Cold Beer and Crocodiles
A Bicycle Journey into Australia
by Roff Smith
Overview
From the Publisher
Drawn directly from the author's extraordinary experiences over the course of a nine-month, 10,000-mile, solitary bicycle trip through Australia, this thoroughly engaging travel memoir offers an uncommonly intimate glimpse into the heart of the land down under. Immersing readers in all the excitement and anticipation of a nation facing the challenges of a new century, Cold Beer and Crocodiles: A Bicycle Journey into Australia is a deeply affectionate portrayal of this most alluring continent.
In 1996, award-winning American author and expatriate journalist Roff Smith set off, a lone man on his trusty bicycle, seeking to lose himself among the cattle stations, mining towns, Aboriginal communities, rain forests, and desert campsites. “Somewhere in those thousands of miles,” Smith writes, “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 newfound pride in my adopted country.”
Smith's genuine passion for his subject is infectious, and his graceful, insightful writing places Cold Beer and Crocodiles on the shelf beside Bruce Chatwin's classic The Songlines.
My thoughts
I thought this was a great book. It's amazing to me that anyone would try to bicycle across Australia in the first place. That they would succeed to the degree of Roff Smith is even more astonishing.
I particularly enjoyed the "common" bits of Australia that the author describes, as Australia is so unique to itself. Very good book! I enjoyed it a lot!
Note from Becky
All books with a read date prior to fall 2003 were not added to this website at the time I read the books; rather they were added in late 2005 as I organized my home library. For that reason, the reviews are less substantial than the reviews of the books I have more recently read. That does not mean that the older books were less enjoyable; only that a lot of time has passed since I first read them and I haven't taken the time to go back and review the books. Perhaps in time that will come.
