Echoes from Down Under review: Michael Cullen’s Australian memoir hilariously jumps back and forth like a wallaby

Hearing

Michael Cullen talks about the adventures of an Irishman in Australia in the 1980s. Photo: Chris Putnam

The title is apt for this memoir, as the title informs readers that this is not a contemporary look at this vast continent, but “the adventures of an Irishman in 1980s Australia.” Just as he noticed some major changes when he returned to Dublin three years later, Cullen’s Oz is now a very different place to the one he called home when he arrived in Perth in 1987.

There he found a job as a journalist in Catherine Advertiser in the heart of the vast Northern Territory. In many ways it was like working on a local Irish newspaper, except for the exotic locations and the dialogue in an Australian accent. But the rhythm was essentially the same: keeping in touch with the police, the courts and the social life of the area.