On the Road meets Down Under in this really rough guide to the adventures of an English hitchhiker and his reluctant French girlfriend in the Australian Outback! Thumbs Up Australia: Hitchhiking the Outback is the true story of Tom Parry_s journey through the Outback. As Parry and his girlfriend hitch their way around the near-empty highways, they encounter a wide cross-section of Aussie society along the dusty roads, from a yarn-spinning opal miner turned mechanic, to the grizzled Aboriginal elder with his tales of dreamtime, to the Dutch hitchhiker who paused at a commune twenty years ago and never left. We see a country of opportunity and boundless freedoms, of mountains and beaches and thousands of miles of nearly uninhabited wilderness and, as our travelers come to realize, people whose pioneer spirit is very much alive. Full of wonderful anecdotes and endearing tales, Thumbs Up Australia is essential reading for anyone bound for the bush_or dreaming of it from their backyard.