THE stage version of Bill Bryson's bestseller, Down Under, comes to Hereford Courtyard tomorrow.

Cynical and affectionate in his musings, the source of inspiration for the bearded Yankee is Australia.

Bryson's informative and absorbing portrait is of a terrain so intractably vast, a land so climatically extreme, it seems expressly designed to daunt and torment, which throws up an Aussie paradox - if the country is so hostile, how come the natives are so laid back?

To book for Down Under, starring Steve Steen, contact 0870 1122330.