Tales From The Big Yellow: Unreliable Memoirs of a Tour Guide

by Simon Tobin

It’s the late 1970s and Simon Tobin knows he wants a life of adventure after he finishes college in England. But when he answers an ad in the paper to become a Tour Guide, he’s not sure what he’s getting into.

“Get your shit together, have a shave and a haircut, buy some clothes that don’t make you look like a stupid hippy,” his boss tells him after the training trip around Europe. “You take the first three-weeker leaving on Monday. Good luck, you’ve got potential. Don’t fuck up.’

Travelling in a coach painted with a big yellow sun across Europe, through Russia and down to North Africa until the early 80s, ‘Tobes’ survives both an earthquake in Montenegro and the traffic in Paris. He runs an Austrian ski resort and converts a chateau in the Beaujolais. He smuggles jeans in Russia, lunches (and lunches, and lunches…) in Tuscany and drinks tea at sunrise in the Moroccan desert.

Through it all, he makes friends – food-and-drink loving Italians, Austrian skiers, and a vast network of young, down-to-earth Aussie and Kiwi travelers and tour guides all with outlandish nicknames. Tobes’ life of adventure turns out to be above all, a life of friendship and fun, giving him more than a few ‘Big Yellow’ tales to tell.