Need Australian citizen or former citizen for new book

popgun62 · Feb 14, 2014

I need a person who lives in or is familiar with Australia, e.g. climate, geography, local language dialects, customs, etc. I don't have the means to go myself, or I would! I'm doing research on my own, but that only goes so far. You will get full credit in the acknowledgement section of my book. I will be asking various questions via email, so shoot me a line if interested to: {snip}email address removed by moderator{/snip}. Thanks!

Cath · Feb 14, 2014

Australia's a huge place. If you want to ask specific questions, you may get some help in thread.

Otherwise asking for an unspecified amount of help for a gratuitous credit might not get the results you desire.

Helix · Feb 14, 2014

Echoing what Cath said -- Australia's quite a big place with a fair amount of diversity in all the factors you've listed. What specific things do you want to know?

ameliavarro · Feb 14, 2014

I'm an Australian based in Melbourne, one of our big cities and cultural centres. If that matches the kind of setting that you're writing about, I'd be happy to answer your questions.

popgun62 · Feb 15, 2014

Helix said:
Echoing what Cath said -- Australia's quite a big place with a fair amount of diversity in all the factors you've listed. What specific things do you want to know?

ameliavarro said:
I'm an Australian based in Melbourne, one of our big cities and cultural centres. If that matches the kind of setting that you're writing about, I'd be happy to answer your questions.

Thanks Helix and Amelia. I will have some specific questions once I flesh the story out. I appreciate your input!

popgun62 · Feb 18, 2014

Here's my first set of questions: I'm doing some preliminary research on the outback. If you've ever been there, I need to know what your impressions of it were - the climate, how it made you feel, what kinds of animals and/or plants and trees you saw there, if you saw any at all. Basically, I just need to know what the outback is like, in your opinion. Also, what do the people in Australia think of the outback? Do they have any special nicknames for it, etc.? Thanks!

Helix · Feb 18, 2014

You're going to have to narrow it down a bit, Popgun62! The Outback -- a.k.a Back o' Bourke and other names, some unprintable -- is a vast area and covers a huge range of climate zones from tropical to Mediterranean and ecosystems from sand desert to gibber plains to savanna to eucalypt woodlands to alpine woodlands to deciduous vine thickets to rainforests. It's basically all of mainland Australia that isn't the SW, SE or E coast. (ETA: Or 'The Bush'. But trying to draw boundaries between the Bush and the Outback is tricky!)

May I suggest that you have a look at Australia on Google Maps to get an idea of which region most suits your story? Google Street View has a surprisingly good coverage of the continent. Lonely Planet also has a guide called 'Outback Australia', which puts the area into perspective.

popgun62 · Feb 18, 2014

Helix said:
You're going to have to narrow it down a bit, Popgun62! The Outback -- a.k.a Back o' Bourke and other names, some unprintable -- is a vast area and covers a huge range of climate zones from tropical to Mediterranean and ecosystems from sand desert to gibber plains to savanna to eucalypt woodlands to alpine woodlands to deciduous vine thickets to rainforests. It's basically all of mainland Australia that isn't the SW, SE or E coast. (ETA: Or 'The Bush'. But trying to draw boundaries between the Bush and the Outback is tricky!)

May I suggest that you have a look at Australia on Google Maps to get an idea of which region most suits your story? Google Street View has a surprisingly good coverage of the continent. Lonely Planet also has a guide called 'Outback Australia', which puts the area into perspective.

Thanks Helix!

mccardey · Feb 18, 2014

This might help explain it

Many years back I had a visitor from America on his first trip to Australia.

There are the visitor attractions of the Sydney Opera House, Great Barrier Reef, Uluru, and so I attempted to be helpful and asked what he wanted most to see.

And he said: "The Outback."

That stumped me. For there is no one place that is the Australian Outback.

Helix · Feb 18, 2014

Oh, that article includes Tasmania! I will have to rethink my ideas. SW Tassie is wild country, for sure.

mccardey · Feb 18, 2014

Helix said:
Oh, that article includes Tasmania! I will have to rethink my ideas. SW Tassie is wild country, for sure.

What - wait! Tasmania's real?

popgun62 · Feb 18, 2014

mccardey said:
This might help explain it

Thanks - that's perfect!

Albedo · Feb 18, 2014

mccardey said:
What - wait! Tasmania's real?

Tasmania is a convenient geographical fiction, created by the colonial administration back in the day and maintained by governments and cartographical authorities since, to cover up the terrible truth of what actually lies in the Southern Ocean between here and Antarctica.

People who think they are going on holidays to Tasmania are actually anaesthetised on the mainland, then kept in comas for the duration of their trips, and fed false memories using a mixture of hypnotism and psychoactive drugs. Hence the illusion of there being an island state is maintained.

Meanwhile, It continues to slumber.

I've probably said too much.

mccardey · Feb 18, 2014

Albedo said:
Tasmania is a convenient geographical fiction, created by the colonial administration back in the day and maintained by governments and cartographical authorities since, to cover up the terrible truth of what actually lies in the Southern Ocean between here and Antarctica...

I've probably said too much.

My heavens! And all this time I thought Terry Pratchett had made it up....

Helix · Feb 18, 2014

There's certainly a fair bit of non-Euclidean geometry happening in Tasmania. And then there's the infernal wordplay of Doo Town.

LA*78 · Feb 18, 2014

As others have said, 'the outback' pretty much encompasses the entire country excluding the coastal areas, so you might want to narrow your location a little. Personally being a Qlder, when I think outback I think Western Qld, Northern Territory. I haven't been to the NT, but for Western Qld my thoughts are dry red dirt, spinifex grass, dry heat, sporadic trees.

You might find this a useful resource site to browse through - https://open.abc.net.au/

LA*78 · Feb 18, 2014

Also, if you access Facebook at all, this page might be of interest in regards to living in Western Qld.
https://www.facebook.com/ABCWesternQueensland

(ABC is our Govt-owned broadcasting station)

mccardey · Feb 18, 2014

LA*78 said:
(ABC is our Govt-owned broadcasting station)

For the moment.

afarnam · Feb 19, 2014

Having an aunt in Australia and knowing enough to know that "the Outback" is not one place, I know it may seem ridiculous for someone to think of writing a book about some place while starting from so little information. However, I would like to point out that here in the Czech Republic every adult male I know grew up on the stories of Karl May, who wrote supposedly about the US Wild West and Native Americans. I grew up in a rural/remote area in Oregon. While I wouldn't recommend the books and they are horrendously inaccurate to the point of roll-on-the-floor hilarious parody, they were wildly popular for decades, so it can be done.

Research does really help too. Good luck.

Cath · Feb 19, 2014

Popgun62, you really might benefit from a trip to the library. Go to the reference desk and tell the librarian what you're looking for, he or she should be able to provide you with a wealth of resources to help answers these broader questions.

Helix · Feb 19, 2014

afarnam said:
Having an aunt in Australia and knowing enough to know that "the Outback" is not one place, I know it may seem ridiculous for someone to think of writing a book about some place while starting from so little information. However, I would like to point out that here in the Czech Republic every adult male I know grew up on the stories of Karl May, who wrote supposedly about the US Wild West and Native Americans. I grew up in a rural/remote area in Oregon. While I wouldn't recommend the books and they are horrendously inaccurate to the point of roll-on-the-floor hilarious parody, they were wildly popular for decades, so it can be done. Research does really help too. Good luck.

We all grew up with our regional equivalents, I suspect! It might be a bit more difficult to get away with that sort of fudging nowadays because of the internet.

*closes notebook for future work set in rural West Virginia and slides it under stack of filing, while whistling nonchalantly*

King Neptune · Feb 19, 2014

afarnam said:
Having an aunt in Australia and knowing enough to know that "the Outback" is not one place, I know it may seem ridiculous for someone to think of writing a book about some place while starting from so little information. However, I would like to point out that here in the Czech Republic every adult male I know grew up on the stories of Karl May, who wrote supposedly about the US Wild West and Native Americans. I grew up in a rural/remote area in Oregon. While I wouldn't recommend the books and they are horrendously inaccurate to the point of roll-on-the-floor hilarious parody, they were wildly popular for decades, so it can be done. Research does really help too. Good luck.

That's a very good point. ANd we all know that Edgar Rice Burroughs knew as much about Barsoom as he knew about Africa, but that didn't hurt his sales at all.

mirandashell · Feb 19, 2014

Helix said:
There's certainly a fair bit of non-Euclidean geometry happening in Tasmania. And then there's the infernal wordplay of Doo Town.

That's brilliant! And the one called Medhurst.... that just proves you're as bloody-minded as we are!

:ROFL

popgun62 · Feb 19, 2014

Thanks for all the great tips! I found another excellent resource - a show on Animal Planet called "I Shouldn't Be Alive: Lost in the Outback." Poor guy was lost for five days with a bad heart, no water and no food. He pretty much did everything wrong that a person could possibly do, and survived. Great show.

Helix · Feb 19, 2014

I wonder where they filmed that episode*. Does it say in the credits?

He was lucky that the weather was so mild. This Sydney Morning Herald article about that WA incident tells you pretty much all you need to know about attitudes to people getting lost for no good reason.

*ETA: It looks like Broken Hill to me.

Need Australian citizen or former citizen for new book

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