THE JOURNEY ENCOUNTERS STRENGTH, RESILIENCE, JOY, HOPE AND HUMOUR IN THE VERY ORDINARINESS OF LIFE IN VILLAGES AND TOWNS. Drawing on a multiplicity of travel experiences across culturally diverse and historically rich landscapes, The Journey offers a critical, quirky, humorous reflection on the strangeness of the human species, the universal weirdness of ideas, the oddness of traditions and the plight of those who remain captured by beliefs well past their use by dates. It tells of places visited and people seen, needing no special observation post, the traveller content just to watch the realities of passing lives from the windows of trains, buses, taxis, rickshaws, and the endless opportunities given at bus stands, cafes, hotels, laneways, walks, beaches and the host of circumstances that comprise the core of travel; the ordinary, the mundane preferred to the advertised spectacular. It encounters devastating human tragedy caused by happenstance and unending grief born from the callousness of the unaccountably powerful. Eccentricities are revealed without apology, without embarrassment. From the opening meeting with an old friend, to the perplexing observations of the privileged and those scraping a living, through the tragedy of loss, delusion of false hope, the searching for the missing and the deliberately hidden, The Journey wanders with humour and disgust, finishing with the fate of the mouse. "The delight in this book is the premise it may well be true...what a wonderful piece of writing by a new and exciting author in Australia's growing range of talents..." Terry, Indiebook reviewer