HEADWINDS A book with trucks, thieving marsupials & unnecessary exercise by Andrew Bain

HEADWINDS Andrew Bain - A Book With Trucks, Thieving Marsupials & Unnecessary Exercise (Australia / Cycling)

A hard-to-find and very popular cycling travel book: the author cycles Australia's Highway One.

This is a used travel book in good condition: cover is clean with light reading wear and creasing; pages are clean and tanning with age; dog ears to bottom corner of first few pages; excellent binding with no spine creases. See photos for cover blurb, condition and sample pages. The book in the photos is the actual book you will receive - we never use stock pictures - enjoy!

Publisher's blurb: Equipped with their weight in chocolate, panniers overpacked with All the Wrong Things and a solitary 'bike tool', Andrew and Janette redefine the 'Aussie Crawl', plagued by murderous trucks, psychotic cassowaries and aching limbs, they survive bushfires, food poisoning, and Billy Joel songs as they cycle aroung Australia. ‘What I knew about Australia’s Highway One: it was long, more than 16,000 kilometres around if you included Tasmania; and it was full of trucks, missiles of destruction half the length of a soccer pitch with 62 wheels so that if one didn’t get me, the other 61 might. What I knew about cycling: nothing.’

After fulfilling their backpacking ‘tour of duty’ in Europe self-confessed cycling ‘frauds’ Andrew and Janette Bain decided to embark on the ultimate adventure: to explore their own ‘backyard’ and cycle around Australia. Unprepared, unconfident and terrified of trucks, they wobbled away on a journey with a solitary ‘bike tool’. In Headwinds (Hardie Grant, $29.95) Andrew and Janette redefine the ‘Aussie Crawl’.

Plagued by murderous trucks, psychotic cassowaries and aching limbs, they survive bushfires, food poisoning, Billy Joel songs and unwelcoming wildlife, to emerge saner than they thought they ever would. Along the way, they meet the eccentric ‘Mad Phil’; Yoshi, the deepsleeping Japanese cyclist; Surf nazis; Grey Nomads; Wallaby mafia; and Adrian, the bible-thumping cyclist from Geraldton who was inspired to ride around Australia by – of all things – a bush-tucker book.

Headwinds is as much a story of determination, adventure and chocolate as it is about life on the verges of roads in the Sunburnt Country. Not to mention what can go wrong when you get the wrong advice! From the pencil-thin highways of the east coast to the humbling vastness of the outback, Headwinds is a story that shows there is a taste for adventure in everybody … sometimes even despite themselves! Andrew Bain is a former editor at Lonely Planet, and is now a freelance writer.

WARNING: It is recommended that you cycle counter-clockwise around Australia, to minimise the risk of riding into headwinds.

Book Details

Code: SKU550

Condition: See notes and photos below

Binding: Paperback

Pages: 214

Published: 2003 by Hardie Grant Books

ISBN: 1740660927

Postage: $6.90

Price: AUD $20.00