BETWEEN DARK AND DARK

By David Lovejoy

Echo Publications, 248pp, $22.95

Despite prevailing mythologies, there are very few people who can honestly claim that their life followed the cliches of the 1960s. But take the life of David Lovejoy and you'll be so familiar with its arc that you'll be tripping (sorry) over yourself to anticipate the next chapter.

Here is a bright, unassuming Englishman who goes to Oxford, drifts through uni in a cloud of dope and booze and scrapes through a BA. He drops acid, lives in a large communal house in London then heads off to India to find enlightenment at the Guru Maharaji's ashram. He meanders across Asia, eventually washing up in Darwin. In Sydney, Lovejoy becomes the founder of an ashram in Surry Hills, works as a taxi driver, marries and has children, becomes a travel writer and magazine publisher, finally settling in the hinterland behind Byron Bay.

This is a celebration of the values of passionate people who embraced everything good and ennobling about the '60s.