Frommer's Australia from $50 a Day 13th Edition - To Parent Directory

FAST FACTS: AUSTRALIA 81
want to get plastered, try Coopers—
it’s rather cloudy, very strong, and
usually causes a fierce hangover. Most
Australian beers range from 4.8% to
5.2% alcohol.
Tipping is not widely expected in
Australia, but it is usual to tip around
5% to 10% or round up to the nearest
A$10 (US$6.50) for a substantial meal
in a good restaurant.
20 Recommended Books & Films
Australian literature has come a long
way since the days when the bush poets
A. B. “Banjo” Patterson and Henry
Lawson penned their odes to a way of
life now largely lost. The best known of
these is Patterson’s epic The Man from
Snowy River (Buccaneer Books, 1996),
which hit the bestseller list in 1895 and
was made into a film. Australia has a
wealth of classics, many with the Outback
at their heart.
Miles Franklin wrote My Brilliant
Career (HarperCollins, 2001) in 1901,
the story of a young woman faced with
the dilemma of choosing between marriage
and a career; Colleen McCullough’s
Thorn Birds (Avon, 1996) is a
romantic epic about forbidden love
between a Catholic priest and a young
woman; We of the Never Never (Avon,
1984) by Mrs. Aeneas Gunn, tells the
story of a young woman who leaves the
comfort of her Melbourne home to live
on a cattle station in the Northern Territory;
and Walkabout (Sundance,
1984) by James V. Marshall explores
the relationship between an Aborigine
and two lost children in the bush. It
was later made into a powerful film.
If you can find it, The Long Farewell
by Don Charlwood tells first-hand
diary accounts of long journeys from
Europe to Australia in the last century.
A good historical account of the early
days is Geoffrey Blainey’s The Tyranny
of Distance, first published in 1966.
Robert Hughes’s The Fatal Shore: The
Epic of Australia’s Founding, is a bestselling
non-fiction study of the country’s
early days. For a contemporary, if
somewhat dark, take on the settlement
and development of Sydney, delve into
John Birmingham’s Leviathan. From an
Aboriginal perspective, Follow the Rabbit-Proof
Fence by Doris Pilkington tells
the true story of three young girls from
the “Stolen Generation” who ran away
from a mission school to return to their
families (it is also a 2002 movie).
Modern novelists include David
Malouf, Elizabeth Jolley, Helen Garner,
Sue Woolfe, and Peter Carey, whose
True History of the Kelly Gang, a fictionalized
autobiography of the outlaw Ned
Kelly, won the Booker Prize in 2001.
West Australian Tim Winton evokes
his part of the continent in stunning
prose, with his latest novel, Dirt Music,
no exception.
Outsiders who have tackled Australia
include Jan Morris and Bill
Bryson. Morris’s Sydney was published
in 1992, and Bryson’s In a Sunburned
Country, while not such a favorite with
Australians, may appeal to Americans.
FAST FACTS: Australia
American Express For all travel-related customer inquiries regarding any
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100. To report lost or stolen traveler’s checks, there is a separate line
(& 1800/251 902).
Area Codes See “Telephones” later in this section.
ATM Networks See “Money” earlier in this chapter.