literature and music

Cities

Landscape / bw

People / People bw

Flora und Fauna

Top / End

"If we had our time again, we would do it differently"

"What about the toxic, deadly creatures which we'd be sleeping with every night?"

"Not many places in the world have waves, huge cliffs and no pollution... and the ocean is a much darker, deeper blue."

"The time has come to say fair's fair - To pay the rent, to pay the share - The time has come a fact's a fact - It belongs to them let's give it back "

"You know you're in the outback when what is described as a good bitumen road is in fact a single lane of tarmac with a yard or two of red dirt either side. When a car comes the other way, you plant two wheels in the dirt and hope for the best. "

"Flying around Australia is like taking a spaceship to Mars"

literature for Australia

also bibliography

Literature

Lonely Planet

The standard of guide books for Australian travellers and an absolute must as Australia is the origin of Lonely Planet. The series - exclusively in English - gives you good information about culture, events, accommodation and tours for basically every location in Australia that knows the word "tourist". There are maps, distance tables and images added for further information. The descriptions are rather dry and objective but almost complete. More detailed guide books to special activities ("Bushwalking in Australia") and certain cities are also available.

Lonely Planet Australia 2000 - 10th Edition. Lonely Planet Publications Pty Ltd. ISBN 1 86450 0689

Australien - Loertscher, Patrick

The Swiss Photographer from the canton Appenzell spent several months in different parts of Australia in national parks and on hiking tours through the bush to present a complete photo book. In his texts, he gives background information about his locations, the tours available there at the local tourist agency and the accommodation. He only covery natural displays, cities and events are missing.

Landschafts-Studien-Reiseführer Australien

The guidebook for background information about geography and geology covers the development of the Australian continent concerning climate and formation of stones, the creation of special displays and natural monuments. Reading on, you learn how time, tectonic movements and volcanoes change the country and the climate.

Heidi Rüppel / Jürgen Apel (dipl. geogr.) im LSRB Verlag ISBN 3-932767-02-0

National Geographic July 2000

The article "Australia - A Harsh Awakening" in the july issue explores the backgrounds of the environment problems that are a daily issue on the fifth continent and searches the context with white settlers, salting and the development of laterite. Deforestation and the introduction of foreign species (Dingo, rabbit) got out of control and competes with the natural population. The settlement in extreme climate conditions needed watering that threatens the water level below the surface.

Text by Michael Parfit, Photography by Wolinski.

Australia is raw, dramatic, difficult, magnificent, unpredictable and hard to manage, and when it comes to protecting or using it, Australia's people are the same.

National Geographic - Australia By Bike I - III : Dec 1997, Feb 98 and Apr 98

Roff Martin Smith was born in the USA and left New Hampshire more than fifteen years ago to work in Australia. When he got divorced he found out that he didn't really know this big continent. Loading his bike with just the bare necessities and a lot of courage that people give him on the way, he makes his way over 10'000 miles around the country, looking for the true heart of Australia. While working thourgh the three parts in three different issues, the reader is more and more confirmed in his hope to find the untouched, bare plain and the special feeling of living in the Outback which is beautifully photographed by R. Ian Lloyd.

(Every day a road train pulls up to the station to take on a load of melons or sweet potatoes for the 1,400-mile haul to Perth. "We're the loneliest market garden in the world," Jay likes to say. "But it's worth it. Our watermelons come on ahead of everybody ele's, and for a few weeks around Christmas we've got the Perth market almost to ourselves. Easier money than cattle and a lot more pleasant - no watermelon ever stomped me into the dust.")

Geo Spezial - Australien

The special issue is dedicated to the trend destination number one for Europeans. The colorful magazine, in its niveau perhaps not as high as National Geographic, shows the contrasts of this vast continent and tries to find out, what the Australian feeling is like. Of course there are travel information and local guides for the most important cities and locations available at the end of the magazine.

Topics: Portrait of Sydney; National Park Kakadu, The Dreamtime of the Aborigines, Expedition into Kimberley, Byron Bay, Great Barrier Reef

Musik Down Under

The Classic Hymn for everything concerning Australia is "Down Under" by Men At Work, especially well-known after the Olympic Games of Sydney 2000. Not only appreciated as a typical representative of Australian Bands popular in Europe, but also expression of a national identity. Less known hits like "Who Can It Be Now" got on top of the European Charts, too.

Important representatives of Australian Pop are Midnight Oil, who care for more than just music. Peter Garrett sings crucial lyrics that express the original culture of the red continent. "Beds Are Burning" talks about expropriation and dispossession that took the Aborigines their land away. "The Dead Heart" (on "Diesel and Dust", highly recommendable!!!) expresses the rich culture that lies beneath the surface.

Their policital lyrics and the hints to the difficult past between the white and black Australia, combined with a fine, dense music with moaning voices and melodic riffs gives an idea of the diversity of this rich, red, old continent and its problems and sorrows:

Wir w�hlen eine Regierung mit �xten in den Augen, wir f�ttern eine Wirtschaft, die Blut an ihren H�nden hat. Der Flu� f�rbt sich rot, schwarzer Regen f�llt. An einem Ort auf der Welt mu� das Wasser wenigstens noch nat�rlich und klar bleiben." Starke Worte aus einem Land, das in den K�pfen vieler Europ�er als heile Welt gilt, in der drollige K�nguruhs durch den Busch hopsen und wo die K�sten von t�rkisfarbener See ges�umt sind. Peter Garrett, Kopf der australischen Gruppe Midnight Oil, wei�, wovon er singt. Der ausgebildete Rechtsanwalt ist mit seinen Band-Kollegen schon seit Jahren auf dem 18 Millionen Einwohner z�hlenden Kontinent politisch aktiv. W�hrend andere Musiker von "Down Under" wie Olivia Newton-John oder Kylie Minogue den Weltmarkt mit Weichsp�lware �berschwemmen, sagen Midnight Oil bei Benefizkonzerten und Demonstrationen der Atom-Politik oder der Diskriminierung der Aborigines den Kampf an und machen sich f�r rigorosen Umweltschutz stark. Ohne den Zeigefinger zu erheben, versetzt die Kult-Band mit eing�ngigen, aber trotzdem kantigen Songs ihrem Publikum kleine Nadelstiche, nach denen man s�chtig werden kann. Obwohl die rauhbeinigen Polit-Popper ihre Musik seit Ende der 70er Jahre in den Pubs von Sydney und "f�r Australien machen", wirbelten sie 1988 mit dem Top-Ten-Album "Diesel And Dust" auch in Deutschland geh�rig Staub auf (© Stereoplay)

More music from Australien: Savage Garden (Animal Song; Truly, Madly, Deeply; To The Moon And Back) and, rather mainstream pop, Vanessa Amorosi (Absolutely Everybody).

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