Book recommendation: The Dig Tree by Sarah Murgatroyd

Great travel journalism

With all the talk in the last week or so about the death of travel journalism, I thought I’d recommend what I think is the best piece of travel journalism I have read this year.

It’s not travel journalism is the traditional sense of travel for the sake of travel. But I’ve always argued that the best travel writing should always fit into another section of the paper; the same should apply for books.

The Dig Tree

The Dig Tree* by Sarah Murgatroyd charts the tragic expedition of explorers Burke and Wills in 1860-61. They attempted to become the first people to successfully to cross the Australian continent from south to north, and lurched from disaster to disaster on the way.

Hollywood epic

It’s an incredible tale of love, folly, politics and survival. It has all the ingredients of a Hollywood epic (and would have been a far better filming choice than Baz Luhrmann’s Australia). And it has been researched brilliantly by Murgatroyd, who retraced Burke and Wills’ steps. She captures the essence and mood swings of the landscape beautifully.

This isn’t a new book, but it’s a staggeringly good one that many readers of this blog will possibly not have come across. I can’t recommend it highly enough.

Tags: Australia, book recommendation, Burke and Wills, Dig Tree, Sarah Murgatroyd, Travel Writing