PTPI Blog

Our staff readers have prepared this list of discussion questions for those reading In a Sunburned Country.  Use these if you are starting your own book club, or just keep the questions in mind as you are reading the book.  Next week, we will be introducing staff reading the book and they will begin posting their own thoughts on these questions…and we hope you will join the conversation!

1.  Bryson starts off the book speaking of not knowing the Australian Prime Minister’s name, no matter how many times he has committed it to memory.  How true is this of how aware we are of governments outside of our own?  There are many countries that receive little to no global attention.  What do you think dictates the topics that major news outlets deem news-worthy?

2.  Bryson writes of the Aborigines “inventing and mastering ocean-going seacraft at least 30,000 years in advance of anyone else…”  What is your reaction to that fact?  Does it make you wonder about your studies and what other great human achievements are overlooked or glossed over by our history books?

3.  The author writes primarily of his observations of Australian culture and people, rarely speaking with or quoting Australians.  Would you like this book if it were written about your own country?

4.  How do you think reading this book would influence how you experience Australia?  When you travel, do you read beforehand, to get a better sense of the place you are visiting?  Has a travel experience ever been enhanced or diminished by what you’ve read?  Do you bring any pre-conceived notions?

5.  Can you ever really experience a country just touring?  How can you best get a real feel for a country and its people?

6.  The author speaks of his adventures traveling by train across Australia.  What is the most unusual travel experience you have ever had?

7.  On pg. 151 Bryson talks about how Australians will spend half of a conversation speaking of how the dangers that wildlife present in their country are overrated, and the other half of the conversation telling you about near-death experiences with wildlife.  Is there a danger present in your country that you feel is exaggerated or misunderstood by outsiders?

8.  In talking about visiting Uluru for the first time, the author writes “In some odd way that you don’t understand and can’t begin to articulate you feel an acquaintance with it – a familiarity on an unfamiliar level.  Somewhere in the deep sediment of your being some long-dormant fragment of primordial memory, some little severed tail of DNA, has twitched or stirred.  It is a motion much too faint to be understood or interpreted, but somehow you feel certain that this large, brooding, hypnotic presence has an importance to you at the species level – perhaps even at a sort of tadpole level – and that in some way your visit here is more than happenstance.”  Have you ever felt this experience when visiting a distant place for the first time?