Funny, personal, completely unexpected travel writing, and an incisive view into Australian life away from the big cities-Mango Country explores the notion that the further you venture from a nation's capital, the likelier you are to encounter its culture in the raw.Journeying around North Queensland, jungle tour-guide turned gonzo-journalist John van Tiggelen lingers in places that tourists are ill-advised, disinclined or simply unable to visit. He goes crocodile hunting, shoots a nude calendar for charity, joins the world's wildest cricket carnival, attends the opening of the Big Mango and flits around the Torres Strait on a wing and a prayer. En route he is harassed by cassowaries, bush poets, thong collectors, falling coconuts, numerous drunks, Bob Katter, the president of the Country Women's Association and the alien commander of 18 million spaceships, among others. But he also harasses them.At one level Mango Country is an irreverent profile of a province, but John van Tiggelen's perspective provides something deeper, too: a portrait of Australia in extremis.