Down Under, by Bill Bryson

I always wanted to visit Australia, and I hope to do so this year. So, to get some information and the feeling of the place, I ordered Down Under from Amazon. It was the first book I read by Bill Bryson. He's funny, sometimes a little too conscienciously so, but I was glad an Australian friend of mine told me the book was "pretty accurate". Anyway, I think my goal was fulfilled, I ended the book wanting more than ever to go, and with some ideas of what I wish to see. I hope I'll have some experiences of my own to share after I've been there. Until then, I leave you with some funny quotes of this book.

I am thus able to report that the following are all real places: Wee Waa, Poowong, Burrumbuttock, Suggan Buggan, Boomahnoomoonah, Waaia, Mullumbimby, Ewlyamartup, Jiggalong and the supremely satisfying Tittybong.

One of the most cherishable peculiarities of Australians is that they like to build big things in the shape of other things. Give them a bale of chicken wire, some fibreglass and a pot of paint and they will make you, say, an enormous pineapple or strawberry or, as here, a lobster. Then they put a café and a gift shop inside, erect a big sign beside the highway (for the benefit of people whose acuity evidently does not extend to spotting a fifty-foot high piece of fruit standing beside an otherwise empty highway), then sit back and wait for the money to roll in. [...] You can, if you have sufficient petrol, money and nothing approaching a real life, visit a Big Prawn, a Big Koala, a Big Oyster (with searchlights for eyes, apparently), a Big Lawnmower, a Big Marlin, a Big Orange and a Big Merino Ram, among many others.

Australians [...] 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 OK now because he's off the life-support machine and they've discovered he can communicate with eye blinks.

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.

I really want to go there.