Cold Beer and Crocodiles: A Bicycle Journey into Australia

by RoffMartinSmith (Author)

• Used

  Hardcover
  2000

  $6.60

  The born wayfarer takes his time, stays close to the land, and lives by its rhythms, always ready when a friendly nod turns into a dinner invitation but just as happy to camp alone under the Southern Cross. He's a free spirit, following the road map of his own adventurous imagination. When he happens to be a keen observer and a vivid writer as well, the result is a classic travel book. American Roff Smith had been living in Australia for 15 years when he quit his job, pared his life to what could be carried in the panniers of his bicycle, and pedaled off on a 10,000-mile circuit of the continent. By the time he coasted back into Sydney nine months later, he had discovered an Australia that eludes the casual traveler; Cold Beer and Crocodiles is his evocative, eventful report from the highways and byways of Oz, an affectionate portrait of his adopted country and its colorful people. It's a tale worthy of the bold explorers who lived -- and sometimes died -- to open up this vast, isolated, beautiful world, from chilly Tasmania to the arid, blistering outback, where temperatures soar to 140 degrees in the midday sun. On a good day, 100 miles or more might unreel smoothly beneath Smith's tires; on a bad day, he often staggered into a desert roadhouse, exhausted, out of water, and all but dead. There are narrow escapes, wild tropical storms, a grisly crash, and a wonderful variety of unexpected scenes that capture the many faces of Australia and the men and women who call it home. We meet rancher Rob Macintosh and his family, who offer Smith a warm welcome and a job on a working sheep station, and a quartet of matey diggers who whisk him off to a lush canyon oasis hiddenbetween the folds of an apocalyptic landscape. We meet soft-spoken Aborigines of unfailing courtesy and generosity, as well as drifters and tourists, craftsmen and farmers, roadhouse keepers and their trademark customers -- the fabled long-distance drivers who barrel across the empty sands in the cab of a road train as long as a football field. Though there's a wealth of good company here, this is a book that savors solitude, too, the quietly stunning moments that reward the self-sufficient traveler -- a black-velvet sky studded with stars, the green flash at the instant of sunset in the old pearling port of Broome, restless swells that sweep in from the South Pole to crash against breathtaking cliffs at the desolate edge of the world. With a sure sense of place and an engaging, entertaining, and above all honest voice, Roff Smith interweaves the history and lore of Australia with his own hard-won journey of discovery -- the kind of revelation that rewards those who travel not through a country but into it.

• Used

  Paperback
  2001

  $3.25

  NINE-MONTH TREK: Based on the authors nine-month, 10,000-mile bicycle trip around Australia, described in a 3-part series in National Geographic Magazine. ENTERTAINING, AFFECTIONATE PORTRAYAL OF AN EXOTIC LAND: Author gets deeply into the heart of the country, describing with great verve the people he meets, the towns, the landscapes and the hardships, loneliness, and self-discovery. KEEN INTEREST IN AUSTRALIA AND POPULARITY AS A TRAVEL DESTINATION: In America, especially, Australia is seen as a last frontier and a younger, sunnier, and more innocent reflection of itself. More than 4 million people visit each year; 2000 will be a banner year for tourism. PAUCITY OF COMPETITION: Despite interest in Australia, very little narrative, book-length treatment of the country in the travel genre. Cold Beer and Crocodiles: A Bicycle Journey into Australia is an American journalists immersion into an exotic land, where he had lived for years but never come to know. In 1996 Roff Smith set off alone into the Australia outback on a 10,000-mile bicycle trek. Over the next nine months, he stayed at remote sheep and cattle stations, old pearling ports, mining towns, Aboriginal communities, quiet rain forest villages, occasional big cities, and many solitary desert campsites, often hundreds of miles from the nearest dwelling. And so I wandered the country for more than nine months, living a more magnificent adventure than I could possibly have imagined at the start of the journey. I rode along the Tropic of Cancer into the dusty heart of the Queensland outback, through the rugged and extremely remote Kimberley region, crossed Western Australians Great Sandy Desert and ventured out across the sub-blistered immensity of the Nullabor Plain in the height of summer. I had to carry as much as 22 liters of water to survive these lonely distances, carefully conserving each precious drop as there were no opportunities to fill my canteens. It was a grueling journey. What with headwinds, dust, flies, searing heat, steep mountain grades, icy gales off the Southern Ocean, and long days of hard riding, I lost more than 30 pounds by the time I returned to Sydney. But somewhere in those thousands of miles I had gained a new home. It was the people I met more than anything else that opened my eyes to what it meant to be an Australian and instilled in me a deep and new found pride in my adopted country. Gracefully written, filled with insights, and teeming with discoveries, this lively narrative will find a place on the shelf alongside Bruce ChatwinsThe Songlines.