Product Description

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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #263870 in Books
• Published on: 2001-11
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 284 pages

Customer Reviews

Duel in the Sun.
Cold Beer and Crocodiles (crocodiles barely feature at all!) is an excellent travel adventure which will appeal to anyone who cosily enjoys the vicarious experience of someone else battling to survive in an extreme landscape : in this case, the Australian Outback. Having lived in Australia for 15 years without developing any emotional attachment to the country, Roff Smith quit his job at Time magazine to undertake a mammoth 10,000 mile round trip of Australia, the rationale being to try to engage emotionally "with the country I'd lived in as a stranger all these years". His chosen mode of transport, a 21 speed touring bicycle would let him get close to the land, experience Australia, its sights, sounds and smells.

In the early stages of the venture, Smith expends much pedal power shaking off the Sydney suburbs and running the gauntlet of heavy, aggressive traffic. City and suburbs sloughed off, six months of gruelling Outback travel follow : its when he hits the furnace of the Outback that the words blaze off the pages as he is plagued for months on end by flies, thirst, dust, scorching heat and feelings of loneliness; is passed by huge roadtrains barrelling down desert highways; witnesses violent thunder and lightning desert storms; bivouacs in scrub under night skies "full of stars as sharp as needles"; works in sheep and cattle stations; visits an Aboriginal community; picks melons; duels with the vast, hostile expanses of empty, reddish plains baking under the blistering sun. ("so much nothing out there - just miles and miles of nothing")

On his travels, Smith encounters a mixed bag of characters, (a few dodgy, most helpful) often in remote roadhouses, isolated settlements or outstations hundreds of miles of sand, scrub and spinifex away from the nearest town. If the idea of living on the edge appeals to you, then you'll certainly enjoy Cold Beer and Crocodiles. Now try "One For The Road" by Tony Horwitz, another equally good and well written travel venture into the Australian Outback but this time from the very different perspective of a hitch-hiker. Both books highly recommended.

Duel in the Sun.
Cold Beer and Crocodiles (crocodiles barely feature at all!) is an excellent travel adventure which will appeal to anyone who cosily enjoys the vicarious experience of someone else battling to survive in an extreme landscape : in this case, the Australian Outback. Having lived in Australia for 15 years without developing any emotional attachment to the country, Roff Smith quit his job at Time magazine to undertake a mammoth 10,000 mile journey around Australia, his rationale being a desire to try to engage emotionally "with the country I'd lived in as a stranger all these years". His chosen mode of transport, a 21 speed touring bicycle would let him get close to the land, experience Australia, its sights, sounds and smells.

In the early stages, Smith expends much pedal power shaking off the Sydney suburbs and running the gauntlet of heavy, aggressive traffic. City and suburbs sloughed off, six months of gruelling Outback travel follow : its when he hits the furnace of the Outback that the words blaze off the page as he is tormented for months on end by plagues of flies, thirst, dust, scorching heat and feelings of loneliness ; is overtaken by huge triple roadtrains barrelling down desert highways ; witnesses spectacular thunder and lightning desert storms ; bivouacs in scrub under night skies "full of stars as sharp as needles" ; works in sheep and cattle stations, picks melons, visits an Aboriginal Community ; duels for weeks on end with the vast, hostile, endless expanses of empty reddish plains baking under the blistering sun - "so much nothing out there...just burning sand and scrub and spinifex for hundreds of miles". Surviving to the next roadhouse is the order of each day! On his travels, Smith encounters a mixed bag of people, (mostly helpful) often in remote roadhouses, isolated settlements or outstations.

If you enjoy reading about people living on the edge, this book is certainly for you.

A wonderful journey
A very enjoyable book, bringing many of the remoter parts of Australia (and its inhabitants) to life. A pleasurable read.