Marketing.ie editor Michael Cullen will soon publish a book about his time living in Australia in the late 1980s. Echoes from Down Under is an Irishman’s collection of stories and anecdotes from his days working as a journalist in Western Australia and the Northern Territory. Tales of friendship, adventure, joy, and tragedy. The author recounts his experiences as a reporter covering the courts in the outback town of Katherine.
At the time, Katherine had the second highest rate of crime pro rata in Australia after Sydney. “The Northern Territory was ‘Crocodile Dundee’ country,” Cullen said, “where the temperature in the build-up to the wet season could reach 48 degrees Celcius and the humidity was punishing. People would lose their minds – they’d go ‘troppo’. Contrast that with the cosmopolitan and care-free world of Perth and Fremantle in WA.”
He chronicles drama on the high seas with round the world sailor Enda O’Coineen (pictured in The West Australian), the plight of Australia’s First Nations’ people, the wars fought at home and abroad, and the growing impact of climate change on the country. He interviews the redoubtable writer and broadcaster Clive James in Perth’s Burswood Casino. He also recalls events from his days Down Under with throwbacks to his life in Ireland.
Echoes from Down Under (Gregmar Books) will be published at the end of May.
