Packed with adventures in the wilderness and a unique insight into this fascinating but largely untravelled country, this book rivals any adventure story and should be on every travel fanatics must-read list. When Mandy agreed to let us feature some extracts on our blog we were thrilled β so here it is, an insight into a childhood most of us could only dream of! Mandy Sunderland spent her teenage years travelling the world with her parents.
One of the most interesting times was the years spent in Papua New Guinea. Inspired by taking a degree in English and creative writing and a later career in teaching English, Mandy has been writing creatively for the last ten years. She has published a successful blog, written a dystopian novel for young adults, and begun many, many other writing projectsβ¦She has three children, one long-suffering husband, two grandchildren, five step-grandchildren, two badly behaved sausage dogs, and a tiny black cat who is in charge of everyone!
If I were painting my past, this part would be executed in oils, richly textured, thick and viscous; representing exotic, slightly unnerving landscapes; a painting in the manner of Rousseau or Gauguin. Probably executed with a pallet knife. The contrast between being in Papua and my place of upbringing was as marked as putting a Lego brick next to a snakeskin. Neither held any elements in common and the brick could never have prepared me for the snake.
Weeks of stiff, sore arms later, arguments about leaving friends and familiars are long-spent and our life is packed into large chests that are being shipped ever-so-slowly to us after we depart, and I am flying for the first time ever. It is exhilarating to feel, for the first time, the magnetic pull-back as the plane thrusts its way into the air. Camel cigarettes fog the cabin and are sickening their way into my throat, my stomach and my memory as air-sickness takes hold somewhere over Bahrain.
Lifting my head from the paper bag I am retching into, I stare at the impossible landscape outside my tiny, porthole window. There is the blue-ringed octopus, from which you will die within minutes if you are unlucky enough to encounter one.
