Insomnia attack in some ungodly early morning hours and I couldn't bother reading e-book (as much as I enjoyed Sherlock Holmes) so I took "real book" which was easy to hold in my hands and flick trough: it was something I found in ship's library, one of those paperback editions people leave behind and constantly exchange. This particular book came all the way from Australia apparently, it was obviously an Australian passenger who brought it with him and left behind - since I am actually not familiar much with either history or present of Australia, this was all new for me so I decided to check it out.
It turned out really interesting, curious read.
This is a collection of short, almost journalist-like articles about all sorts of mysteries, unsolved crime cases, strange natural phenomena and disappearances that happened in the last two hundred years down under. Needless to say, I have never heard of them so I found it very interesting and couldn't put it down. Stories were engaging, writing style enthusiastic and easy to follow, chapters just flew and I found myself deeply involved in mysterious murders, stories about strange creatures hiding in bushes, mistaken identities, people hanged for murders they probably never committed, natural phenomena called "Min-Min lights" (strange lights that follow people, almost like intelligent beings), cases of famous people disappearances (Juanita Nielsen, Australian Prime Minister Harold Holt, young pilot Frederik Valentich) and most chilling of all - the case of Beaumont children who went to play on the beach and never came home. Now, this is something that all Australians know, but I am not Australian and this is all new to me - I felt goosebumps of terror as I read this particular story and my insomnia actually intensified - now I was wide awake, because I got so involved and upset about the whole horror of idea that these little kids might have been kidnapped and murdered. This is something that happened in 1966 and it was a big deal, because media attention and search resulted in change of attitude towards supervision of kids - from than on, people were much more aware of the "keeping an eye" on little ones. I read it all with greatest curiosity, than re-read it again during next few days when I was wide awake and my brain worked properly, even did some Internet research about this particular case because it bothered me so much. In fact, the whole book was quite mind-boggling because there was so much of unexplained, mysterious and interesting in there - the UFO chapter towards the end was almost like afterthought, because all the other cases were much more interesting. We don't need aliens to harm each other, it seems that humans are far bigger danger to each other and everyone else than any out of space creature. I might even keep the book (although I should probably return it in library for someone else to enjoy) because it turned out to be so interesting.
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