Book Review: In A Sunburned Country by Bill Brysoon

• The Australian native animal population is exponentially more likely to kill you than anywhere else in the world.
• It is so large and hostile, that most of the country is unexplored.
• The people are lovely. 
• Even in this modern day, with comfortable airline travel, most non-Australians consider traveling there to be too remote. 
• Even the locals don’t travel to the outskirts. They are too far and too hostile. 
• Australia has a dark history like most countries and Bryson doesn’t shy away from any of it. 

In the end, Bryson loves the country and especially the people, and more especially, the remote people. I listened to the book as Bryson narrated it and that adds its own charm. This is his last paragraph: 

“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. You see, Australia is an interesting place. It truly is. And that really is all I’m saying.”

Bill Bryson Books I have Read

“A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail”
“A Short History of Nearly Everything”
“At Home: A Short History of Private Life”
“Neither Here nor There: Travels in Europe
“In a Sunburned Country”

References

“In a Sunburned Country,” by Bill Bryson, Published by Broadway Books 18 June 2000, Last Visited 30 April 2020,
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24.In_a_Sunburned_Country