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"A high-spirited, comic ramble into the savage Outback
populated by irreverent, beer-guzzling frontiersmen." —Chicago Tribune
"A fascinating insight into what we're all about on the highways and byways
along the outback track." —The Telegraph (Sydney)
Swept off to live in Sydney by his Australian bride, American writer Tony
Horwitz longs to explore the exotic reaches of his adopted land. So one day,
armed only with a backpack and fantasies of the open road, he hitchhikes off
into the awesome emptiness of Australia's outback.
What follows is a hilarious, hair-raising ride into the hot red
center of a continent so desolate that civilization dwindles to a gas pump
and a pub. While the outback's terrain is inhospitable, its scattered
inhabitants are anything but. Horwitz entrusts himself to Aborigines, opal
diggers, jackeroos, card sharks, and sunstruck wanderers who measure
distance in the number of beers consumed en route. Along the way, Horwitz
discovers that the outback is as treacherous as it is colorful. Bug-bitten,
sunblasted, dust-choked, and bloodied by a near-fatal accident, Horwitz
endures seven thousand miles of the world's most forbidding real estate, and
some very bizarre personal encounters, as he winds his way to Queensland,
Alice Springs, Perth, Darwin—and a hundred bush pubs in between.
Horwitz, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of two national
bestsellers, Confederates in the Attic and Baghdad Without a Map,
is the ideal tour guide for anyone who has ever dreamed of a genuine
Australianadventure.
"Lively, fast-paced and amusing . . . a consistently interesting and
entertaining account." —Kirkus Reviews
"Ironical, perceptive and subtle . . . will have readers getting out their
maps and itching to follow Horwitz's tracks. . . . The internal journey is
his finest achievement; he allows the reader into his heart, to go
travelling with him there, sharing his adventures of the spirit." —Sunday
Times (London)
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