{"product_id":"down-under-by-bill-bryson-copy","title":"Down Under by Bill Bryson","description":"\u003cp\u003eIt was as if I had privately discovered life on another planet, or a parallel universe where life was at once recognizably similar but entirely different. I can't tell you how exciting it was. Insofar as I had accumulated my expectations of Australia at all in the intervening years, I had thought of it as a kind of alternative southern California, a place of constant sunshine and the cheerful vapidity of a beach lifestyle, but with a slightly British bent - a sort of Baywatch with cricket...' Of course, what greeted Bill Bryson was something rather different. Australia is a country that exists on a vast scale. It is the world's sixth largest country and its largest island. It is the only island that is also a continent and the only continent that is also a country. It is the driest, flattest, hottest, most desiccated, infertile and climatically aggressive of all the inhabited continents and still it teems with life - a large proportion of it quite deadly. In fact, Australia has more things that can kill you in a very nasty way than anywhere else.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Book Express","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43249024073802,"sku":"6199l","price":7.0,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0618\/9101\/8826\/files\/6199l.jpg?v=1778552734","url":"https:\/\/www.bookexpress.nz\/products\/down-under-by-bill-bryson-copy","provider":"Book Express","version":"1.0","type":"link"}