The road to anywhere: The travel writings of Peter Pinney

A very enjoyable selection of the travel writings of Australian Peter Pinney. I look forward to reading the source material itself. Selected from four of Pinney's books by John Borthwick who complied these excerpts after the author's death in 1992. For me a first time reader of the author, this has been a very good taste of what awaits. Pinney returned from active service in WW2 and decided to take the road to anywhere with just a passport and the clothes on his back. We get tales of his wanderings through the Middle East, south Asia, Africa to the Caribbean and the Pacific. There is wit and daring and arrogant audacity galore. For anyone that likes a good travel compendium the comparatively unknown Peter Pinney is well worth your time.

Page 146. Pinney visits a zoo in Martinique and is appalled at the state of the facilities. He observes “Birds of a diverse nature were caged together, so confined that the weaker could not escape the strong; a constant social torture reduced the weaker to shivering, jerking neurotics. Pecking feather-pulling, blinding one another: birds could be quite human, I discovered.”