Culture Shock!: Australia

About Author

Ilsa Sharp is uniquely well positioned to explain culture shock in Australia. She comes to the subject from many different directions: British-born, she has worked as a journalist in Southeast Asia, chiefly in Singapore, since 1968. She holds a degree in Chinese Studies from Leeds University, England, and is married to a Singaporean-Tamil. In 1989, she and her husband became migrants to Western Australia, and a new love affair with Australia began. Ilsa is the author of several books ranging from histories of Raffles Hotel (1982/86), the Singapore Cricket Club (1986/93), the Land Transport (2005) in Singapore and the history of the Eastern & Oriental Hotel in Penang, Malaysia (2008), to wildlife/nature books such as Green Indonesia (Oxford University Press 1994) and the story of the Singapore Zoological Gardens (1994). An active environmentalist in Asia since the 1970s, she has also worked as manager of public relations and marketing (1998 2000) for Greening Australia (Western Australia), a non-governmental organisation dedicated to the conservation and renewal of native vegetation. She is now a freelance writer.