Alan E Bailey

This Vast Land Alan E Bailey

Four seasoned travelers in their early sixties decide to head to Australia to have a look around. Two are brothers and notorious penny pinchers. Third is known for packing ten pounds into a five-pound bag (he once took a group of high school students on a tour of New York City during an unscheduled three-hour layover at JFK). Fourth, the only woman in the group, also known as "Princess Two Coats", photographs everything and is sometimes the sole voice of reason, or at least the voice of caution. Their three-month adventure begins in Perth with a cruise along Australia's south coast and around New Zealand, followed by five weeks by train up the east coast to Brisbane and Cairns, and from Darwin to Alice Springs on the luxury streamliner, The Ghan, with a week in the Outback before continuing on to Adelaide. From Adelaide they ride the rails to Melbourne and finish in Sydney, where they share a "Deluxe Apartment In The Sky" for about the same price of individual hotel rooms. The adventure concludes with the travelers boarding their homeward bound 24-night luxury cruise to Seattle, justified by the penny-pinching brothers in that the price of the cruise is really not much more than a one-way flight home. The book includes helpful tips for the novice Australian traveler such as: American words you never, never, ever, say out loud in Australia, Turning an ordinary suitcase into a steamer trunk with their patented Ziploc bag packing method, Making the best of accidently checking in to a "No-Tell" Motel, Doing your own shipboard laundry, and What to do when you find yourself in a ridiculously overpriced restaurant. Observations are also shared, such as behaviour of chair hogs at a cruise ship swimming pool, and what "blowing the dummy" actually means - ( hint: it's not at all what an American would think). Photographs accompany each chapter, along with the author's "Unofficial and Non-statistical 5-Star Daily Rankings" which might be helpful to those planning a similar adventure "down under". Situational humor is on a PG ratings level.