Adventures in Caravanastan

Book excerpt: One car, one caravan, one kid, one continent... Around Australia at eighty kays. Greg Bearup and his partner Lisa Upton survived three years living together in Pakistan and Afghanistan, but life with the Taliban was nothing compared to taking a toddler to Caravanastan. Following the trail of the superannuated wildebeest, they wind up the jockey wheel, check the safety chains and hitch up the van for the great lap of Australia with their baby son, Joe. Along the way they park the van behind the Dagwood Dog stand and run away with the showies, break down in croc-infested waters, talk iambic pentameter with the great poet Les Murray, share tunes with John Butler and pimp Lisa to a brothel in the Pilbara. Their blue-eyed, blond-haired little boy has his own adventures- charming madams, attempting to swim with man-eating reptiles, and escaping in dramatic fashion from the van. Bearup is a double-Walkley Award winning writer with Fairfax's Good Weekend magazine. In Adventures In Caravanstan he turns his keen eye on the wide, brown land of Australia and its never less than fascinating people.