Inside Out Down Under

By Diana Somerville

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0977353303
• ISBN13: 9780977353309
• Release Date: March 2006
• Publisher: Beechworth Press
• Length: 220 Pages
• Weight: 0.54 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.0" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

A frank travelogue, that reflects upon Australia's natural beauty and majestic history

Inside Out Down Under: Stories from a Spiritual Sabbatical is author Diana Somerville's true-life memoir of her year-long trip to Australia, following her own internal paths, in search of her center and discovering the wisdom of the world's oldest indigenous culture. A frank travelogue, that reflects upon Australia's natural beauty and majestic history as well as the author's personal quest, Inside Out Down Under blends wonder, exploration, spirituality, and joy into a thoroughly satisfying travelogue experience.

Hooray for Diana!

I love Somerville's prose! ...her way of phrasing things, of connecting unfamiliar words in a strange new land with something - whether connected or not - familiar. I loved that she don't pretend to understand all she saw & felt, that she doesn't profess to have everything all figured out & that not all healing practices (i.e. the sweat lodge) send her into raptures. As a professional writer, I've been asked by many whom I respect why I haven't written a book about my adventures in my 20-year life in Indonesia. I've never given it serious thought as I wouldn't know where to begin, how to separate the wheat from the chaff & how to make so many unfamiliar sensations comprehensible to the reader. Somerville has woven just enough Koori-ness into her story to give it flavor without overwhelming us with stuff we readers couldn't understand in just 204 pages. I also love that she didn't wait until she knew the ending to write it. She made it a personal, continuing journey, which is exactly where I am, even after all these years of exploring a strange land. I still don't think I could write a book, but if I ever did think about it, Somerville has given me a fine example of how it could be done.

An enlightening journey!

Inside Out Down Under is so full of love and wisdom and adventure, it made cry. Somerville offers us a gorgeous songline that runs through her circle of women into the circle of Aboriginal Australia and back again in dreamtime. Anyone who reads this will be truly transformed.

More than a travel story

As she arrived at the mid-life way-station of fifty, Diana Somerville knew that it was time for a departure. Leaving her comfortable middle-class life in Boulder, and the circle of women who had been her support, she began a spiritual sabbatical to the Australian outback. During the next year she explored life in a tiny, nearly forgotten town, traveled the magnificent and sometimes overwhelming natural world, and explored the even more complex terrain of Aboriginal (or Koori, as they prefer to be called) spirituality. The details of that journey are the subject of Inside Out Down Under, Diana Somerville's beautifully written and engaging memoir of adventure, spiritual quest and personal growth. With her background as a science writer, she uses precise description to recreate the amazing landscapes, plants and animals and a vivid sense of time and place. This book is not just the simple exposition of another land, but the very personal journey of a woman's spirituality. With the rigorous diligence of a scientist, she searches for the profound meanings and forces that have connected Koori people to the natural world, and to the power of a life-force past and present. "To survive in the bush, you must know your own footprints," she quotes an old bush- hand, "That way you'll know when you're going around in circles." Certainly all of us can benefit from taking time to assess our path, whether we are pointlessly repeating old patterns, limiting our own potential, denying our need for spiritual sustenance. Inside Out Down Under is an enjoyable and satisfying read, an armchair journey for the kind of traveler who goes out not just to see, but to know. The book does not bring us to any neat conclusions, does not argue that the "truth" was discovered and here it is. It simply allows us to come along on one brave, honest, smart woman's adventure.

"In the midst of life's journey, I found my self in a dark wood..."

Diana Somerville is a woman whom I have known for many years, but actually had not met until reading this book. Introduced electronically by a mutual friend, we have been online correspondents sharing off-beat humour and strategies to beat off what we see as political, cultural, and environmental exploitation of the world we live in. I chose to review the book, not just because of acquaintance with Diana, but because cross-cultural, gender and spiritual encounters are what most interest me in life--and, this book is full of them. Moreover, it is fascinating to follow people who are "following their heart" "Approaching fifty, that mid-life milestone, I overflowed with questions." Diana begins, echoing Dante's "dark wood on the road of life." Undertaking a physical journey can be not only a metaphor for the spiritual journey but embody it. Whether Mecca or Compostello, California or Kerala be the destination, pilgrims over the ages have sought to fulfil vows or simply to make sense out of life "on the road" --some, like Jack Kerouac, to get over "...my feeling that everything was dead." Diana decided on spending a year in Australia, to go "inside out," spiritually, by going "down under geographically." The book is a rich mixture of her perceptions, surprises, wanderings and encounters with the culture, the personalities, the landscape of Oz, and herself. From a literary perspective, Inside Out/Down Under is a joy to read. Diana is a writer by trade and her travelogue of the beauty, the challenges and the damage done to landscapes, outer and inner, geographical and spiritual are carefully and creatively crafted for maximum awareness as well as reading pleasure. Yet to this man Inside Out/Down Under feels like a woman's book, perhaps best intended for and appreciated by those in Diana's women's circle and like-minded and curious women on the road to self-discovery and healing. It is full of the elements of female friendship and the processes that emerge from feminist awareness and new age beliefs and rituals, seemingly substitutes for male-tainted spiritualities. There is a search for the sources of spirit in nature, for symbols and omens, and for connecting with the "energies" of earth that are particularly abundant in the topography of the most ancient of the continents, energies amplified by the relationship of the Koori to their land and places. It is not incidental that Native American spirituality and the Koori world get connected in this writing as tales of the white quest for lost innocence. There is Rousseauvian romanticism in the search for the unspoiled native remaining in the world and perhaps within us. Innocence unfortunately requires a great deal of judgement of the deeds and behaviours of ourselves and others, often of those most like us. It is politically incorrect to admit to the destructive social and ecological practices of native peoples. At points we see the author examining and struggling with her judgemental tendencies