Australians Abroad

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31333, 1 April 1967, Page 4

Australians Abroad

Some of the World Through My Gooseberry Eyes. By E. Cole Turnley. Cole Publications, Melbourne. Maps and comic drawings. 216 pp.

It should be explained at once that Mr Turnley is a humorist known in Australia for his contributions to newspapers and periodicals. This should be understood before the book is read because it is by no means a travel brochure extended to book length. It is an account of a holiday tour from Melbourne to Messina undertaken by Mr Turnley and his wife. The latter, we suspect, has a better eye for tiie romantic than he has; on the other hand her joys are tempered by anxiety when her teen-age family fails to provide her with- letters at each port of call.

The Turnleys travelled on an Italian passenger ship and both had learned Italian to help them on their way. Mrs Turnley succeeded linguistically better than her husband; but in general they found the fast-talking Italian stewards too fast for them to be at home with the language, whereas the Italians on the ship where sufficiently acquainted with English to make themselves

understood. This situation, of course, played into Mr Turnley’s hands and his capacity for wry humour. It should not be imagined, however, that this is the only comic topic. Refusing to see through rose coloured spectacles or to accept the glamorised advice ot their Australian friend, Ada, he looks at things through gooseberry eyes—and, as everyone knows, gooseberries can be tart.

Hie reader must not, therefore, expect a picture postcard recital as he accompanies the unromantic Mr Turnley on visits to Djakarta, Singapore, Colombo, Cochin (India), Aden, Suez, Cairo (and the Pyramids), Port Said and Messina. The reader will be more informed than he was before, but he should not expect everything in the garden to be. lovely. . For this reviewer the charms of the book were considerably enhanced' by the quaintly comic drawings. Unfortunately he does not know the artist's name because the artist’s signature, which is the only clue, is one of those decorative contrivances it is impossible to be positive about. So the name may be Armstrong, but, on the other hand, it may not.