Bom Bom - A Wacky Hippie Trail Adventure

Bom Bom - A Wacky Hippie Trail Adventure is a coming of age road trip punctuated by the music and politics of the seventies. A story of youthful hedonism, love, self-discovery and wild adventures through amazing landscapes that only a few were brave or stupid enough to embrace. 

'In the 1960s and 1970s tens of thousands of young Australians headed overseas on “the big adventure”. Some ended up in “Kangaroo Valley” in London drinking vast quantities of Fosters and being immortalised by Barry Humphries in the form of the innocent abroad, Bazza McKenzie. Others took various hippie trails and, although they little knew what they were doing, went on a complex journey of self-discovery.

So why have we never had a really good account of these wild adventures which, with a bit of luck, were always stories about sex and drugs and rock’n’roll. I suspect the problem was Hunter S. Thompson. When someone writes a book like Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas the bar is set so high … and imitation is a fatal flaw. This omission has now been corrected.

In “Bom Bom” Mark Tesoriero has written the best, and most fascinating, account of a remarkable adventure and a remarkable life. Here, told in an easy conversational style without pretension and without any attempt at “gonzo” style writing, is the story of a young Sydney man who headed out with a friend to experience the hippie trail. It is a story of friendships made; of loves and dalliances along the way; and of adventures in the eternal quest for good drugs and lots of fun.

Don’t underestimate it: this is an important book. It is a slice of life, experienced with great joy and intensity, which many experienced but very few have written about with such clear-eyed honesty. Mark Tesoriero makes a mockery of that old cliché that “If you remember the ‘60s, you weren’t really there”. He remembers everything … and he definitely was there.' Bruce Elder