Chasing Dreamtime: A Sea-Going Hitchhiker's Journey Through Memory and Myth - Softcover

Neva Sullaway

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0970764928 ISBN 13: 9780970764928

Publisher: Brookview Pr, 2005

Synopsis

Chasing Dreamtime is the incredible true-life story of a young traveler's journey through memory and myth. In 1975, after college and a brief, disastrous marriage, Neva Sullaway attempts to escape her anguish as well as the post-Vietnam confusion of her generation by sailing alone around the world, but her plans are abruptly scuttled. A string of unlikely events occurs and sends her boat-hopping across the vast South Pacific.

While sailing among the exquisitely beautiful Pacific atolls, Sullaway is arrested for a visa violation, hunted by sharks, stricken with tropical fever and held at knifepoint. Even after being entangled in a drug-smuggling scheme and facing death several times, Sullaway continues her journey, taking a brief respite from sailing the seas to pedal a "pushbike" 2,000 kilometers along Australia's northeastern coastline. There the odyssey takes its sharpest turn as she ventures onto a fishing trawler in the remotest outback regions.

While poised at the brink of her physical and emotional limits in the stark Never-Never, Sullaway catches a glimpse of the elusive Aboriginal concept of Dreamtime and her darkest demons unfold into wings of flight. For Sullaway and the reader alike, reality can never be the same again.

Awards

• First place! Best Travel Book 2005
  North American Travel Journalists Association awards
• Shortlisted for National Outdoor Book Award 2005
• Honorable Mention, 2006 Independent Publisher Book Awards
  Mind-Body-Spirit category
• Winner of a San Diego Book Award
  Best unpublished nonfiction narrative category.
• Honorable Mention, 2007 New York Book Festival Awards
  Biography-Autobiography category
• Honorable Mention, 2011 Hollywood Book Festival Awards
  Celebrating books that deserve greater recognition from the film, television game and multimedia communities

About this title

About the Author

As a sea-going hitchhiker, Neva Sullaway lived the story of Chasing Dreamtime well before her twenty-fifth birthday. After settling in Sydney, she soon became the Australian Women's Sailboarding Champion, a title she successfully defended for four consecutive years. She built a career as a writer and photojournalist, covering sailboarding events in Australia, Europe and the U.S., and wrote One with the Wind: A Guide to Sailboarding in Australia. During this time she also created a magazine for sailors, Freesail Australia, which became Australia's top-selling sailboarding magazine.

Returning to the U.S., Sullaway studied filmmaking, receiving first place for her short film, Woodcarver, at the San Francisco International Film Festival. She wrote Sailing in San Diego: A Pictorial History for the 1992/1995 America's Cup. She continues to write, edit and do photography for maritime publications.

Sullaway lives with her husband and two children in San Diego, California.

Edition details

• Publisher: Brookview Pr
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0970764928
• ISBN 13: 9780970764928
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 304