One for the Road: Revised Edition [Paperback]

Tony Horwitz (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 5, 1999

"A high-spirited, comic ramble into the savage Outback populated by irreverent, beer-guzzling frontiersmen." --Chicago Tribune

"A fascinating insight into what we're all about on the highways and byways along the outback track." --The Telegraph (Sydney)

Swept off to live in Sydney by his Australian bride, American writer Tony Horwitz longs to explore the exotic reaches of his adopted land. So one day, armed only with a backpack and fantasies of the open road, he hitchhikes off into the awesome emptiness of Australia's outback.
        What follows is a hilarious, hair-raising ride into the hot red center of a continent so desolate that civilization dwindles to a gas pump and a pub. While the outback's terrain is inhospitable, its scattered inhabitants are anything but. Horwitz entrusts himself to Aborigines, opal diggers, jackeroos, card sharks, and sunstruck wanderers who measure distance in the number of beers consumed en route. Along the way, Horwitz discovers that the outback is as treacherous as it is colorful. Bug-bitten, sunblasted, dust-choked, and bloodied by a near-fatal accident, Horwitz endures seven thousand miles of the world's most forbidding real estate, and some very bizarre personal encounters, as he winds his way to Queensland, Alice Springs, Perth, Darwin--and a hundred bush pubs in between.
        Horwitz, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of two national bestsellers, Confederates in the Attic and Baghdad Without a Map, is the ideal tour guide for anyone who has ever dreamed of a genuine Australian adventure.

"Lively, fast-paced and amusing . . . a consistently interesting and entertaining account." --Kirkus Reviews

"Ironical, perceptive and subtle . . . will have readers getting out their maps and itching to follow Horwitz's tracks. . . . The internal journey is his finest achievement; he allows the reader into his heart, to go travelling with him there, sharing his adventures of the spirit." --Sunday Times (London)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

After a year working an office job in Sydney, author and Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaperman Tony Horwitz finds himself longing for the open road. Spurred on by a colleague's "Aren't you a little too old for this game?" he sets off on a 7,000-mile adventure around Australia, hitchhiking to Alice Springs and beyond: through desolate mining towns, sheep stations, countless bush pubs (do not attempt to match his beer intake), and the forbidding, Martianesque emptinesses of Australian deserts. On the way he encounters hostile, friendly, and downright strange natives; jumps a train; survives a harrowing accident; and uses his relentless sense of humor to face down a cyclone:

I prop my pack against the fence as a windbreak. Huddled behind it, I pull on two pairs of pants, three shirts, four pairs of socks--my entire wardrobe in fact, except for the dung-covered shirt and five pairs of elastic-waisted underwear. No room for dignity here, at the center of a cyclone. I put the jockey shorts over my head, one pair at a time, fitting the fly over my nose to let a little oxygen in.

A wily melange of tenderness, eye-popping lunacy, and occasional white-knuckled fear, One for the Road will leave you yearning to have the never-ending-blue Oz sky above, the flavor of that red, red dust in your mouth, and a tinnie to wash it all down with. --Jhana Bach

From the Inside Flap

"A high-spirited, comic ramble into the savage Outback populated by irreverent, beer-guzzling frontiersmen." --Chicago Tribune

"A fascinating insight into what we're all about on the highways and byways along the outback track." --The Telegraph (Sydney)

Swept off to live in Sydney by his Australian bride, American writer Tony Horwitz longs to explore the exotic reaches of his adopted land. So one day, armed only with a backpack and fantasies of the open road, he hitchhikes off into the awesome emptiness of Australia's outback.
        What follows is a hilarious, hair-raising ride into the hot red center of a continent so desolate that civilization dwindles to a gas pump and a pub. While the outback's terrain is inhospitable, its scattered inhabitants are anything but. Horwitz entrusts himself to Aborigines, opal diggers, jackeroos, card sharks, and sunstruck wanderers who measure distance in the number of beers consumed en route. Along the way, Horwitz discovers that the outback is as treacherous as it is colorful. Bug-bitten, sunblasted, dust-choked, and bloodied by a near-fatal accident, Horwitz endures seven thousand miles of the world's most forbidding real estate, and some very bizarre personal encounters, as he winds his way to Queensland, Alice Springs, Perth, Darwin--and a hundred bush pubs in between.
        Horwitz, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of two national bestsellers, Confederates in the Attic and Baghdad Without a Map, is the ideal tour guide for anyone who has ever dreamed of a genuine Australian adventure.

"Lively, fast-paced and amusing . . . a consistently interesting and entertaining account." --Kirkus Reviews

"Ironical, perceptive and subtle . . . will have readers getting out their maps and itching to follow Horwitz's tracks. . . . The internal journey is his finest achievement; he allows the reader into his heart, to go travelling with him there, sharing his adventures of the spirit." --Sunday Times (London)

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Vintage; Revised edition (October 5, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375706135
• ISBN-13: 978-0375706134
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.6 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #477,874 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #99 in Books > Travel > Australia & South Pacific > Australia

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

34 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A backpack and a sense of adventure, August 16, 2000

By 

Linda Linguvic (New York City) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: One for the Road: Revised Edition (Paperback)

Tony Horwitz is fast becoming my one of my favorite authors. I loved "Confederates in the Attic" and "Baghdad Without a Map" and looked forward to reading "One for the Road", his very first book which describes his adventures hitchhiking across the Australian outback in 1987 at the age of 27.

With only a backpack and a sense of adventure, he shares his journey with the reader, skillfully describing the mostly desolate terrain and the people he meets along the way. His sense of humor and instinctive quest for the quirky detail made me smile often and I tried to read this small 206-page book as slowly as possible because I just wanted it to last.

I'm a mature city-dwelling grandmother and it's unlikely I'll ever stand by the side of the road with a cardboard sign and an outstretched thumb (or index finger as they do in Australia) waiting for a stranger to open a car door and share a little piece of his or her life with me. But for the moments that I was engaged in the book, Tony Horwitz brought me right there.

He made me feel the 100-degree-plus heat, the flies so dense he had to squint his eyes. My head swirled with the countless bottles of beer he described drinking as he tried to ignore the fact that most of the drivers who picked him up were drunk. He slept in his clothes by the side of the road, met aboriginals and opal diggers and got seasick working as a deck hand on a fishing boat.

And I also experienced the wonder of it all, the freedom of waking up in the morning and not knowing what the day will bring, the time to relish each moment, and the writer's eye to make the trip real for the many people destined to read his book. Occasionally, the book got a bit slow, but that is not a criticism, but rather just part of the reality of the experience.

I really loved this book. And wish there were more books out there by this author. Hopefully, he'll write another book soon. And I know I'll be one of the first in line to order it.

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars on the road again with Horwitz, February 8, 2000

By 

Jonathan C. Owen - See all my reviews

This review is from: One for the Road: Revised Edition (Paperback)

No book by Horwitz can be categorized easily. Rather than a "travel" book, it reads more like an existential narrative in which the author immerses himself in the Australian outback and studies the persons he encounters as well as the places. In the process, he seems to take a journey inward, and discovers some things about himself. I learned some about the outback from this book; Horwitz addresses racial tensions (though without the depth of understanding that he later shows in "Confederates"). He is terrifically funny, with just a thin edge of cynicism. To me, however, this book's real draw is what it teaches about humans who choose to live in the "bush", i.e., far from civilization. Those who do so often gravitate to one of two extremes. Either they become gregarious and extroverted (read: constantly ready and able to tell fabulous whoppers in which they are cast in the starring role), or they eventually see interaction with other humans a frightful chore (read: a thousand yard stare in a ten foot room). The characters vignetted by Horwitz portray this accurately, as I daily see the same two extremes, living in "bush" Alaska for 7 years. It's just colder here. Read this book if you're interested in people who choose to live outside the lines. I recommend it.

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Real "Sunburnt" Country, July 30, 2001

By 

sweetmolly (RICHMOND, VA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: One for the Road: Revised Edition (Paperback)

Tony Horwitz, with an Australian bride is residing in Sydney, and thoroughly fed up with the sameness of city life, embarks upon a hitchhikers tour of the Outback. At the outset, I couldnt quite get my mind around the premise of trying to hitch rides in an area so desolate, a day or two might go by before a car was even seen, let alone a driver that would extend the courtesy of a ride. Tony is here to tell you it can be done with a lot of determination on his part and friendliness and compassion on the part of his Australian hosts. (At certain junctures, I would call these affable drivers life savers as well.)

The author has unique encounters with the real people of the Outback: truck drivers, farmers (cockies), Aboriginals, and opal miners. I enjoyed his laid-back sense of humor, his insightfulness, and most of allhis willingness to be human like the rest of us. He dislikes spending the night under the stars, cant pitch a tent, is agonized by flies and mosquitoes and becomes violently sea-sick while catching a ride in a crawfish trawler.

The chapter Pearls Before Matzo Balls describes trying to find a Jewish family with whom to celebrate Passover in the delightful town of Broome in Western Australia. He looks in the telephone book in vain for a Jewish name, but finally gets steered in the right direction by an unusual Catholic priest. This chapter epitomizes the hilarious strangeness of his entire trip to the red hot center of Australia.

It is a good idea to read the glossary at the back before you begin. I found that a Pub is called a hotel in the Outback, and I kept wondering why in world all these Holiday Inn/Marriott-types were sitting in the middle of nowhere. Another warning, the Outback is awash in beer. In the Western Territory, the average yearly consumption is 52 gallons (!) for every man, woman and child. Distances between hotels are measured in six-packs rather than miles or kilometers.

A fun, sprightly read, though when you reach the end of the journey, you mightlike Tonyhave a bit of a hangover!