast pace bowling to match it since Baden-Powell took Rangachangabanga for a maiden ovary at Bangalore in 1948.’ I had stumbled into the surreal and rewarding world of cricket on the radio. After years of patient study (and with cricket there can be no other kind) I have decided that there is nothing wrong with the game that the introduction of golf carts wouldn’t fix in a hurry. 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. I don’t wish to denigrate a sport that is enjoyed by millions, some of them awake and facing the right way, but it is an odd game. 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 players (more if they are moderately restless). It is the only competitive activity of any type, other than perhaps baking, in which you can dress in white from head to toe and be as clean at the end of the day as you were at the beginning.”
― In a Sunburned Country
― In a Sunburned Country
“On my first visit, some years ago, I passed the time on the long flight from London 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. No trace of the poor man was ever seen again. This seemed doubly astounding to me – first that Australia could just lose a Prime Minister (I mean, come on) and second that news of this had never reached me.”
― In a Sunburned Country
― In a Sunburned Country
“You are totally at the mercy of nature in this country, mate. It's just a fact of life.”
― In a Sunburned Country
― In a Sunburned Country
“I am quite certain that if the rest of the world vanished overnight and the development of cricket was left in Australian hands, within a generation the players would be wearing shorts and using the bats to hit each other.”
― In a Sunburned Country
― In a Sunburned Country
“That’s the thing about Australia, you see. It teems with interesting stuff, but at the same time it’s so vast and empty and forbidding that it generally takes a remarkable stroke of luck to find it. Unfortunately,”
― In a Sunburned Country
― In a Sunburned Country
“Cook was a brilliant navigator and a conscientious observer, but he made one critical mistake on his first voyage: he took Australia’s wet season for its dry one, and concluded that the country was more hospitable than it was.”
― In a Sunburned Country
― In a Sunburned Country
“In 1935, not far from where we stood now, some fishermen captured a fourteen-foot beige shark and took it to a public aquarium at Coogee, where it was put on display. The shark swam around for a day or two in its new home, then abruptly, and to the certain surprise of the viewing public, regurgitated a human arm.”
― In a Sunburned Country
― In a Sunburned Country
“The friendliness of Australians – all of it quite sincere and spontaneous, as far as I could ever tell – never ceases to amaze or gratify.”
― In a Sunburned Country
― In a Sunburned Country
“In late 1998, the inhabitants were invited to become Australia’s seventh state and roundly rejected the notion in a referendum. It appears they quite like being outsiders. In consequence, an area of 523,000 square miles, or about one-fifth of the country, is in Australia but not entirely of it. This throws up some interesting anomalies. All Australians are required by law to vote in federal elections, including residents of the Northern Territory. However, since the Northern Territory is not a state, it has no seats in Parliament. So the Territorians elect representatives who go to Canberra and attend sessions of Parliament (at least that’s what they say in their letters home) but don’t actually vote or take part or have any consequence at all. Even more interestingly, during national referendums the citizens of the Northern Territory are also required to vote, but the votes don’t actually count towards anything. They’re just put in a drawer or something. Seems a little odd to me, but then, as I say, the people seem content with the arrangement. Personally,”
― In a Sunburned Country
― In a Sunburned Country
“One thing you won’t find much in Australian second-hand bookshops are 1950s or earlier editions of lots of books – The Catcher in the Rye, A Farewell to Arms, Animal Farm, Peyton Place, Another Country, Brave New World and hundreds and hundreds of others. The reason for this is simple: they were banned. Altogether, at its peak, 5,000 titles were forbidden to be imported into the country. By the 1950s this had fallen to a couple of hundred, but it still featured some extraordinary exclusions – Childbirth Without Pain, for instance, whose unflinching candour in describing where babies come from was considered a little too rich for Australian sensibilities. This was just conventional titles, by the way.”
― In a Sunburned Country
― In a Sunburned Country
“The thing about Ayers Rock is that by the time you finally get there you are already a little sick of it.”
― In a Sunburned Country
― In a Sunburned Country
Reading Progress
Finished Reading
February 10, 2019
– Shelved
February 10, 2019
– Shelved as:
travel
February 10, 2019
– Shelved as:
humour
April 10, 2019
–
Started Reading
May 1, 2019
– Shelved as:
recently-reviewed
May 1, 2019
– Shelved as:
history
May 1, 2019
–
Finished Reading
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Barbara
(new)
May 02, 2019 01:43AM
Nice review, Martin. I loved this book, too, and I feel the same way about Bryson.
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Barbara wrote; Nice review, Martin. I loved this book, too, and I feel the same way about Bryson. Thank you Barbara for your kind words.
It's always nice to meet another Bryson fan.
