Australian books and movies piqued our interest before we traveled “Down Under” in 2024.
Far-reaching stories (and watching The Crocodile Hunter) captured our imagination and left us curious about a place so far from home.
Here’s a list of Australian books we’ve loved:
Any novel by Neville Shute, but particularly A Town Like Alice.
(We love Trustee from the Toolroom, too, but it’s set in the South Pacific).
Shute wrote most of his Australian books in the 1950s when he visited the country following World War II. Requiem for a Wren is another poignant post-WWII tale of a flyer.
The Fatal Shore by Robert Hughes. I read this history of Australia’s colonial past in 1987 and I never forgot it. Hughes, an Australian native, examined the British penal system that sent convicts so far from England and dumped them on the shore of what is now Sydney.
Good luck, mates. It was a difficult beginning, and, particularly for Aborigines, life only got worse.
(Friends in the state of South Australia told me their families were part of a “dissenters” group that came to Australia later in the 19th century. Those settlers sought to worship God outside of the Church of England. South Australia is described as the “only freely settled British province” in the country.)
In a Sunburned Country by Bill Bryson. Published in 2000, this is a funny take on Bryson’s trip “down under.” Written in his inimitable style, it left me terrified of giant spiders and uneasy about the other fauna in the country.
(Aussie friends telling stories didn’t help either.)
How about Australian movies?
We first discovered Neville Shute when we watched the A Town Like Alice miniseries on PBS’ Masterpiece Theater in the 1980s.
The Dish: A quirky and funny film based on the true story of an Australian radiotelescope “dish” that transmitted the 1969 moon landing to the world.
The “dish” is set in a sheep paddock in a small Australian town–which provides gentle humor on Australian humor.
The Man from Snowy River: An Australian poem turned into a “Western” movie, this one appeals to my husband. The guys go out to drive their cattle to market and find a gold mine along the way. A spirited young woman breaks horses, and all sorts of excitement occurs!
Babe! Who knew it was set in Australia? An endearing story set on a sheep farm, all ages in our family love it!
Australian books we read before we traveled
Since two granddaughters traveled with us to Australia, I gave them tour books for their birthdays.
They looked through them and marked what they wanted to see.
We went to most of those places.
Wildly Weird But Totally True: AUSTRALIA: Fun Facts, True Stories and Trivia Designed for kids, this book warned them to watch out for vegemite. It also whetted their appetite for the unusual birds and animals we saw on the trip.
Australia: Benita South Travel Guide 2023. Our girls fell in love with beaches from this travel guide. Unfortunately, we visited Australia during their winter!
Aussie Slang – Australian Words & Phrases Some days our teenagers understood Australian English better than we did. (And we visited twice as long!)
Fodor’s Essential Australia All the books convinced them they wanted to see the Great Barrier Reef, the Australia Zoo, and the Sydney Opera House.
Plus all the strange animals, of course.
The country did not disappoint even if it wsn’t quite as dramatic as the films and the books.
Of course, there was that one river cruise during which we saw nearly invisible crocodiles sunning on the bank . . .
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