'Macca's Australia' is the book over two million listeners to Macca's ABC Radio program "Australia All Over" have been waiting for. As in the program, readers will find in this book the ever-popular themes: stories, poems, interviews, phone calls, humour, weather, animals, letters and pictures from kids - and unique one-liners. For example, Macca asked a bloke if he knew another bloke from the same district - answer, "I've never met him, I wouldn't know him if he stood up in my porridge!"
There's also a serious view of the bush in severe drought, and of country towns battling against the closure of essential services. However, humour almost always comes to the fore: Jim from Mount Gambier, South Australia, on the weather, "Mate, it rains for three hundred and sixty days and drips off the trees for the other five."
A particularly memorable moment comes in a phone conversation between Macca and Gloria, who is descended from the Yandruwandha tribe, around Innamincka, South Australia. At the end of their talk she said ". . . we marry Europeans, but our identity and culture is inside every Australian and we should never lose it no matter who comes to our country. I'm pleased that we share it with a lot of good people."
And that's the beauty of Macca's "Australia All Over". It's the people's program. As Warwick Frank from Bathurst, New South Wales, said in Macca's first book: " "Australia All Over" represents a celebration and reaffirmation of a traditional view of the essence of Australia, but within this approach there are persistent notes of questioning, revision and scepticism which give the program a richness and depth."
