Cold Beer and Crocodiles: A Bicycle Journey into Australia (Adventure Press)

And a rollicking tale it is, as Smith meets with an odd assortment of humans and critters along his sometimes torturous path. (One all-too-long stretch of road, for instance, he calls "the most dangerous and frightening I've ever had the misfortune to ride: a suicide run of hammering trucks, heavy construction, muddy detours, and lane closures.") Smith logs time in crocodile country, too, in the far northern Australian rainforest, where he counts the awful moments until antediluvian doom strikes. It never does, and in any event the crocs are nothing compared to the errant sheep, emus, kangaroos, and death adders he encounters, to say nothing of the 108-degree gusts euphemistically referred to by local weathercasters as "sea breezes"--none of which poses quite the dangers that his fellow humans offer out on the beery highways of Oz. Difficult though the journey is, Smith keeps up his good cheer throughout these lively pages, and, if he's not quite unflappable, he's certainly a sympathetic narrator.

Expanded from his popular three-part series in National Geographic magazine, Smith's pedal-powered epic is an instructive manual for anyone contemplating a life-changing journey--and, for the rest of us, a highly enjoyable, altogether unexpected tour of the outback. --Gregory McNamee

Product Description
NINE-MONTH TREK: Based on the authors nine-month, 10,000-mile bicycle trip around Australia, described in a 3-part series in National Geographic Magazine. ENTERTAINING, AFFECTIONATE PORTRAYAL OF AN EXOTIC LAND: Author gets deeply into the heart of the country, describing with great verve the people he meets, the towns, the landscapes and the hardships, loneliness, and self-discovery. KEEN INTEREST IN AUSTRALIA AND POPULARITY AS A TRAVEL DESTINATION: In America, especially, Australia is seen as a last frontier and a younger, sunnier, and more innocent reflection of itself. More than 4 million people visit each year; 2000 will be a banner year for tourism. PAUCITY OF COMPETITION: Despite interest in Australia, very little narrative, book-length treatment of the country in the travel genre. Cold Beer and Crocodiles: A Bicycle Journey into Australia is an American journalists immersion into an exotic land, where he had lived for years but never come to know. In 1996 Roff Smith set off alone into the Australia outback on a 10,000-mile bicycle trek. Over the next nine months, he stayed at remote sheep and cattle stations, old pearling ports, mining towns, Aboriginal communities, quiet rain forest villages, occasional big cities, and many solitary desert campsites, often hundreds of miles from the nearest dwelling. And so I wandered the country for more than nine months, living a more magnificent adventure than I could possibly have imagined at the start of the journey. I rode along the Tropic of Cancer into the dusty heart of the Queensland outback, through the rugged and extremely remote Kimberley region, crossed Western Australians Great Sandy Desert and ventured out across the sub-blistered immensity of the Nullabor Plain in the height of summer. I had to carry as much as 22 liters of water to survive these lonely distances, carefully conserving each precious drop as there were no opportunities to fill my canteens. It was a grueling journey. What with headwinds, dust, flies, searing heat, steep mountain grades, icy gales off the Southern Ocean, and long days of hard riding, I lost more than 30 pounds by the time I returned to Sydney. But somewhere in those thousands of miles 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 new found pride in my adopted country. Gracefully written, filled with insights, and teeming with discoveries, this lively narrative will find a place on the shelf alongside Bruce ChatwinsThe Songlines.

"Cold Beer and Crocodiles" is a poor title, especially when Smith's account proves there is so much more to Australia than the two. He does an excellent job of describing the different climates he rides and lives through.

Just as skillful is his portrayal of the various Australians he meets along the way. I spent several months in the country a few years ago, so I can relate to their overwhelming hospitality and generosity (most). As few truly unfriendly and hostile Australians as I met, I'm glad Smith wasn't afraid to mention the few he came across. They're such a small minority, especially if you consider a similar trip made around say the US. A small number would be so open to a strange cycling by their homes. Traditionally, Australians are used to strangers traveling through covering the vast distances in search of work. Even so I think Smith fortunate to get a rare glimpse (for the rest of the world anyway) into an outback station, several, and we're lucky to read about his other experiences. His balance between the positive and negative provides a wonderful narrative of his trip. I agree with other reviewers the book winds up extremely quickly, and he skips through and by several places worth commenting on. He barely writes about this trip in Tasmania. But this isn't the Rough Guide to Australia. What is mentioned and left out is entirely up to the writer. There are several other books on travel in Australia, such as Bryson's "In a Sunburned Country" to give a different spin on Oz.


Finishing the Australian experience   June 20, 2001
Ron Albrecht (Palo Alto, CA USA)
7 out of 8 found this review helpful

The force of my desire to hear more from an adventurer like Roff Smith is the litmus test of how much I enjoyed this summertime page-turner. Although I longed for greater detail at every leg of his journey, I sensed Smith's efficient writing style pulling me forward to the next landscape and the next experience.

Smith's adventures complete the Australian experience started by Eric Stiller's "Keep Australia on Your Left: A True Story of an Attempt to Circumnavigate Australia." While cycling 10,000 miles puts Smith in contact with many more aspects of this unique continent, Stiller's failed kayaking attempt deals more with the problems of bringing another personality onboard. Both are compelling reads.

While Smith seems open to making new acquaintances along the way, his reported loneliness is magnified by the adsence of a certain warmth - a feeling conveyed by descriptions of the support and concern from friends and family that surely must have accompanied him. On the other hand, this might just be a carry-over from the sanitized writing requirements of the "National Geographic" series.

"Cold Beer and Crocodiles" is a stop-and-start-anywhere book. Each chapter offers readers the craft and closure of a short story.


Duel in the Sun.   June 5, 2003
Michael Murphy (Glasgow, Scotland.)
7 out of 7 found this review helpful

Cold Beer and Crocodiles (crocodiles barely feature at all!) is an excellent travel adventure which will appeal to anyone who cosily enjoys the vicarious experience of someone else battling to survive in an extreme landscape : in this case, the Australian Outback. Having lived in Australia for 15 years without developing any emotional attachment to the country, Roff Smith quit his job at Time magazine to undertake a mammoth 10,000 mile round trip of Australia, his rationale being a desire to try to engage emotionally "with the country I'd lived in as a stranger all these years". His chosen mode of transport, a 21 speed touring bicycle would let him get close to the land, experience Australia, its sights, sounds and smells.

In the early stages, Smith expends much pedal power shaking off the Sydney suburbs and running the gauntlet of heavy, aggressive traffic. City and suburbs sloughed off, six months of gruelling Outback travel follow : its when he hits the furnace of the Outback that the words blaze off the page as he is plagued for months on end by flies, thirst, dust, scorching heat and feelings of loneliness ; is overtaken by huge triple roadtrains barrelling down desert highways ; witnesses spectacular thunder and lightning desert storms ; bivouacs in scrub under night skies "full of stars as sharp as needles"; works in sheep and cattle stations; picks melons ; visits an Aboriginal Community; duels for weeks on end with the vast, hostile expanses of empty reddish plains baking under the blistering sun - "so much nothing out there...just miles and miles of nothing" .Surviving to the next roadhouse is the order of each day! On his travels, Smith encounters a mixed bag of people ( a few dodgy, most helpful) often in remote roadhouses, isolated settlements or outstations hundreds of miles of sand, scrub and spinifex away from the nearest town.

If the thought of living on the edge appeals to you, read this book. Now try "One For The Road" by Tony Horwitz, another equally good travel venture into the Australian Outback but this time from the very different perspective of a hitch-hiker. Both books strongly recommended!


Excellent read   February 19, 2001
J. D. Moffatt (Victoria, BC Canada)
5 out of 5 found this review helpful

When I was 26, about 8 years before the author made his journey, I almost undertook exactly the same adventure (even following the same roads - I had the whole thing planned out, with significantly more detail and prep than the author made), so when I heard about this book, I had to read it. I was not disappointed. His effusive story telling style was a pleasant surprise to me, and read it cover-to-cover. I think his National Geographic piece on the trip was more reflective, if I recall correctly, and you didn't get as much insight in the book as to what sort of turmoil made him take the trip, but I guess he felt it wasn't relevant. I would have also liked a bit more detail about his personal transformation, and a bit more about what certain regions were like. For example, his terrifying journey (or is that "escape"?) across the south of Australia was gripping reading, but there wasn't much about the geography, such as the spectacular coast. It didn't exactly paint a picture. It's not as poetic about the natural beauty of Australia as I'd like, but he HAD been a resident of Australia for some time before he took the trip. He wasn't exactly looking at it with tourist's eyes. My only real complaint, then, was that the book was too skimpy. I would have happily travelled with him for another 100 pages, as I didn't want it to end. If there's ever a second edition, I hope he fleshes it out a bit, maybe borrowing from the NG article. I have to say that after reading it, I'm both glad I didn't go (I might be dead now!), and even more sorry I didn't (it's dangerous, but possible and rewarding). Congratulations to the author for his courage, and thanks for satisfying a bit of my wanderlust.


Not bad   May 2, 2001
3 out of 13 found this review helpful

It was a pretty good read actually.