Throwim Way Leg
   Tim Flannery
  1998 Atlantic Monthly Press, NY USA
   ISBN: 0871137313


On the Track of Unknown Mammals in Wildest New Guinea: Tree-kangaroos, possums & penis gourds. Taking you to places you never dreamed of; camping among cannibals, befriending a legendary warrior who led the slaughter of colonial whites just decades before; finding caves full of skeletons of long-extinct giant marsupials & climbing mountains untouched by Europeans.

Throwim way leg is New Guinea pidgin for taking the first step of a long journey & it is also a tour de force of travel, anthropology & natural history. Tim Flannery writes of the fate of indigenous people in collision with the high-tech world of industries & takes you on long journeys full of adventure & natural wonders.

Tim Flannery's accounts of his several expeditions to the big island just north of his native Australia are filled with details, itineraries, people, strange sights, wonderful views & bizarre adventures.

I was unable to get involved: perhaps Tim Flannery's story-telling was too dry, too labored for me so I couldn't feel the kind of connection I've felt in other travelers' tales.

It is the function of a scientist to be focused on the hunt, to be fluent with facts, figures & failures. Perhaps Tim Flannery's oral telling of his tales would have brought more color & life. Or perhaps I was simply out of sorts when I read Throwim Way Leg.

I got more out of the few photographs than I did from all the words & while the data was fascinating, I simply wasn't engaged.

Also by Tim Flannery: Mammals of New Guinea; Tree Kangaroos: A Curious Natural History; The Future Eaters; Possums of the World: A monograph of the Phalangeroidea; Mammals of the South West Pacific and Moluccan Islands & more.
(02/20/00)

Rebecca