En route to our holiday in the Hunter Valley, The Spouse and I took two books of interest to literary tourists: the Oxford Literary Guide to Australia, (Revised Edition 1993) by Peter Pierce, and Brief Encounters, Literary Travellers in Australia 1836-1939 by Susannah Fullerton.

The Oxford Guide might be a useful reference if you know the geography of the area through which you travel, but it wasn’t much use to me as we drove up the Hume Highway from Melbourne to Sydney. As a good national route should, the Hume bypasses almost everything and unless you’ve plodded through the Guide beforehand and identified which towns warrant taking an exit, chances are you’ll miss any literary sights altogether. (As we did). The Guide is arranged by State, but not by routes, so for New South Wales that means browsing 120 pages to find which towns lie along the route, and then which of those have authors of any interest.

The Editor, Peter Pierce, has spurned all but Australian writers, so you won’t find any mention of Joseph Conrad’s boat in Tassie, or Charles Darwin’s adventures in the Blue Mountains, though there are references to lots of obscure poets and playwrights amongst the better known authors. However, even when you do discover something you might like to see, there are no addresses or directions to tell you how to get there, so we left our overnight stopover in Yass without seeing the Memorial Banjo Paterson Park at Wee Jasper. (Paterson lived at Illalong Station in his childhood, went to a bush school at Binalong, and went into partnership with R.S. Lindeman of Lindeman’s Wines in 1915).

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2010/01/15/brief-encounters-by-susannah-fullerton/ ( )

This is excellently researched, and highly readable. Fullerton examines the impact of literary giants on Australia, and of Australia on them. Full of fascinating details, as well as a broader view. ( )