Great reading that provides a sense of the city, from the Traveler online Ultimate Travel Library.
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30 Days in Sydney, by Peter Carey (2001)
Carey’s “Wildly Distorted Account” documents 30 days he spent in the “Emerald City” in 2000, returning to Australia after 17 years abroad.
The Bodysurfers, by Robert Drewe (1983)
Collection of disquieting, sensual short stories laced with Sydney beach imagery (you can almost smell the suntan oil). Adapted into a TV miniseries in the late-1980s.
He Died With a Felafel in His Hand, by John Birmingham (1994)
An Australian “grunge” handbook, Birmingham’s beer-stained exposé of the Sydney share-housing scene is hilarious and cringe-worthy. Not for the mild-mannered.
Sydney: Biography of a City, by Lucy Turnbull (1999)
Turnbull—the first female Lord Mayor of Sydney—comes from a conspicuous Sydney family. Her weighty, 500-page homage to Sydney traces the city’s history and development from a politically engaged perspective.
Unreliable Memoirs, by Clive James (1980)
Poet, larrikin, and media doyen, Clive James grew up in post-WWII, blue-collar Kogarah in Sydney’s south. His childhood memoirs are highly amusing, engaging, and socially barbed.
Voss, by Patrick White (1957)
Sunburned mediation on early Australian history from Nobel Prize-winning White. A story of adversity in exploring Australia’s harsh interior set against the complexities of colonial Sydney life.
