Spencer Ratcliff's Wonder, Thunder and Blunder Down Under - reviewed by Shandos Cleaver

At first glance, I didn’t really like the look of Wonder, Thunder and Blunder Down Under, the debut book from Spencer Ratcliff, a “Ten Pound Pom” immigrant to Australia in the 1970s. The cover was so brash and colourful, with a comic style similar to Mad magazine, that I wondered what kind of travel memoir this would be. Maybe this book was just one for the lads?
Once I started reading the book, however, I realised that the overly bright cover was partially deceiving. Yes, Wonder, Thunder and Blunder Down Under did detail some very humorous and at times candid exploits, particularly involving women, but it always stayed on the right side of good taste. Probably one of the reasons for this, is that, along with picking up some Australian strine and a slight twang to his accent (which he occasionally used trying to pass himself off as an Aussie whilst around women, rather unsuccessfully), Ratcliff’s move to Australia also resulted in him picking up the typically Australian gift of yarning. The resulting writing is entertaining and deprecating, and whilst not as polished as I generally would expect in a published book, the casual style is probably part of the book’s charm.
Ratcliff’s tale is divided into twenty-two stories, or should I say “yarns”. Starting with his arrival in Sydney in 1970, for the first half of the book Ratcliff details the exploits of his initial two-year stay in Australia, working as a journalist for ABC radio, both in Grafton on the northern coast of NSW and in Sydney, just down the road from the temptations of Kings Cross. Ratcliff’s encounters with Australian women are particularly memorable, such as the women sitting outside the hotel in Grafton in their boyfriend’s cars and the dangerous Bondi encounter with a bride-to-be.
When a visit from a young English rose and the subsequent blooming of their love leads him to return back to England, Ratcliff promises the land he has also fallen for, and the Coathanger in particular, that he “shall return”. However, it ends up being a long six years, during which time he travels around the globe, taking in England, Africa, Israel and the USA, before he returns to his yearned for Oz.
Whilst Australia is obviously the country at the centre of the book, I found the most engrossing stories to be those set in 1970s Zimbabwe (then known as Rhodesia), during the three years that Ratcliff spent working at a journalist there during the civil war immediately before Zimbabwe’s creation. Displaying a sensitive insight into the issues being encountered in the country (and from close range due to his work), these sections provide an interesting contrast to the humorous exploits that populate the majority of the book.
It all adds up to Wonder, Thunder and Blunder Down Under being an entertaining read, whether you are interested in Ratcliff’s perspective on 1970s Australia and Zimbabwe, or you just want to casually dip into a collection of funny and entertaining yarns whilst on holidays or while riding the train to work (perhaps even going over Ratcliff’s beloved Coathanger).