"Bryson makes you laugh out loud...Down Under is filled with quirky stories'," (Sunday Express)"The thing that Bryson most loves about Australia - its "effortlessly dry, direct way of viewing the world" - is, in fact, his own. They're a perfect fit" (The New York Times Book Review)"Bryson is the perfect travelling companion... when it comes to travel's peculiars the man still has no peers" (The Times)"Bill Bryson is a very talented writer and an enormously funny and perceptive one. He is an artist who needs a big canvas. Australia has provided this. He's painted a masterpiece in travel literature" (Globe & Mail Toronto)

It is the driest, flattest, hottest, most desiccated, infertile and climatically aggressive of all the inhabited continents and still Australia teems with life ? a large portion of it quite deadly. In fact, Australia has more things that can kill you in a very nasty way than anywhere else.Ignoring such dangers ? and yet curiously obsessed by them ? Bill Bryson journeyed to Australia and promptly fell in love with the country. And who can blame him? The people are cheerful, extrovert, quick-witted and unfailingly obliging: their cities are safe and clean and nearly always built on water; the food is excellent; the beer is cold and the sun nearly always shines. Life doesn?t get much better than this?