Michael Cullen’s memoir Echoes from Down Under entertainingly hops back and forth like a wallaby
Memoir
Michael Cullen recounts an Irishman’s adventures from 1980s Australia. Photo: Chris Putnam
The title is apt for this memoir, as the strapline informs readers that it is not a modern take on that vast continent, but “an Irishman’s adventures from 1980s Australia”. Just as he noted some fundamental changes when he got back to Dublin three years later, Cullen’s Oz is now a very different place from the one he called home after arriving in Perth in 1987.
There he found work as a journalist on the Katherine Advertiser in the heart of the vast Northern Territory. In many ways it was similar to working on a local Irish paper, except for the exotic locations and Aussie-flavoured dialogue. But the beat is basically the same: keeping in touch with the police, the courts and the social life of the area.
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