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

Liam Collins

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.