Adventures of a Compulsive Traveller

Book excerpt: Journalist Dominic Dunne’s travels have rarely been ordinary, despite his best intentions. He has been travelling all his life, from the time his parents started their annual pilgrimage to the opal fields of Lightning Ridge. Since then he has trekked all over Australia and to some 60 countries, spending his life trying to satisfy his insatiable appetite for travelling, an addiction that has taken him to wonderful and sometimes dangerous places where he has met all manner of people. In this book Dominic uses insight and wit – and a good dollop of gossip – to capture the highlights (and lowlights) from destinations the world over. Dominic takes readers backstage with Nana Mouskouri in Greece and in search of the ghosts of Elvis Presley in Mississippi. He escapes marauding Americans at Noel Coward’s Jamaican sanctuary, crosses cranky guards in North Korea, rubs shoulders with Hillary Clinton in Washington and solves a life-long mystery in Zimbabwe. And he meets his namesake, the best-selling American author Dominick Dunne, with whom he forges an enduring friendship.