Literary Walkabouts: Contemporary Australian Writers on Their European Experiences

Abstract

It is amazing to see just how much travel writing, writmg which does not exclusively belong to this sub-genre of "creative non-fiction", and also how many non-Australian settings with emphasis on European and Asian ones there are in recent contemporary writing. This fact certainly speaks about a certain preoccupation or downright trait in the Australian national character. Perhaps, it is a reflection of a particular condition of being down under, derived from "a tradition of colonialism and post-colonialism; from geographical location, both a deterrent and a spur; from post-Romantic literary tradition, coinciding with the early years of white settlement; and from the universal lure of ideas of travel, never more flourishing than at the present" (Hergenhan, Petersson xiii).