Review: How to See, Feel, and Enjoy Australia
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 02 27, 2014
As said before in reviewing the myriad books by this author, Kathryn Shell has many hats. Kathryn Shell is also Australian artist Kathy Shell and also goes by the name Ryn Shell to write the Billabong series of Australian adventures and using the moniker of Gray Nomad she writes travel books! Or as the author puts it on her website `While Ryn Shell spends her summer ghost writing the Gray Nomad series of non-fiction semi memoir seniors travel eBooks, her own fiction series of crime, mystery, lover and Australia, the Dreaming Billabong novels for adults has taken off.' So Kathryn Shell, here, is a professional writing and publishing student and creative coach who has a published and award winning writing career, in both non-fiction and fiction, spanning sixty years. She has written eBooks on how to write plots for Romance, Young Adult, Mystery, Epics, Paranormal, Action, and Crime books. In essence we have one wonder woman - author of this series Kathryn Shell as Ryn Shell rural-lit author, Kathy Shell as fine artist, and Gray-Nomad travel writer, and it is this last category we explore this time around.Kathryn/Ryn Shell and her husband Reg take us through the outback of Australia, known to us basically through movies and tales of lucky travelers. But this is a tour that is so memorable that likely it will encourage plans for an Australian journey. She starts her travel guide with first things first - how to pack a caravan pantry for survival, then load up the participants (here with their dog Indigo, too) and set out for an excursion that includes amazingly beautiful photographs (or is it an amazingly beautiful country well photographed?!), a day by day personal diary, `This Kimberley tour carried on from a tour up to the Northern Territory up through Central Australia to the top end and then back to Katherine where we spend at least a month enjoying the gorge scenery and the hoot springs.'The points of interest where they pause and take in the scenery and countryside include Lake Argyle and Ord River Scheme, Gregory National Park, Wyndham, Kununurra, Purnululu National Park: Bungle Bungle, Spring Creek, Mary Pool free campsite,  Ngumban Cliff Lookout, and Derby Barn Hill Cattle Station.All along the way we are invited to see and learn about the birds and animals and flora of the land by means of the gorgeous photos (89 of them), but the joy is the way Ryn describes each stop while providing vistas of mountains, water, skies, lakes, deserts, and all the natural wonders of the Outback. This is a 100% real travel guide written by a pro! Grady Harp, February 14