Presenting Australia

The timely appearance of Walkabout’s Australia will make giving easier for many this Christmas, especially if you are an Australian and have overseas friends.

Australian magazine Walka bout is an institution. It dissemi nates the Australian way of life and has been doing so since 1934 when it was launched by the Australian National Travel Association, then a very modest, semi-official organisa tion responsible for promoting travel to Australia.

Since the war, ANTA has grown greatly and Walkabout has grown with it and is now read by almost as many people abroad as by fans in Australia. To an extent, this magazine has taken the place of the old Sydney Bulletin in that it has encouraged non-professional writers in New Zea land and the South-West Pacific Islands, as well as those in Australia, to contribute their experiences and items of Australiana to it.

This present collection of articles that have appeared in Walkabout over the 30 years of its life have been selected by A. T. Bolton, and although he makes a point in a preface that they are not intended to be the “best of Walkabout”, they present a cross section of the sort of material that is normal to the magazine.

Professional writers like the late Arthur Upfield, Ernestine Hill and D’arcy Niland are represented but there is also a fair showing of the non-professionals who have always given freshness and Australianess to the magazine.

Good photographs have been feature of Walkabout throughout i life and many of these, in black ar white and colour, have been include in the collection.

The legendary Birdsville Trac cattle droving, aboriginal dancing, tl School of the Air, surfing, wild li and Australia’s contribution to tl arts are some of the subjects covere The authors themselves have adde brief footnotes to their origin articles, some of which appeared i far back as 1935; and the editor h provided brief biographies of the contributors.

If there is any fault to find wi the collection it is that more ths three-quarters of it is devoted to tl Australian outback or rural subjecl This may be the fault of the magazii itself; as the editor says, it practical ignored the cities until the 195C even though 54 per cent, of tl population lives in the State ar Federal capitals.

The reasoning seems to be th although the clerk and the tradesmj are, in 1964, far more typical Au tralians than the drover, the jol swagman or the shearer, it’s tl latter—plus kangaroos, of course that make Australia different in tl

eyes of the outside world.

IT.

(Walkabout’S Australia. U

Smith. 39/6.)