Journey to Canberra: By road from Sydney in search of history and curiosa

by Frank Clune

Bushrangers, convicts, a millionaire, a ghost, explorers, policemen, squatters, a novelist, tavern-keepers: they all played their colourful parts in the story of the Great South Road tht leads from Sydney to our "bush capital" - Canberra

Frank Clune, the perennial traveller here takes you down the Canberra highway, with some interesting historical and geographical excursions by the way.

Genres: Travel

264 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1960

About the author

Australian Dictionary of Biography entry
http://www.adb.online.anu.edu.au/biog...

Checklist of major works
http://www.burnetsbooks.com.au/biblio...

Reviews

[Brian · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is styled similar to Warren Denning's 1945 book Road to Canberra, in that as he progresses along the way, Clune gives little vignettes of the people and places and their part in Australian history. Which is all well and fine until he starts injecting his own skewed views on all subjects, and then goes off on 3 and 4 chapter tangents about a particular person of interest to himself, but of little consequence to the apparent goal of the book.

One couldn't help but look at the authors lists of titles of similar vein, and his mention of more to come throughout the text, to begin to wonder if he actually made this journey specifically to write this book, as Denning had, or if he just made it up by following a map on his desk and doing research in the library.

Unlike Denning, Clune doesn't convey much sense of the road itself, it's just used to link the vignettes together.

It's lightweight but interesting enough to those interested in Australian history.