Walkabout Year: Twelve Months in Australia

It's hard to identify the charismatic teacher portrayed by Robin Williams in Dead Poets Society with the archly pedantic persona of the author of this account of a sabbatical year in Perth. A university professor of English in Connecticut, Pickering, who inspired that movie character, took his wife and three children to Western Australia, where the children attended local schools. Pickering took advantage of his year abroad by traveling throughout the country, going wherever his movie-related fame took him as a guest speaker. Although Pickering quickly glosses over the content of his lectures, he does describe in precise detail what seems like every plant he saw on the way, including exotic specimens in various parks and botanic gardens, his hobby being to visit local gardens. U.S. readers unfamiliar with Australian flora and fauna will find these passages tough going. Vacations with the whole family to the bush, Ayers Rock, the Great Barrier Reef and other South Pacific travel meccas also become platforms for Pickering's elaborate descriptions of plants and birds, while he tells little more about himself and his family than what flavor ice-cream they ate. As Pickering himself notes, in a typically meandering aside, about his lengthy descriptions: ``In truth I usually examine things in order to escape self.'' Photos not seen by PW. (Dec.)