CultureShock! Australia: A Survival Guide to Customs and Etiquette

Culture Shock!

by Ilsa Sharp

A Survival Guide to Customs and Etiquette in Australia

Genres: Travel, Nonfiction, Australia

436 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1992

About the author

Ilsa Sharp is a British-born freelance writer and specialist in SE Asian affairs, with a Chinese Studies honours degree from Leeds University. She has built up a strong track record for current affairs and economics/business reporting, writing and editing, as well as environment/nature/wildlife/popular science over her long career as a journalist and author, based in Singapore/Hong Kong/Australia and including extensive travel throughout the Asia-Pacific region, since 1968. She was a Hong Kong-based ‘China-watcher’ for the Far Eastern Economic Review in the 1970s, and among the first foreign journalists to travel in and report from China towards the end of the Cultural Revolution, in 1971.

Ms Sharp also has a parallel track record of public relations copy-writing and consultancy, both for business corporations and for government. She has specialised in commissioned institutional, corporate and government history books.

Reviews

[Michelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book while living in America. It helped in those times I was missing home. Reading about Australia helped somehow.

[Cheryl · Rating 4 out of 5]

The edition I read is old but doesn't seem dated. Fun and fascinating. A visit is still on my bucket list, but this helped ease the crave a bit. I will look for more in the Culture Shock series.

[Darla Ebert · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well done (!) writing on Australia and the good people of that great (and fun) nation. I am, even more than ever, determined to go there. The people are fascinating and the culture itself is so original and unique. There are so many multi-colored strands woven into the tapestry that makes up the Aussie.
And it was sheer genius to get an "outsider", now a citizen, to write from the viewpoint of a newcomer at the same time as she is writing from her experience as a transplanted Australian of many years.
I'd recommend the series "Culture Shock" to anyone due to the excellent writing and observations of the writers chosen to open up each country.

[Jaclyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

This a pretty good book for travelers but I am also grateful to my aussie friend Becca that can help me with Australian stuff. If you love history it helps..

[Colleen · Rating 4 out of 5]

a definate read before you travel there.