Strange Country Travels in a Very Different Australia by Mark Dapin - USED

"I wanted to see Australia really see it from coast to coast, from the barefaced glass towers of Surfers Paradise to hidden dugout homes of Coober Pedy, from the Nullarbor to the Dingo Fence, from the oceans to the dead heart. As a writer, I had always been attracted to the new and growing, or the old and dying, bush sports and fighters, conmen and drunks. As an individual, I seemed driven by a sociopathic impulse to fly into a new place, eat a hamburger, drink beer, take the piss out of everything, and make complicated situations infinitely more difficult. So I found myself dancing on barstools and singing communist songs with the state MP for Broken Hill, jockeying in a camel race at the trotting track in Glebe, provoking a war between boxing tents in Mt Isa, and padding through a Gold Coast hinterland national park at 10pm, wearing night-vision goggles and making noises like a strangled cow, attempting to lure a foul-smelling mythical giant out of the bush to mate with me. This book is about the people I met as I crisscrossed Australia by train and plane and L-plated car: the undefeated dreamers and wild-hearted romantics, the obsessed hobbyists and beautiful failures. It is about heroes and legends, illusions, delusions and hope, and one or two men with shit for brains who ought to be locked up."--Provided by publisher.

ISBN: 9781405038720