Given that I have a) never been to Perth and b) can count the number of days I have spent sailing in small craft on the knuckles of one finger, I found this tale of journeying the Swan and Canning rivers in a tiny, handmade boat oddly fascinating. Author Nick Burningham is an English-born maritime adventurer who has spent much of the last 30 years sailing around South-East Asia in traditional boats and more recently has consulted on the building of replicas of historic ships like the Duyfken. Finding himself middle-aged and under-employed, he set out to investigate the rivers around his home in Fremantle by rowing and sailing Earnest, a tiny wooden boat he'd made himself to the 'sort-of-finished to the nearly-good-enough standard I like to set as a benchmark'. The book is full of history and close observation of the suburban landscape from a riparian perspective. The narrative voice is informative but irreverent and more than a little curmudgeonly. The trip is slow and meandering and the writing can be too at times, so this book might not appeal to those who want a pacy read, but I was very pleasantly surprised by this whimsical and eccentric view of the familiar.

Tim Coronel is AB&P's assistant editor. C. 2003 Thorpe-Bowker and contributors

Tags: nick burningham