80 books like The Long Ride Home

I live in a small space with little room for books I don’t want to re-read. This one stays! Paddy chose his travel bike, a 2002 Aprilia Pegaso 650ie, because it was cheap. His ‘mend and make do’ approach was put to good use on this journey in the Americas, time-defined by how long the money lasted. I delighted in his eye for the puzzling and ridiculous, and how he depicts the essence of the people and places he sees. Spotting a fellow non-planner, I was hooked when I read, “…the plans of man are but thoughts and ideas easily revoked should anything more interesting crop up in the meantime.” So did this Irishman successfully complete his quest? Where is Puerto Faraglioni anyway?

The Sahara Desert, more used to Bedouins and camels, had never seen a motorcycle before let alone two Englishwomen riding one. Setting off from London in December 1934, Theresa Wallach and Florence Blenkiron rode their 600cc Panther through Africa from north to south. They maintained a ‘why not?’ attitude that got them through despite frequent punctures, delays whilst waiting for permits and none of the technology provided for today’s motorcycle traveller. These two qualified engineers who had already broken motorcycle speed records at Brooklands, took their motorcycle outfit and trailer with not even a compass... just a map that showed each oasis on the way. I was in a permanent state of suspense when reading about each encounter they experienced and their outstanding ingenuity and perseverance.

What I like about this book is that Peggy writes as if riding a 125cc BSA Bantam through Canada, North America, and Mexico with an Airedale dog as pillion is quite the normal thing to do! In 1951, she left Liverpool for Nova Scotia. Arriving with only $60, she took various jobs to fund the two years she spent on the trip. I identified with this as I worked as a nurse in New Zealand during my own motorcycle travels. Her matter-of-fact attitude is smile-worthy, as she describes her wonderful experiences. “Oppy” the BSA proves perfect for the job. Matelot, the dog who travels on a metal box behind her, adjusts to his life on the road with similar alacrity.

Some motorcycle travel books say little about the motorbike itself but I like the nuts and bolts in a story of this genre. This book is very much about the bike. Steve’s Ariel was fifty-five years old and he was sixty-six when he embarked on his trip from Capetown to South Luangwa. I identified with Steve; neither of us had any modern gadgetry nor much in the way of mechanical expertise, therefore we both discovered new levels of patience and were blessed with experiencing people’s generosity in a different culture together with spectacular scenery. Like me, he thought of himself and his motorbike as ‘we’; when you travel solo, it is like a partnership. There’s nothing like travelling with a classic motorcycle as your (sometimes frustrating!) companion. 

I don’t often read books more than once, but this one I have, and I know I will read it again. The woman whose life is revealed this time is 70-year-old Nora Porteous. She has returned to her native Brisbane, Australia after having escaped it by marriage to Sydney, and having escaped that marriage to London. She now reflects wryly on how she developed throughout those years of hardship and joy as she also experiences the changes in the neighbourhood she ran from decades before. As we move through both her memories of the past and her experience of the present, the details that help us to understand her are extraordinary: ‘The man is unlocking the door. I have had to talk and smile too much in his car, and as I wait I consciously rest my face.’

This is a really funny book. It is the second volume of Clive James’ Unreliable Memoirs, and it’s set in London in the sixties. James moves to London from Australia to find fame and fortune as a writer and playwright, but things do not go smoothly. I remember snorting with laughter as he describes having no money and nowhere to live, so he crashes at a friend’s place. His friend has bought just a new mattress and James has no blankets and is freezing, so he sleeps in the plastic packaging that the mattress arrives in. He said he rustled like a packet of chips all night long.

Published in 1934, this is Stead’s first novel, and its Modernistic portrayal of a loosely connected group of young men and women existing and interacting in a poverty-wracked but rapidly changing between-the-Wars Sydney caused a literary storm at the time. The City, caught between its Colonial heritage and its future as a modern Twentieth Century metropolis is the real star of the novel even as its seven bewildered, beleaguered characters roam its bay and suburbs, its libraries, university, and pubs, attempting to negotiate their changing city and their place in it. I couldn’t write a novel about Sydney without visiting Christina Stead’s Sydney first.

Corris and his protagonist, the hard-scrabble private detective Cliff Hardy, are quintessentially Australian. The Dying Trade introduces Cliff (smoker, drinker, ex-boxer) and sets the standard for all the books that follow in this series. It’s dry and laconic, with a wonderful sense of place (a very gritty 1980s Sydney). There’s a definite nod to the greats— Chandler and Hammett in this series; you know Cliff Hardy probably shouldn’t take this job, it’s odds-on he’ll cop a beating along the way, possible he’ll find love and lose it again. I enjoy the author’s economy with words and the moral complexity of his characters. If you like hard-boiled crime, this series is worth a look!

*Note: Sydney is much nicer than it may seem when you walk in Corris’s shoes!

A bold and broad-sweeping book, written in the 1940s, described as a novel but featuring a mix of real and fictional characters, The Timeless Land is a beautifully imaginative telling of the arrival of the First Fleet in what became Sydney in 1788, as seen through the eyes of the Aboriginal people, the Governor and his officers, convicts and the odd settler. The depiction of the part-real, part-invented Aboriginal people may cause raised eyebrows nowadays, but the book is based on thorough research and written with great imagination and sensitivity. I love the mix of the real and the imaginary, while never distorting the facts. It’s a brilliant way to paint a vivid portrait of a subject, I’ve done it myself (if I may be presumptuous enough to bracket myself with Ms. Dark).

First published in 1894, this is definitely a nostalgic choice; however, there’s a good reason why it became the first Australian novel to be continuously in print for 100 years in 1994. Esther Turner’s classic novel is Australia’s answer to Little Women, and if you don’t fall in love with the seven boisterous Woolcot children and end up in tears over the tragic events at Yarrahappini, I’m afraid you’re even harder-hearted than Captain Woolcot himself!