Sean and David's Long Drive tells the story of two friends who decide to travel around Australia in a Ford Falcon to escape their dull and boring lives in urban Australia. The story is told through diary entries written by Sean Condon, the author and proud "generation X-er" which give details regarding Sean's thoughts about where they are, who they've met and any experiences along the road worth noting. Sean's idea of Australian tourism is constructed though his use of techniques such as setting, point of view, characterisation, language, selection of detail and the fragmentation of time which he uses to create a mixture of the "good the bad and the ugly" of his experiences on the road. The details Sean gives in his travel log are predominately critical of people, places and encounters he experiences on his journey, which create an image of Australia which is in great contrast to that of tourism guides and the general perception of Australia. Sean doesn't leave anything out of his journey, as stated by Kathy Bail of Rolling Stone: "You"ll be shown the crap and the weird stuff as well as the scenic wonders" although the majority of the text focuses on the negative or "crap." It is for this reason that Sean and David's Long Drive is an anti-travel text, it chooses not to focus on the typical Australia created by tourism but to focus on the lesser known "qualities" of outback and coastal Australia.
The narrative point of view used in Sean and David's Long Drive encourages the reader to draw parallels between and relate to the main character and narrator, Sean. Because of this we as readers are encouraged to agree with and adopt the ideas and thoughts of Sean because he represents around ninety precent of Australians as an urban Australian, who ventures into the outback and doesn't quite fit in. The style in which he writes also has an effect on the reader as it gives the impression that Sean is a friend, somebody who can be trusted, giving the information he writes down more credibility.
