Australian Adventure Travel – Australien Abenteuer Reisen
Saturday, 11 January 2025
▲ I met Bernd Tesch in Germany – Frankfurt Bookfair of course – back in 1977 (so 48 years ago) when he was promoting his first travel books. There have been many more since including, most recently, Australian Adventure Travel – Australien Abenteuer Reisen – 448 pages (in German) on travel-travel-travel to from and around Australia. Including Bernd’s three long motorcycle excursions around the country. Click here if you’d like to go to Bernd’s travel shop in Germany to buy a copy for €32.
▲ Two-wheeled travel features particularly strongly, such as Donald George Mackay who pedalled around Australia in 1899-1900. There would have been very few sealed roads around Australia at that time, in fact when I first drove from Perth to Sydney in 1972 you didn’t hit the tarmac until you crossed the border from Western Australia to South Australia. And in 1982, when I went to Broome for the first time, the sealed road from Perth had only just been completed.
▲ Lots of other forms of Australian transport pop up of course, including Robyn Davidson’s camel trek across Australia, you can explore that trip in her 1980 book Tracks or see it in the 2013 movie.
▲ Getting to Australia also features, in 2010 I posted a blog about the 1919 air-race from London to Darwin which was won by a four man crew in a Vickers Vimy biplane. The two pilots – Ross Smith and Keith Smith – were brothers and the epic flight set out from London on 12 November 1919 and arrived in Darwin 24 stops and 28 days later on 10 December.
▲ You get the feeling there has never been a book about getting to or getting around Australia which Bernd hasn’t tracked down. Like Michael and Rita Mariott’s 1956-1957 trip from London to Australia – and then around much of the island – on an NSU scooter – Two-Up – By Scooter to Australia. You should be able to find a second hand copy and I’ve got their earlier book Desert Taxi – crossing the Sahara in a London taxi – on my bookshelves.
▲ Lots more weird and wonderful Australian travel adventures pop up in Bernd’s book. Like speedway star Jeff Munro who cruised around Australia on his Ariel motorcycle in 1928.
▲ And people are still doing it, in 1988, driving from Darwin to Perth, I passed Phil McDonald making a circuit of Australia on a penny-farthing. In 2023 he was planning to pedal across Bass Strait between Victoria and Tasmania on a waterbike, but for some reason that trip didn’t eventuate so I guess it’s a challenge still to be met. Adventurous people regularly kayak across Bass Strait and I met a couple of them when I visited Erith Island in 2019. Coincidentally ‘camel lady’ Robyn Davidson was with the same group I stayed with on Erith Island on that trip.
So Bernd’s book covers quite a range of Australian travel tales, if you’d like to translate it into English or even better publish it in English for Bernd you can contact him at berndtesch@gmail.com
