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Tourist's Guide to Australian Culture and History |
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MELB, SYD, NSW, VIC,
ACT, TAS, SA, NT, QLD, WA, Nat. & Hist., The Arts Practicalities |
(revised August 2017)
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Australia is situated approximately between the 10th and 45th parallels south and between 110 and 160 degrees east. Its total area is 7.68 million sq km (2.96 million sq miles), sufficient to cover Europe to the Urals and include the Mediterranean or nearly to cover the continental USA. Its three principal geological regions are the Western Plateau and the Central Plains (a Precambrian shield) and the Eastern Highlands (the Tasman Geosyncline). The continental base dates from Gondwana at least. Interesting Precambrian troughs run north through South Australia and then to northwestern Western Australia. The Yilgara region of Western Australia is, in fact, Archaean. The Great Artesian Basin, dating from the Mesozoic period, extends from north central South Australia to western Cape York Peninsula and straddles the New South Wales/ Queensland border.
Geological eras
In the Triassic
period, about 225 million years ago, Australia was still part
of Gondwanaland, the supercontinent which combined all
present-day continents. About 45 million years ago, the
ancient continent of Sahul, consisting of mainland Australia,
Tasmania and Papua New Guinea, separated from Gondwanaland.
During the Oligocene period, about 40 million years ago, the
Australian landmass experienced widespread volcanic activity.
By the Miocene period, the land bridge with Papua New Guinea
was cut, and mammals appeared on the Australian continent. The
Pliocene era saw the emergence of primitive people in Africa,
and the continued development of marsupials and distinctive
bird species.
The Nullarbor Plain
of South and Western Australia dates from a sea in the
Cainozoic Era, as do the Simpson Desert as far south as Lake
Eyre and much of the Murray-Darling River basin. Much of
northern Western Australia, the Kimberley and Arnhem Land are
Precambrian, the interior northern Great Sandy Desert and
central Northern Territory south of the Barkly Tablelands is
Palaeozoic.
The land mass was last connected to Antarctica in the early
Tertiary Era. Except as island hopping, there has been no
access to African or South American biomes for over 150
million years. Even then they were at quite a distance across
Gondwana. Australia separated from Antarctica to begin chasing
the Southeast Asian Plate at about the same time that North
America started separating from Europe about 60 million years
ago. Indigenous conifers predate this split. An example of
these, the Wollemi Pine, touted as the world's oldest still
extant tree species, was recently found in the Wollemi
National Park near the Blue Mountains just outside
Sydney. Seedlings are just now available commercially.
Reduced sea level during the late Pliocene and Quaternary ice
ages did facilitate colonisation of the continent indirectly
from southeast Asia. Although there were no land bridges
during this time, introductions during this period included
palms, humans and, about 5000 years ago, dogs.
The Western Plateau covers nearly two thirds of the continent
and is comprised of four major deserts rimmed by escarpments.
It averages about 300m above sea level and rests on ancient
rock shield. The plateau is marked by the Hamersley and
Kimberley Ranges in the north west, three east–west oriented
mountain ranges (MacDonnell, Musgrave and Petermann) in its
centre and the Nullarbor Plain and coastal Bight in the south.
The Central Plain extends from the Gulf of Carpentaria to the
Nullarbor. It includes the Lake Eyre drainage basin, the
Murray-Darling river system, and the Gulf of Carpentaria
drainage. Except for the Murray-Darling, the interior river
systems in this area generally have seasonally intermittent
flow.
The Eastern Highlands, locally called the Great Dividing
Range, extend from Cape York Peninsula to the Bass Strait and
include Tasmania. The northern portions are low and broad, the
central portion becomes increasingly mountainous. Dating from
the Palaeozoic period, these highlands have risen at the same
rate as they were eroded.
Climatically, Australia sits across and to the south of the
horse latitudes, currently referred to as the Intertropical
Convergence Zone (ITCZ). In the north, southeast trade winds
descend to well south of the Tropic of Capricorn, bringing the
northwest monsoon to the northern regions (Top End). This
summer (December to February) pattern causes heavy
thunderstorm. To the south, westerly tradewinds push counter
clockwise moving fronts formed over the Great Southern Ocean.
These bring periodic winter rains once the ITCZ moves north.
The resulting rainfall patterns interact with geology to cause
a number of Australia's ecological features. The central
desert is possible because the eastern highlands remove water
from the South East Trade Winds. Further, these winds limit
the southern advance of the monsoon. The monsoon fills the
flood plains of Kakadu and Arnhem Land annually. That which
falls over the tablelands of western Queensland flows inland,
occasionally filling Lake Eyre, but generally simply seeping
into the artesian basin.
During ‘The Dry’, the interior is arid from the west coast
well into the central eastern lowlands. Perth, Adelaide and
the south coast can be described as Mediterranean in that they
receive winter rains.
Because of the prevailing southeasterly trade winds, the
eastern coastal mountains have temperate rain forests. Only in
the highest and southernmost mountains of the Eastern
Highlands does the temperature fall below freezing in winter,
although the desert will be quite cool at night in winter. In
contrast to the northern hemisphere, low pressure systems
circulate clockwise and highs circulate anti-clockwise.
Vegetation and soils are a matter of combining the effects of
geology and climate. The true deserts of the interior, from
eastern Western Australia extending into northwest South
Australia and the southwest of the Northern Territory and
adjacent central South Australia, are well vegetated relative
to the Old World and North American deserts. They tend towards
loose stone (called ‘gibber’), red and red-brown desert loams.
Their sand dunes form extensive longitudinal ridges.
Characteristic vegetation is saltbush or, in slightly better
soils, hummock grasses like spinifex.
Surrounding the desert is a semi-arid area of grey and brown
soils with increasing grass and thinly wooded acacia or
eucalypt scrub. The mallee, a low growing, multi-stemmed
eucalypt, extends as a band from the coast of Western
Australia through the Nullarbor. The name of the plant also
refers to the region in which it grows. During the era of sea
travel, ships’ passengers describe knowing they were nearly to
South Australia because they could smell the acacia blossoming
in these alkaline soils long before land was sighted. The
semi-arid conditions in the central eastern regions often
suffer from drought.
The southwestern and southeastern regions are marked by a
succession of humid to sub-humid areas of eucalypt forest and
tall woodlands. In the wettest areas of the eastern coastal
mountains and western Tasmania, dense rainforests with trees
30m high dominate, with extensive undergrowth of ferns,
orchids and palms in the north. In fact, across the top end of
the continent are warm eucalypt forests growing in soils of
low fertility and mangroves on the coastal flats.
With the exception of noble efforts to preserve large tracts
as national parks and also the establishment of World Heritage
sites, there has been little conservation on a local level.
Some progress is being made now that it has been recognised
that rising salinity in the agricultural soils in the
Murray-Darling River Basin in New South Wales and Victoria is
an effect of deforestation and erosion. Further, the economic
damage of opportunistic forestry (particularly clear cutting
for wood-chip export) and the appreciation of the economic
benefits of ecological tourism are among the factors leading
to the protection of local natural sites.
The weather in Australia is remarkably consistent. Across the
north of the continent, as mentioned, frequent thundershowers
in the monsoonal summer (November and December) alternate with
a cooler, dry period (April to August). The region’s most
uncomfortable period is during the oppressive humidity and
heat which eventually results in the monsoonal summer rains.
The southern portions of the continent can expect generally
dry and warm summers. During winter (May to July) the South
Ocean lows from the ‘roaring 40s’ latitudes migrate north.
These lows bring cool, wet weather across from the southeast.
Then a trailing high pressure front brings cooler, drier days.
Occasionally, a northwest cloud band from the tropics will
cross the continent, bringing rain to the centre and
increasing the wet weather already associated with low fronts
affecting the southeastern capital cities. In any event, this
intermittent wet weather generally lasts a couple of days, to
be repeated every five or six days.
The bracing to brisk line of water temperature proceeds from
central New South Wales to Victoria from mid-summer to early
autumn, but depends, of course, on the sun’s heat and ocean
currents.
Australia is not particularly interested in the official implementation of emblematic flora and fauna, although the wattle flower is the country’s official floral emblem. Inexplicably, this beautiful symbol appeared on none of the popularly nominated Republican flag designs recently displayed for future consideration, even though it could be as distinctive an emblem as Canada’s maple leaf. The states and other organisations are represented, however, by semi-official emblems of flora and fauna: the ACT Parks and Gardens have a parrot, the gang gang cockatoo; Tasmania has become known for the Tasmanian devil; New South Wales takes the remarkable blossoms of the waratah; Western Australia has the kangaroo paw plant; South Australia’s Sturt’s desert pea and the rifle bird emblems seem a bit confusing, since the desert pea is more frequently noted in northern Western Australia, and the rifle bird is better known on the extreme northeastern coast of the continent. No one has claimed one of the most prevalent birds, the galah, despite its pleasant pink head and calm grey body.
Flora
The acacia (in
Australia known as the wattle), casuarina and eucalypts
(usually called ‘gums’) are the most significant indigenous
flora. No pines grew here before their introduction by
Europeans, although there are a few native conifer species;
all deciduous trees are introduced. Acacia comprises some 1000
species of low trees with ball-shaped blossoms tending to be
bright yellow to yellow-green with a characteristic scent.
Many people claim that wattle cause allergic reactions.
However, its pollen is too large to have an effect. It is the
grasses which blossom at the same time, i.e. late winter and
early spring, which are more likely to be responsible. The
brilliant yellow blossoms of many wattle varieties provide a
spectacular display of colour along the roadsides and in the
parks at the end of August.
Cootamundra wattle
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Gold dust wattle
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Leafless rock wattle
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Casuarinas, sometimes
called she-oaks, occur as stands along river courses. They are
quite large trees with a cedar or conifer-like appearance. The
seeds provide food for sturdy-beaked parrots.
The eucalypts produce 450 distinct species throughout the
continent, having adapted to nearly every condition.
Approximately 68 per cent of Australia’s forest trees and a
large portion of woodlands and even tropical trees are
eucalypts. They are sometimes magistic in stature
and often have remarkable bark. They have been popular
introductions in other similar climates and show remarkable
variation dependent upon local conditions.
Red gum in Flinders
Range
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Blue gum trunk
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Eucalypt in California
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The blossoms can be
white, red
or pink and attract honey bees. |
Eucalyptus forest
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Coolbah
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Tea trees, especially
the species Melaleuca alternifolia, are now widely
cultivated for their valuable medicinal oil. Tea trees often
resemble forms of eucalypt, although they are more likely to
be shrub-like in size.
While the distribution of native grasses conforms to the
degree of aridity, the area within a couple of hundred
kilometres of Cloncurry in western Queensland offers nearly
the complete range of habitats and grass types on the
continent. Other indigenous and widely distributed floral
species include banksias, grevilleas, and bottlebrushes (Callistemon
spp.). Each present a surprising variety of forms and
colours. If you keep track of such, the banksia and
grevillea are in the Proteaceae family; the eucalypts,
callistemon, and tea trees are in the Myrtaceae family.
Ornamental tea tree |
Banksia |
Grevillea |
Callistemon |
Kangaroo grass |
Spinifex |
Mammals
The marsupial
mammals, reptiles, and parrots are similarly signal fauna for
Australia. Serious naturalists will find numerous descriptions
of native species throughout this text, but a summary is
provided here for general interest.
The indigenous mammals of Australia include two of the world’s
three monotremes (of the order Monotremata, native to
Australia and New Guinea), most of the marsupials, a few
rodents, and bats. Of the monotremes, the platypus (Ornithorhynchus
anatinus), although a mammal with thick brown fur, lays
eggs and has webbed feet; the adult male has a poisonous spur
that is venomous enough to kill small animals. The other
native monotreme is the echidna (Tachyglossus aculeatus),
sometimes called erroneously the spiny anteater. The echidna’s
body is covered in brown hair with quills on its back, some
reaching a length of 6cm. Its defense is to tuck itself into a
ball. The marsupials gestate outside the womb in a pouch
or fold of skin where the infant suckles.
Platypus |
Echidna |
Kangaroos and
wallabies can be found in most natural settings, although the
kangaroo is most characteristically associated with fallow
pastures and grasslands. They can be quite tame when hand-fed
in enclosures. In the wild, the male leader of a ‘mob’ of
kangaroos may attack following a display in which he tilts his
head back while scratching his chest. However, this happens
very rarely; usually when a mob is disturbed in the wild the
leader will simply hop away. Wallabies are more elusive,
though frequently encountered on trails in natural settings.
There are some 48 different species of kangaroos and wallabies
in Australia, some of them quite widespread and others now
seriously endangered.
Eastern Wallaroo |
Wallabie |
The famed koala (Phascolarctos
cinereus) is a quiet tree dweller with a strong
characteristic odour. Like most marsupials, koalas are
nocturnal animals. Spotting them in the wild in the daytime is
not impossible for someone with a trained eye as they sleep
curled in the crotches of tree limbs about 15m off the ground.
Since becoming a protected species in the 1920s, koala numbers
have reached stable proportions, although in some areas
disease and environmental changes pose a continuing threat to
their population.
The wombat will not be widely recognised outside Australia.
Its shape and weight is something like a badger with a blunt
nose. It sleeps in a burrow, eats grasses and roots at night.
Tales abound about its sole survival tactic which is to squash
its pursuer between the flat base of its spine and the roof of
its burrow.
Koala, Great Otway National Park |
Wombat |
One of the most
easily seen marsupials is probably one of the many species of
possum. The name was given to this family of marsupials by
Captain Cook’s sailors, who thought they resembled the North
American opossum. The most widely distributed species is the
common brushtail possum (Trichosurus vulpecula), who
often nest in suburban backyards or in city parks. Possums can
be a real nuisance if they manage to establish themselves
inside the eaves of houses or office buildings. Other possums
include the wonderful sugar glider (Pteraurus breviceps),
which can glide as far as 50m from tree to tree, and lives off
nectar, sap and insects; and the tiny eastern pygmy possum
(Cercartetus nanus) in eastern Australia, also a nectar eater.
Australian bats, which are placental mammals, include a number
of fruit bats ranging from flying foxes to blossom bats as
small as moths. The grey-headed fruit bat (Pteropus poliocephalus) is known for
its southerly migration from central Queensland to Victoria
following the orchard crop’s ripening. A 20,000-strong colony
of these flying foxes exists in the Sydney suburb of Gordon,
and fly across the city at dusk. The downtown botanic
garden has a strong colony as well. Australians have
been active in the rescue of wild animals. Most
recently, bat
rescue has become popular.
Fruit bat, also called flying fox |
Mother and infant bats
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Birds
The birds of
Australia are for the most part strikingly social: flocks of
parrots, generations of kookaburras, families of magpie and
fairy wren; even the more solitary bowerbird courts his mate
most elaborately. The eastern coast and mountain range, as
well as the northern tropical forests, offer an overwhelming
variety of species peculiar to Australia. Opportunities are
increasing for birdwatchers due to the trend towards native
gardens and parklands and a more protective attitude towards
wilderness areas.
The birdlife of urban areas is surprisingly varied, and an
unending delight for bird lovers unaccustomed to such
brilliant plumage and diversity of bird calls in the
neighbourhood garden. Several varieties of black-and-white
birds and also parrots are among those which the visitor is
most likely to see.
Of the black-and-white varieties, locally plentiful species
include the magpie lark (Grallina cyanoleuca),
commonly called the peewee (you will know why when you hear
one); a dapper flycatcher with twitching tail called a Willie
Wagtail (Rhipidura leucophrys); and
larger birds like the mellifluous magpie (Cracticus tibicen);
the yellow-eyed currawong; and the native raven with a call of
mocking plaintive crying.
Pee Wee |
Willie Wagtail |
Magpie |
Among parrots, the ubiquitous grey-and-pink galah (Eolophus roseicapilla), pronounced ‘gul-AHH’, has a reputation for being stupid, hence the expression ‘dumb as galahs’. The sulphur-crested cockatoos (Cacatua galerita) are very raucous and will certainly awaken those unaccustomed to their early morning call-and-response. Parrots and their relatives are non-Passerines, i.e. not northern hemisphere songbirds. Rather they are mostly of the order Psittaciformes. They routinely show green, yellow, red and blue for accent. Smaller parrots and lorikeets are about 20cm long, rosellas 30cm, corellas 40cm and the varieties of cockatoos 40cm and more.
Gallahs |
Cockatoo |
Crimson rosella |
Birds with noteworthy
songs include bowerbirds, lyrebirds and ground-wrens for the
imitative capacity of their elaborate songs. A variety of whip
and bell birds, the kookaburra, with its staccato laugh, and
its kingfisher relatives are common sounds in the bush, as
well as in some urban areas.
Some of the surprising varieties prevalent in Queensland and
the Northern Territory do have relatives in function or
structure in other regions. The cassowary (Casuarius
casuarius) and emu (Dromaius novaehollandiae) are
a case in point. Cassowarys are ostrich-like omnivorous
browsers, important or essential to the seed dispersal of
about 100 fruiting or seed-bearing species. Up to two metres
tall, with a distinctive helmet, a blue head, red nape and
wattle and black body, they frequent stream beds and clearings
on Cape York’s western rain forests. They are reputedly
dangerous, attacking if cornered or harassed. Emu are
ostrich-shaped birds. Although they look shaggy and charred or
smutty, their feathers are delicate. Common throughout
Australian grasslands and deserts, they are omnivores and
surprisingly opportunistic feeders in picnic areas, and to
leave a laden table or grilling meat unattended where emu are
about is tantamount to feeding the wildlife. Unlike the
cassowary, they are not dangerous to chase off, though it is
wise to be careful when approaching creatures kept in
enclosures.
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Australia’s
equivalent to a crane is the brolga (Grus rubicundus),
prevalent only in the northeastern corner of the continent.
Standing nearly 1.5m tall, it has a reddish mask and a
nondescript grey body. Cranes are noted for their social
displays and for soaring on air thermals. In somewhat drier
grassy habitats, the male Australian or Kori bustard has a
remarkable courtship display. The normally quiet bird roars
and extends a white throat sack to the ground while stepping
from side to side.
Among those birds making unusual nests are the mound-building
Australian brush turkey (Alectura lathami), scrubfowl (Megapodius
reinwardt) and mallee fowl (Leipoa ocellata). All
mate for life and build mounds of vegetation in which they
incubate their eggs. Frequenting rainforests and wetter open
forests along the northern and eastern coast, the brush
turkey’s head is bare of feathers and is red with a yellow
ruffled collar. The mallee fowl inhabits the dry inland scrub
along the southern portion of the continent. The scrubfowl is
native to the rainforests and monsoon forests of the north.
The lyrebird (Meura ssp.) builds a small domed nest on
the ground but broods rather than buries its eggs in it.
Other nest-builders of note are the paradise rifle-bird (Ptiloris
paraliseus) and bower birds (Ptilorhynchis spp.).
The former builds a cup-shaped nest, often draping cast-off
snake skins around their nest’s rim. Their courtship display,
like that of the related paradise birds in New Guinea,
involves opening their wings and sometimes bobbing or waving
their heads. Because their primary feathers have adapted to
this display, the birds can frequently be spotted due to the
rustling sound they make during flight. Bowerbirds are quite
common. They build elaborate nests or clear courtyards and
decorate either with items of bright colour, often preferring
blue. They are known to steal blue clothes-pegs off the line,
as well as backyard blue containers or straws. The males spend
much of their time calling for mates from their decorated
nest. They generally mate in early to mid-summer, but their
bowers remain throughout the year.
Australian birds have associated geological regions. The
central desert spinifex regions host the spinifex pigeon and a
variety of grass wrens; the shrub-lands host chats and pipits;
the semi-arid mallee support ringneck parrots and
mound-building mallee fowl. The eucalypt woodlands and the
mulga regions of Queensland offer a diverse range of both
parrots and passerine birds, notably the crimson rosella,
lyrebird and scarlet robin. The interspersed wetland areas,
especially in the Murray-Darling River Basin, will attract
pelicans and the famous black swans (Cygnus atratus),
faunal emblem of Western Australia. Mount Kosciuszko, along
with the Torres Strait Islands, are credited with the largest
concentration of bird species.
Reptiles
Lizards play a
prominent role in the Australian imagination despite a modest
representation of species (450 of the world’s 4000) and
families. Geckoes, dragons, skinks, goannas and legless
lizards are frequently encountered.
The small, shiny lizards found in gardens are usually skinks.
A much larger skink, the blue-tongued lizard (Tiliqua scincoides
scincoides) also frequents gardens. Prized for
eating snails and other garden pests, they are easily injured
by handling.
Geckoes are more likely to be encountered in the ground litter
and bark of forested areas, or hanging from the ceilings of
hotel-rooms in tropical areas. The largest gecko grows to c
25cm in length. Forests are also the habitat of goannas, which
routinely grow to more than a metre in length. Gould’s goanna
is frequently seen in dry forests. Surprisingly large at as
much as 1.5m, it will lie still if discovered but can run at
speed, even charging at those who disturb it. Some goannas can
be spotted climbing trees, and they often make a barking sound
like a dog.
The dragons (a number of whose representatives take up
residence at the botanic garden in Canberra each summer)
include the desert-dwelling frilly-necked lizard (Chlamydisaurus
kingii) often featured in wildlife documentaries because
of its defensive posture and hind-legged run.
Blue tongued lizard, juvenile |
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Frill necked lizard |
Crocodiles are of two
sorts, fresh and salt water. Both are encountered in tropical
regions, salt water crocodiles being by far the more
dangerous.
Snakes are common in rural and natural areas. Many have
striking beauty; all deserve respect and protection. Except
for the large carpet python and the diamond snake (Morelia
spilotes), one can assume that any snake is venomous.
The degree of danger they may present varies. The handsome
green tree snake (Dendrelophia punctulatus) or the
yellow bellied sea snake (Pelamis platurus), for
instance, are not likely to bite humans unless provoked by
rough handling. The red bellied black snake (Pseudechis
porphyriacus), while venomous and common, is not
particularly dangerous. On the other hand, a number of
frequently seen brown snake species (Pseudonaja spp.)
and the tiger snake (Demansia carinata) have dangerous
bites. The fabled death adder (Acanthophis antarcticus)
and taipan (Oxyuranus scutellatus) are deadly but not
frequently encountered and rarely bite humans. All cases of
snake bite should be attended to. Antivenins are held at
hospitals for such emergencies.
Taipan |
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Tiger snake |
Insects
Despite the
mosquitoes, insects offer considerable entertainment in
Australia. The awakening of the ants in the cooler regions
signals the end of winter’s wet weather. Australia has over
1500 species of ant, or 10 per cent of the world’s total. The
bull-dog ant (Myrmecia gulosa)
can be as long as 3cm. These red or black beasts are
aggressive and have a powerful and unforgettable sting. (The
sting starts wearing off in minutes, subsiding much like
extreme chills.) Popular belief insists that these feisty
creatures will actually go after anyone disturbing their turf.
Most of the other stinging ants are brightly coloured with an
iridescent violet sheen. Certainly, most of Australia’s ants
are innocuous. Some are comical. Disturbed ‘silly ants’, a
favourite of school-age children, will spin rapidly in place
with their thorax held aloft. Other species are interesting
because of their biology or habits. The honey ants store
nectar in their abdomen. Meat ants are reddish black, swarm
when their large pebbly nests are disturbed and measure about
5mm in length. Birds are seen rubbing these stingless ants
against their feathers. According to experts such as David
Attenborough, no one knows why brids do this.
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Travellers notice termites due to those species which build above ground nests. These mounds will be found on nearly every ramble in the bush. Curiously devoid of vegetation, they often appear to be a fresh pile of dirt until closer inspection reveals the mound to be nearly rock hard. The magnetic termites build tall, narrow mounds with ends pointing north and south.
Poisonous fauna
The majority of
noxious and poisonous fauna are snakes, but, fortunately, they
tend to be shy. A few species of jelly fish and spined fish
are to be avoided. Well-known to fishing or bathing residents
they include a blue-ringed octopus, red-backed and funnel-web
spiders (both reclusive) and the spur of an enraged male
platypus. Some of the ants will give a hurtful sting.
Virtually none of the deadly Australian species, except
perhaps the salt water crocodile, are frequent killers. In
reality, some circumspection and prompt treatment results in
few serious problems. The saying in Australia is ‘Swim between
the flags’. This dictum applies to supervised bush walking as
well as to supervised ocean swimming. A particularly good
example is the stinging tree of tropical Queensland. Touching
it is painful and results in swelling. The reaction is similar
to stinging nettles, hence the name. It is well known, readily
identifiable and is routinely disposed of in frequented areas.
Get someone to point the tree out to you if you are walking in
Queensland, and be sure to stay on marked paths.
By far the most frequently encountered dangerous creatures are
insects -- the prosaic mosquitoes
and ticks.
As frequently mentioned throughout this book, beware of
mosquito bites, especially in the tropical north where they
may carry Ross River Fever and other equally dreadful
diseases. The species of tick prevalent along the eastern
seaboard can cause both Tick Paralysis and a less common but
long-lasting, perhaps permanent, mammalian meat allergy.
Use DEET when bush-walking and wear long pants tucked into
your socks, especially if you are moving through undergrowth.
Any number of repellents are widely available. These
preparations also work against leeches, which are prevalent in
the warmer rainforests and inflict similarly itchy symptoms.
Frankly speaking though, in Queensland and the north real
caution is called for when swimming. Estuarine
Crocodiles are are real menace and surprisingly
prevalent. Do not swim in these waters without first
seeking local advice. While the prospect of being
drowned and chewed up by a giant reptile may seem daunting,
you are more likely to need hospital care for box jelly fish
stings. Be careful to swim within the the nets in ocean
waters between Cape York and Townsville from Oct. to June and
between Townsville and Gladstone from Dec. to March. Again,
always seek local advice.
The night sky
For many visitors, the night sky
in the southern hemisphere is a revelation. Unlike the
northern hemisphere, Polaris is missing as are the Big and
Little Dippers, Ursa Major and Ursa Minor. Instead, the
predominant celestial features are the clearly visible Milky
Way, with a stark, black hole near its centre, and our
neighbouring galaxy the Large Magellanic Cloud. Find the
Southern Cross (Crux) and its two pointers Alpha and Beta
Centauri and you should be able to locate the Large Magellanic
Cloud (the LMC in astromonical circles). If the Cross is at
12:00, the cloud will be at about 3:30. (There is a Small MC
at about 5:30.) Alpha Centauri, our nearest neighbour, is the
third most brilliant star in the heavens and is, in fact, a
binary star with a third star orbiting the pair at some
distance.
Another star not seen in the farther reaches of the northern
hemisphere but visible here is Canopus. The second most
brilliant star, it sits at the end of Argo’s prophetic keel.
The star Canopus was mentioned by Babylonian astronomers as
well.
Of course, the most astonishing celestial sight is the
unfamiliar geography of the moon and the related upside down
orientation of the constellations shared with the northern
hemisphere. The bull Taurus is going in the opposite direction
down under, and ‘the man in the moon’ is upside down.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians
I want people to change their attitudes to Aboriginal people. I want Australians to have pride in a culture which is practically the oldest culture in the world. Australians need to get out there. Seek and ye shall find! I want them to go out to Fitzroy Crossing and places and just hang a bit. People think blackfellas are unapproachable. It’s not true.
The popular newspaper
magazine Good Weekend
presents this call for reconciliation by Ninjali Josie
Lawford, a storyteller of increasing recognition. Her mother
was a Wangkatjungka and her father was taken from his tribe as
a child and, like Lawford, raised on a Kimberley district
cattle station. Of course her instructions for Australians
suits any traveller in a novel situation. Anyone who wishes to
meet and get to know someone from Australia’s Aboriginal or
Torres Strait Island communities must simply make the effort.
Although Australia’s indigenous population has suffered much
since European colonisation, systematic land confiscation,
murder, confinement, starvation, rape and child kidnapping and
enslavement are no longer routinely practised in Australia.
This situation is relatively new, however. The removal of
children from their families and placement in an institution
or foster home was practised until the early 1970s; the
Aboriginal population was fully enfranchised to vote in 1962;
the High Court ruling on land rights (referred to as the Mabo
Decision, 1992) allows access to government owned pastoral
land for traditional practices as long as this access does not
interfere with the current use of the land. Although
Aboriginal deaths in custody continue to be frequent, some
pressure is being exerted by political bodies and activist
groups to change this situation; Amnesty International has
identified this situation as a significant example of human
rights violation. Similarly, the general dearth of health
services in Aboriginal communities is under attack from the
Australian Medical Association and some branches of
government. Most importantly, the indigenous groups in
Australia have uniformly called on the general population for
reconciliation.
One important consideration when discussing contemporary
Aboriginal culture is that there is no such thing as a single
Aboriginal culture, language or world-view. At present, the
indigenous population stands at approximately 649,000, or 2.8
per cent of the Australian population. There are an estimated
1385 indigenous communities in the country, with 81 per cent
in remote areas. New South Wales has the largest Aboriginal
population, with 208,000 people of indigenous descent living
here. At the time of first contact in 1788, estimates indicate
about 600 to 700 Aboriginal ‘groups’ speaking some 250
distinct languages. Today, only about 13 of these languages
are not considered endangered. In the northern regions of
Australia, Aboriginal groups have also developed Kriol, a
mixture of English and native language which in some cases is
becoming a ‘lingua franca’ among Aborigines themselves.
The visitor might best begin an understanding of the lives of
Aborigines with a description cast in religious terms. The
people to whom they are related are recognised first as family
members but with religious affiliations. Their art, their
property, their stories are set in theology. Tourists are
generally surprised by the extent to which religion, art,
social relations, and property are integrated.
As with any religion, aboriginal theology is described in myth
and enacted in ritual. Unlike European religion, however, not
all of the content of this theological structure is freely
available to everyone. Some aspects can be revealed openly,
others are sacred and may only be revealed to the initiated,
those who share participation in the realm of the particular
sacred knowledge. Straightforward rules govern initiation into
age/experience-related groups in the local community. Levels
of understanding and, more importantly, interpretations
associated with events portrayed in myth are provided to the
initiates. Familiarity with mythic, totemic or ritual
knowledge beyond one’s station or capacity can be considered
spiritually or even physically dangerous.
The myths are accounts of the ‘Dreamtime’, or more properly
‘the Dreaming’, which is primarily the mythic era before the
present world took shape: spirit beings moved about the world
shaping the land and creating people, arranging totemic
affiliations, and instituting rituals. But the Dreaming is
also current. Prior to conception and following death, an
individual resides in Dreamtime. Celebrants of the most secret
and sacred of rituals re-enact events which occurred in
Dreamtime and are themselves in Dreamtime. In fact, creation
continues because these participants are involved in Dreaming
it.
The songs, dances and stories for their ceremonies and art are
attributed to the performers’ ancestors or to spirits with
whom the performers have some affinity. Rather than being
authored, they are conveyed to the artist during sleep,
periods of isolation or illness. Should someone deserve the
right to use a song or motif, the living owner can pass it on.
Upon death, the performer continues this process, conveying
the art work to members of the subsequent generation. This
often occurs after a period of mourning and a mortuary ritual
which releases the spirit to travel to the place of other
ancestral spirits. Prior to this ritual and often for a
considerable time afterwards, the names of the deceased are
not spoken. This observance must be kept in mind by the larger
community when an Aboriginal artist dies whose work appears in
national or international collections. Depending on the
traditions and feelings of the artist’s tribe and family, it
may be necessary to remove photographs and identifying labels
naming the deceased person.
The Aboriginal people have struggled to arrive at a safe and
appropriate means of presenting to outsiders their myths and
associated art, music, dance and property rights. Some
traditional art, whether painting or ceremonial, is inherently
more secular. The most well-known of Aboriginal rituals are
commonly referred to as corroborees. Those which are performed
for the benefit of tourists are quite like religious rites in
that body painting, dance movements and music describe mythic
affiliations and dreamtime events. Musical instruments are
extremely simple and likely to include didgeridoos—a painted
wooden tube played like a trumpet but without caesura for
breath—percussive sticks or rocks, and a folded leaf which
acts as a double reed when held between the first knuckle and
pad of the thumbs. The dance movements are evocative of
animals associated with the myths. The body painting will
relate to the associated animals through ornament identifying
totemic clan affiliations. In some instances this information
is considered sacred and a variation on the decoration is
presented instead.
The first Western music performed by Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Island people came from Christian missionaries. The
London Missionary Society introduced this form of worship to
Torres Strait Islanders and Cape York Aboriginal communities
late in the 19C following its success in the Pacific Islands.
Christian musical performances are often marked by traditional
instrumentation (clapping, striking boomerang tips or
clapsticks) and dancing, but not body painting.
Rock and reggae styles of music are also performed by some
Aboriginal people. Again, the northern regions have been the
origin for acceptance and dissemination of modern popular
music within the Aboriginal community. Music by the Aboriginal
band Knuckles from Broome was the basis for Jimmy Chi’s reggae
opera Bran Nue Dae which premiered at the Perth Festival in
1990. The first truly Aboriginal international rock band is
arguably Yothu Yindi from northeast Arnhem Land, the creation
of Yolngu tribal members of the Yunupingu family. Lead singer
Mandawuy Yunupingu was named Australian of the Year in 1993.
Aboriginal Art
When talking to an Aboriginal painter about a particular work, he or she will first of all tell the visitor (as far as the constraints of religious secrecy allow) about the tjukurrpa (Dreaming), which is the painting’s source. He or she will describe the specific interpretation which the symbols assume in this story. The artist will point to the tract of country in which the story takes place, often naming the sites in great detail, and he will talk about the custodianship of the area where the story is centred, naming both specific contemporary custodians and the particular subsection of the kin system through whom ownership is generally passed down. For the artists, this is the essential background information to the proper understanding and appreciation of their work. A painting not informed by a Dreaming (if such a thing were seriously possible) would be nothing more than frivolous decoration; simply not art.
Ian Green, ‘Make ’em flash, poor
bugger’—talking about men’s paintings in Papunya in Margaret
West, ed., The Inspired
Dream—Life as Art in Aboriginal Australia (1988).
Aboriginal art is first and foremost representational. Many of its conventions are recognisable to the viewer. Several fish of diverse species are shown caught in a large fish trap or a kangaroo is presented in x-ray style, showing its major organs and skeleton. With a bit of assistance the viewer recognises the half doughnut shapes and bisected angles in dot paintings as camp sites and emu tracks. Warmun community artist Rover Thomas’s depiction of Cyclone Tracy, a black path through coloured landscape, is easily recognised once its significance is explained.
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Beyond shared
conventions, Aboriginal art in every region continues to be
representational in its ornament. In many areas the
cross-hatch designs and colours represent totemic or kin
groups associated with stewardship of a particular site. They
can represent special relationships with the species or event
depicted. Just as one learns representational conventions in
order to interpret a painting, there are associated stories
and observations learned by Aboriginal initiates. The extent
of esoteric knowledge conveyed by the art, a painting for
instance, depends upon the status of the observers. Still, a
considerable amount of information about a painting is
secular. We recognise the fish as a barramundi, for instance,
and are told about the fishing techniques. The meaning of the
cross-hatches, on the other hand, is not explained; they seem
simply decorative to the uninitiated observer, while to the
initiated and those skilled in looking, these signs take on
additional representational and symbolic significance.
The rock art of the Kakadu region provides an interesting
insight into the process in which the convention of artistic
styles develop. Prior to the end of the last ice age, rock art
in Kakadu presented human and animal figures in animated
poses. At the same time as these depictions became stylised
and abstracted, mythic figures of the yam and Rainbow Snake
Being are represented. By the time the sea levels rose to what
they are now and the monsoonal climatic pattern became
established about 1500 years ago, Namarrgon, the lightning man
figure, appears, as do x-ray style depictions. The depictions
are still realistic but have changed in both subject and style
to portray new ideas about how the world works.
While the relative permanence of rock art makes it an
important means of dating the introduction of motifs and
styles, it was not the most frequently used medium. Painting
the bodies of celebrants in initiation and similar rites,
desert sand paintings not unlike horizontal frescos and
painted slabs of bark for the interior of dwellings were from
early days the most favoured media. Most of the motifs found
in bark and canvas paintings are secular variations on the
motifs in the consciously ephemeral body and sand paintings.
The cross-hatching and x-ray style of the Arnhem Land region
of the Northern Territory is quite distinct from the styles of
the Central Desert. In the desert communities, dot paintings
and stark in-fill are more likely. Until quite recently, these
were generally religious and ephemeral, the work being done as
ground (sand) paintings, body decoration or constructions.
Public awareness of the forms in the desert depended upon
photographs by ethnographers, which were first taken in the
early 20C, or rock art and more transportable decorations on
implements seen by visitors to the region willing to brave
difficult travel. Although some small carved and decorated
pieces were produced for sale, little of the art was publicly
available until the 1960s and later.
The introduction of acrylic paints to replace ground ochres
and other naturally occurring materials began in the early
1970s at the Papunya School in central Australia. Geoffrey
Bardon, a teacher at the school, asked senior Aboriginal men
in the community for permission and advice on the Honey Ant
Dreaming for a mural at the school. Following considerable
discussion about the propriety of depicting sacred knowledge
in a secular setting, Papunya elder Old Tom Onion Tjapangati,
who owned Honey Ant Dreaming, gave permission to a number of
local men to paint the mural. At about the same time, Bardon
provided artist board and paints and with the help of Kaapa
Tjampitjinpa, one of the mural painters who had used modern
materials, the Papunya men began painting in acrylic on board.
Initially, respect for ceremonial proprieties caused more
naturalistic depictions to replace the sacred iconography.
Eventually, recognition that conventional motifs could be
described without revealing sacred secrets allowed a return to
traditional style. Art board was quickly replaced by the more
portable unstretched canvas.
A similar series of events brought the art of the Warlpiri
artists of the Northern Territory to the public arena. In this
instance, Terry Davis, principal of the Yuendumu school asked
senior men to paint the doors of the community’s school in
1983. The Warlpiri were quite aware of the issues at hand. In
fact, the women of the area had been producing decorated
implements for a couple of decades for anthropologists. The
work would be public, and would be the basis for subsequent,
saleable art which would not be ephemeral but would be
purchased and would permanently leave the community. In 1985,
arrangements for the secularisation of the art were made in
Yuendumu through the Warlukurlangu Artists Association, one of
the first Aboriginal-run organisations to benefit from
commercial sales of traditional artworks. In 1989, six
Yuendumu artists installed a Yam Dreaming painting in the
exhibition ‘Magiciens de la terre’ at the Centre Georges
Pompidou in Paris. This exhibition marked a significant point
in the recognition of Aboriginal art abroad, and in a ‘high
art’ context rather than as ethnographic artefact.
Bark painting began to be sold in the early 1960s. However, in
this case the impetus was from outstation missionaries who
attempted unsuccessfully to introduce watercolours. While the
watercolours were somewhat similar to the charcoal, ochre and
other naturally occurring substances, acrylic paints and sized
canvas or canvas board were preferred by the artists.
So, in effect, Aboriginal art has been available to the wider
public since the 1960s. Of course, a number of anthropological
and gallery exhibits pre-date this by a century and more;
German and Swiss anthropological collections, such as the
ethnographic museum in Basle, were important archives of early
Aboriginal artefacts in Europe. The most important inaugural
exhibition in Australia was arguably the 1929 National Museum
of Victoria’s ‘Primitive Art’ show, which included an
anthropologist display of director Baldwin Spencer’s
collection of bark paintings acquired in 1912. Not until 1959
did an Australian art gallery begin to collect Aboriginal work
as art rather than ethnographic artefacts, when the Art
Gallery of New South Wales under artist and curator Tony
Tuckson began to display works by artists from Tiwi and Arnhem
Land cultures.
The state and national galleries now have collections on
continuous display. Their material tends to date from this
post-1950s period. A number of private galleries and
Aboriginal artists’ cooperatives provide the opportunity both
to see and purchase art. In the best circumstances, the artist
may be available to describe the painting’s details. This
information is routinely provided by the agent as well.
The most frequently
mentioned Aboriginal community-based arts organisations
include
Buku
Larrngay Arts, Yirrkala, NT
Bula’Bula Arts,
Ramingining, NT
Maningrida
Arts and Culture Centre, Maningrida, NT
Maruku
Arts, Uluru, NT
Mimi
Arts and Crafts Gallery, Katherine, NT
Papunya Tula Artists,
Alice Springs, NT
Tiwi
Designs, Bathurst Island, NT
Warlukurlangu
Artists, Yuendumu, NT
Waringarri Arts,
Kununurra, WA
Warlayirti
Artists Aboriginal Corporation, Halls Creek, WA
Ernabella Arts,
Ernabella, SA
Descriptions of
several of these community-based organisations reveal a
consistent pattern. European techniques or material are
adopted by local people, often following success in selling
crafts to tourists. The success of modest early sales leads to
greater community involvement and eventual control.
International recognition, based on sales through local
galleries and exhibition at national and international
exhibitions, follows shortly thereafter.
The Ernabella Arts group began in 1949 as handicrafts produced
by women on this mission cattle station. Initially, they spun
and wove station-grown wool, but the women soon found batik to
their liking as well. Similarly, the Maningrida Arts and
Culture Centre began as production of a variety of artefacts
made for tourists in the 1950s. It was established as a
community-based enterprise in 1968.
Warlukurlangu Artists was formed in 1985 after senior Yuendumu
women purchased a four-wheel drive vehicle with money they had
saved from the sale of painted artefacts and canvas board.
Their international recognition came upon the production of a
10 x 5m ground painting at the ‘Magiciens de la Terre’
exhibition in 1989 at the Pompidou Centre in Paris. Papunya
Tula Artists began after the introduction of mural painting at
the Papunya community school by teacher Geoffrey Bardon.
International recognition increased following the 1988
Dreaming exhibition at the Asia Society Galleries in New York
City.
Tiwi Designs was established in 1969 by Melville Island
artists Bede Tungutalum and Giovanni Tipungwuti who initially
applied screen and block printing techniques to cotton fabric.
These and other north
central Australian Aboriginal artist communities are
represented by AboriginalArt.org.
Please
contact
the
pertinent
Land
Council
or
the
gallery you wish to visit prior to travel. These
communities guard their privacy and may turn away undocumented
visitors.
Of course, you can visit private galleries in each metropolitan area which specialize in Aboriginal art. Awareness of the going prices of Aboriginal art in the communities and contemporary agreements among gallery owners are the principal factors that act to control an earlier tendancy to take unfair financial advantage of the artists.
The colonial period
marked the seizure of most of the arable land in Australia by
British pastoralists. Although the indigenous population had
been decimated by European illnesses, sufficient numbers
remained to mount some opposition to this dispossession. Not
surprisingly, prompt retribution from colonial authorities
followed each instance of violent resistance.
Named massacres include the Risdon Massacre (1804, Tasmania,
slaughter), the Battle of Pinjarra (1834, Western Australia,
punitive), Murdering Gully Massacre (1839, Victoria,
punitive), Fighting Hills Massacre (1840, Victoria,
slaughter), Fighting Waterholes Massacre (1840, Victoria,
slaughter), Lubra Creek Massacre (1842, Victoria, murders),
Hornet Bank Massacre (1857, Queensland, vigilante), the
Coppermine Murders (1884, Northern Territory, vigilante),
Forrest River Massacre (1926, Western Australia, punitive),
Coniston Massacre (1928, Northern Territory, punitive).
Government protection boards eradicated Aborigines in the 19C
and 20C more effectively than the armed groups had earlier.
Ironically, these protectors were installed in response to
public concern for the conditions in which Aboriginal people
were living. The efforts of these protectors were marked by
paternalism, segregation and sometimes enslavement in the name
of assimilation, or, as one contemporary phrase put it, ‘to
soothe the dying pillow’. In most cases among colonial
officials, Aborigines were seen as an inevitably ‘dying race’,
with assimilation the only logical and desirable solution.
Initially able to suppress calls for equitable treatment of
their wards, their powers were curtailed once the public came
to recognise these state entities as detrimental. Beginning in
the 1920s, Independent Progressive Leagues controlled by
politically engaged Aboriginal people used high levels of
publicity and well-planned events to present the plight of
Aboriginal people to the Australian public. The result of this
50-year-long process has been a thorough re-evaluation of the
place indigenous people might have in society and their worth
to the nation. This re-evaluation has taken the term
‘reconciliation’ as its banner cry, although, as poet Judith
Wright asserts, such a term implies that the two groups were
at some time friends.
The modern social ethic is so far removed from that of the 19C
and early 20C that we have a temptation to dismiss the
missionaries, settlers and government functionaries as inhuman
brutes. A more productive approach may be to concentrate on
the efforts of the humane participants to establish an
attitude of acceptance and assistance.
During the 19C, a number of settlers lamented the plight of
the Aboriginal population. At the time social welfare efforts
were largely organised by the churches. They established
missions to instil Christian beliefs and provide basic
sustenance. Although most of these missions were simply
gulags, some did offer training in basic literacy and rural
job skills. The missions at New Norcia, Western Australia
(Benedictine Catholic), Poonindie, South Australia (Anglican),
Hermannsburg, Northern Territory (Lutheran) and several later
in Arnhem Land (Methodist) were noteworthy successes.
The earliest of these Christian societies was the British
Aborigines Protection Society formed by Quaker anatomist
Thomas Hodgkin. Not to be confused with the odious subsequent
‘government protectors’ of Aborigines, the society sought to
prevent oppression of indigenous people in the British
colonies. Their greatest success in Australia was the
formation of an Aboriginal reserve, the Port Phillip
Protectorate, which kept the area’s settlers at bay and left
the Aborigines largely to their own devices during the 1840s.
Later in the century Daniel Matthews formed a similar civil
society in 1878, the Aborigines Protection Association. In
addition to furthering the Maloga and Warangesda Missions and
criticising the New South Wales protector of Aborigines, the
association advocated compensation for dispossessed land and
acceptance of Aborigines in responsible positions.
Real political and social advances for Australia’s indigenous
population began in the late 1920s and 1930s when Aborigines
began forming their own political associations. Aboriginal
activist Fred Maynard (1879–1944), in a letter to the
Aboriginal Protection Boards, eloquently stated the
politically engaged concern of reconciliation:
I wish to make perfectly clear on behalf of our people, that we wish to accept no condition of inferiority as compared with European people. Two distinct civilisations are represented by the respective races... That the European people by the arts of war destroyed our more ancient civilisation is freely admitted and that by their vices and diseases our people have been decimated is also patent, but neither of these facts are evidence of superiority. Quite the contrary is the case.
Fred Maynard formed
the Australian Aboriginal Progressive Association in 1926. In
Melbourne, William Cooper and Bill Onus formed the Australian
Aborigines League in 1932. William Ferguson and John Patten
formed the Aboriginal Progressive Association in Dubbo in
1937. The two latter associations cooperated to stage ‘A Day
of Mourning’ in Sydney on Australia’s sesquicentenary (150th
anniversary), 26 January 1938, and presented the Prime
Minister at that time with a list of ten objectives. The
central concerns advocated federal control of Aboriginal
affairs and granting Aborigines citizenship.
This theme re-emerged in 1958 upon the establishment of the
Federal Council for the Advancement of Aborigines and Torres
Strait Islanders following a meeting in Adelaide of
representatives from Aboriginal advancement organisations,
church bodies, trade unions and social welfare groups. Among a
variety of social measures, constitutional issues became their
central effort. In 1967 they presented the issues as a
constitutional referendum, to be voted on by the Australian
people. The referendum amended the constitution so that it
could no longer disallow the federal parliament from enacting
laws which would apply to Aboriginal people or from counting
them in the national census enumeration. Of 42 referenda
presented to Australian voters since Federation in 1901, this
was one of nine which have been passed; it received a 90 per
cent ‘yes’ vote.
Contrary to the popular impression that the referendum gave
Aboriginal people the right to vote in federal elections, they
had actually had this right since 1962. The central effect of
the referendum was recognition of traditional law regarding
ownership of land; the results of this recognition culminated
in the Aboriginal Land Rights (NT) Act 1976. Following this
recognition, regional land councils came to the fore as
cooperative managers of a variety of land rights ceded to
them. Shortly, these councils will have increased power over
intellectual property as well. Tourists apply to these land
councils for permission to enter Aboriginal or Torres Strait
Island land.
Of greatest significance for Aboriginal rights in recent years
has been the so-called Mabo Decision and the Native Title Act
of 1993. Eddie Mabo was a Murray Island native who in 1982
began proceedings against the state of Queensland, seeking
recognition of the rights of the Island’s traditional land.
Mabo’s case eventually came to the Australian High Court,
where the vexed issue of terra nullius—the colonial assertion
that Australia was uninhabited and unowned, and therefore land
could be taken for the Crown or by any settler who wanted
it—was ruled invalid. This recognition of traditional
ownership of the land, that indigenous people had indeed
occupied the continent at the time of white settlement, led to
the historic High Court decision resulting in the Native Title
Act 1993, ensuring clarification of all land titles throughout
Australia and ensuring equality before the law. The
conservative government under John Howard, together with
pastoral and mining interests, is seeking to extinguish native
title in relation to a related High Court decision concerning
the Wik people of Queensland. This effort is leading to
increased divisiveness and setbacks to the cause of
reconciliation.
Not unexpectedly, as the Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islanders have taken control of their social and legal
resources, their lot has begun to improve. Further, they have
begun calling for rapprochement between Indigenous and newer
arrivals. The reconciliation process formally began in 1991
upon the investiture of the Council for Aboriginal
Reconciliation. While the council itself has an honour roll
membership, its best work has been due to the optimistic,
community-based efforts of those espousing its intentions.
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Discovery and habitation of Australia dates to at least 60,000 years ago, the period established for the earliest remains found of an Aboriginal population. Recent evidence, in rock art, suggests that Aborigines may have been on the continent much earlier. Like the late-coming Europeans, these people appear to have come by sea after island-hopping along the northern coast. Evidence of the earliest occupation in the central areas of the country dates to 22,000 years ago. The dingo probably accompanied Aboriginal settlers about 12,000 years ago, well after ocean levels separated Tasmania from the mainland for the last time. Mega-fauna (giant marsupials) became extinct perhaps due to Aboriginal hunting in the late Pleistocene Era; brush burning as a hunting strategy established the predominance of open sclerophyll woodlands and steppe grassland at about this same time. On this isolated continent the Aborigines remained undisturbed, living a nomadic existence, developing an elaborate kinship system and a complex aesthetic and theological world view. Their relatively small numbers and the fact that the harsh landscape necessitated movement over long distances prevented the development of any substantial settlements or elaborate material culture.
Early explorers
In more recent
history, legends about ‘Terra Australis Incognita’, the Great
South Land, have existed both in Europe and Asia since ancient
times. In 350 BC the Greek Theopompus wrote of a Utopia in the
south, ‘a continent or parcel of dry land which in greatness
is infinite...’; the Indians of the sub-continent spoke of a
Golden City under a banyan-tree found by sailing south; and
the Chinese explorer Ch’eng Ho may have reached Australian
shores as early as 1405, although no substantiated evidence
remains.
Malay fishermen are known to have camped seasonally from at
least the 16C on the Australian northern coast while
harvesting sea slugs (beche de mer or trepang) for Chinese
trade; and Islamic merchants who entered Java in the 11C
seemed to have had some knowledge that a great land, wildly
fantastical, existed in the south. Similarly, the Portuguese
probably knew something of Australia shortly after they
colonised East Timor in 1516; Spanish documents seem to
indicate some knowledge of the existence of a southern land,
following their settlement of the Philippines in 1565. By the
time of the great era of European naval exploration, from the
16C to 18C, the fabled southern continent was a firmly
entrenched myth, as demonstrated by its appearance on
Ortelius’s map of 1577, where it covers the entire southern
end of the globe.
In reality, scientific exploration yielded piecemeal
disclosures of the real nature of the Australian landmass; it
was not until 1803 that the continent was fully
circumnavigated and its true dimensions established. Spanish
and Portuguese exploration in the region was frustrated due to
the seasonally strong westerly winds and the maze of reefs
among the islands to the north, where they, along with the
Dutch, claimed land and established colonies for the purposes
of commercial trade in the late 16C. It seems likely that the
Portuguese landed at Cape York as early as the 1530s, but
found little to encourage further investigation. In the 1590s,
Spaniards Pedro Fernandez de Quiros and Luis Vaez de Torres
discovered the New Hebrides and, believing it to be The Great
South Land, named it ‘Australia del Espiritu Santo’; Torres’
name lives on in the Strait through which the adventurers
passed.
Early navigators who did land on Australian soil found it so
wanting in any commodities for trade that they simply ignored
it for many years. In the early 1600s the Dutch discovered and
began charting Australia’s western coasts; in 1616, Dirck
Hartog in the Eendracht left a tin plate on the island given
his name. They had taken an eastward route to the south seas,
striking directly from the Cape of Good Hope at a southern
latitude. While the Dutch explorations were sufficient to name
the continent ‘New Holland’, the Dutch captain’s assessment of
the country and its inhabitants prompted no interest in
settlement. Carstensz’ description of Cape York Peninsula in
1623 will suffice as an example:
We have not seen a fruit-bearing tree, nor anything that man could make use of; there are no mountains or even hills... this is the most arid and barren region that could be found anywhere on earth; the inhabitants, too, are the most wretched and poorest creatures that I have seen.
In the early 1640s, as
preparation to subvert Spanish interests in Chile and Peru,
the Dutch captain Abel Tasman proceeded farther into southern
latitudes than his predecessors. He discovered Tasmania, which
he named Van Diemen’s Land, after the Batavian
governor-general who proposed the expedition. Tasman did not
know whether the place was an island or part of a large
mainland. Failing to find his way expeditiously to the Solomon
Islands, the Netherlands’ hoped-for equivalent to the Spanish
Philippines, Tasman was ordered to take a more northern route.
This voyage completed the Dutch map of the continent from the
tip of the Carpentaria Peninsula to central South Australia in
1644, but without any knowledge of the eastern coastline.
The Dutch were not alone in
describing the continent and its inhabitants negatively. The
English pirate William Dampier visited the northeast and
western coasts in 1688 and 1699–1700 respectively. He
described the land and inhabitants so critically (the
overwhelming number of flies seems to have been the biggest
deterrent) that ‘terra australis incognita’ was left alone
even by the British until Captain James Cook’s voyages in the
1770s. Dampier’s most enduring contribution was as a source
for Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726), in
which he places Lilliput ‘within the confines of modern
Australia and its adjoining seas.’
The French also made forays into this part of the South Seas
from the 17C. Indeed, it was fear of French expansion in the
Pacific that partially prompted Cook’s voyage so far south.
Cook’s first voyage was ostensibly
undertaken to examine the transit of Venus in the Southern
Hemisphere; but Cook was also commanded to chart unknown
territory and claim new discoveries in the name of the Crown.
Cook’s immense navigational achievements were enhanced by the
fact that all three of his voyages carried first-rate
scientists and artists to record and collect. Most significant
was the presence on the first voyage of the great naturalist
Joseph Banks, who would play an important part in Australia’s
subsequent settlement. Cook’s first voyage on the Endeavour
resulted in the discovery, in April 1770, of Cape Everard and,
further north, Botany Bay, named by Banks because of the
number of botanical specimens he was able to find there.
Despite shipwreck at present-day Cape Tribulation in
Queensland, Cook successfully navigated the entire coastline;
on 21 August of that year, at Possession Island, he formally
claimed the eastern coast of New Holland for Britain, naming
the land New South Wales.
These voyagers established the European vision of Australia as
an inverted world in which all natural phenomena, flora and
fauna, were contrary to scientific expectations. As Banks
wrote, ‘All things in this land seemed quaint and opposite’,
and Cook’s flabbergasted descriptions of a kangaroo (‘It was
unlike any European Animal I ever saw’) set the standard for
considering Australia a scientific and geographic anomaly. At
least Cook was kinder in his descriptions of the Aborigines,
countering Dampier’s ‘miserablest people in the world... who
have no houses and skin garments’ with a more romanticised
idea of the ‘noble savage’:
They may appear to some to be the most wretched people on Earth, but in reality they are far happier than Europeans; being wholly unacquainted not only with the superfluous but the necessary conveniences so much sought after in Europe.
After Cook’s and
Banks’ return to England and their enthusiastic accounts of
the wonders of the continent, much of the myth of Australia
incognita was put to rest, although great geographical gaps
remained until Matthew Flinders’ explorations at the end of
the 18C. In his leaky boat Investigator,
in 1801–03, Flinders circumnavigated Australia. At this stage
and upon Flinders’ suggestion in his book of 1814, Australia
became the preferred name rather than New Holland. Flinders
had established that the continent was a single landmass.
The British inclination to settle Australia has been variously
ascribed to hopes to open trade with Asian markets, to find a
source of masts and similar naval stores, to prevent French
colonisation or even to further understanding of natural
history. In fact, the initial means of settlement was through
the transport of criminals, burgeoning numbers of whom had
been housed on floating hulks in the Thames and along the
coast of England. In 1786, the Secretary of State for Home
Affairs, Lord Sydney, entrusted the first fleet of ships
bearing prisoners to Captain Arthur Phillip, a heretofore
lacklustre naval officer of German-English parentage. The
‘First Fleet’ departed England in May 1787, consisting of 11
ships transporting 750 convicts, about a quarter of them
women, and about 250 marine guards. Due to Phillip’s care, the
passengers arrived after the eight-month journey in relatively
good health, and very few deaths had occurred on the voyage,
an unprecedented feat in naval history. Rather than establish
the colony at Botany Bay, as Banks had suggested, its poor
soil, inadequate water and poor anchorage prompted Phillip to
search further north. He entered Port Jackson, a brilliant
natural harbour, named though not explored by Cook.
Back at Botany Bay, the awaiting crew and passengers were
astonished to encounter French ships commanded by Comte La
Perouse, who had landed to make repairs, further motivation
for the British to establish territorial rights. On 26 January
1788, Sydney Cove became the site of the new penal settlement,
a day still celebrated as Australia’s founding (and, for
Aborigines, the day of invasion).
The difficulties Governor Phillip faced included refusal of
the marine garrison to take responsibility for guarding the
convicts, a dearth of useful skills among the convicts,
uncertain supplies from Britain and relatively poor soil and
fresh water. The first years were ones of isolation and
tremendous hardship, with starvation a constant threat, as the
colonists confronted a hostile and unfamiliar environment. The
Second Fleet, with another 750 convicts, did not arrive until
1790; more appeared the next year, by which time arable land
had been found at Parramatta, and the crude beginnings of a
British colony gained some solidity.
Once the colony was established, transported criminals found
colonial life less harsh than it might have been. Convicts
were employed by the government or assigned to land owners,
and for the most part were not incarcerated at night. Once
crops and livestock were well-established, convicts and
workers ate better here than they would have back in England.
Tickets of leave and pardons were often granted to those who
proved useful to the government, and as early as 1793 free
settlers began arriving. By the turn of the century, the first
church, theatre, printing press and brewery had been
established in Sydney.
Indeed, the French expedition under Baudin, upon visiting
Sydney in 1800, reported: ‘Europeans whom events at sea or
particular reasons bring to Port Jackson cannot help but be
surprised at the state of ease and prosperity to which this
colony has risen since the time of its establishment.’
Baudin’s crew member Peron was even more insightful:
The population of the colony amazed us. Settled there were frightful brigands who had long lost the terror of the government. Most of them, obliged to interest themselves in the maintenance of law and justice, had re-entered the ranks of honest citizens. The same revolutionary change had taken place among the women... Wretched prostitutes are today intelligent and hardworking mothers of families.
Within 14 years, the
colony was fairly settled and civilised; just as Australian
flora and fauna had upset the Linnean system of scientific
order, the phenomenon of early Australian society was a
refutation of commonly-held notions about the criminal
classes. The peculiar circumstances surrounding the
establishment of such a colony, and the common experience of a
new land, led to a levelling of classes, a distrust of
authority, and a democratic sense of giving everyone a ‘fair
go’ that still marks the Australian character.
The early economy was based largely on imported rum and other
provisions, establishing Australia’s long-standing habit of
looking to Britain as ‘home’ and the source of all material
goods. By the turn of the century, the New South Wales Corps
through the rum trade controlled the labour force of the
colony. This situation led to the Rum Rebellion of 1808, when
Governor William Bligh (1754–1817), previously of Bounty fame,
tried to thwart the military monopoly. John Macarthur
(1766–1834), the most powerful officer of the Corps, managed
to depose Bligh, but was himself finally arrested and banished
from the colony. Macarthur, however, had already brought
Merino sheep to the colony, establishing Australia’s wool
industry at Camden Park, where he would return in 1817. He and
his extraordinary wife Elizabeth (1769–1850) remained powerful
figures in Australian life, as its first traders and
agricultural pioneers. In the meantime, Bligh was recalled and
the Home Office, recognising the anarchic state of the colony,
appointed a new Governor, the Scotsman and experienced career
officer Lachlan Macquarie (1762–1824), to bring order to the
situation.
The confrontation of white man with indigenous Australians was
from the beginning fraught with the tension of two conflicting
sets of values and expectations. As the First Fleet
chroniclers David Collins and Watkin Tench make clear in their
accounts, the new settlers’ desire to make order out of the
new landscape came into immediate conflict with the ‘hard
primitivism’ of the Aborigines who, seemingly without a sense
of ownership or material values, were seen by the whites to
have no claim to the land they inhabited, and, in the worst of
attitudes, to be hardly human at all. This idea led to the
lamentable concept of Australia as a terra nullius, an
uninhabited land, a misconception that has forever tainted
interactions with the native people and has had sweeping
consequences to the present day.
Governor Lachlan
Macquarie
The arrival of the
ambitious Macquarie and his wife Elizabeth in December 1809
saw a move away from the idea of Australia as solely a penal
colony. Macquarie supported emancipists, encouraged the
rehabilitation of convicts, and subdued the power of the
military establishment. He set out to give the colony all the
trappings of British civilisation, through massive public
works programmes and the implementation of banking and
cultural institutions. With the convict-architect Francis
Greenway (1777–1837), Macquarie created substantial public
monuments and churches, and established new towns along the
newly discovered Hawkesbury River. He set up the first school
for Aborigines, officially recognised Roman Catholicism, and
established Sydney’s Botanic Gardens. He travelled to Van
Diemen’s Land, laying out the town of Hobart, and bestowing
his name on places throughout the country. During his
administration, the Blue Mountains were finally crossed in
1813, allowing expansion into the fertile parts of the inland
and establishing a more positive vision of Australia as a
livable country.
Macquarie’s ambitions were too grandiose for the Home Office,
and his encouragement of emancipist settlement brought him
into conflict with the burgeoning numbers of free settlers. In
1819, Commissioner J. Bigge was sent out to Sydney to report
on Macquarie’s activities and the state of the colony, which
by this time had been transformed from a place of punishment
to one of civilised prosperity, eliminating the threat of
transportation to Australia as a supposed deterrent to
criminals in England. Bigge’s negative assessment of public
spending and political organisation led to Macquarie’s
resignation in 1821, as England vacillated in its opinion of
Australia’s value to the Empire. Further penal settlements
were seen as necessary to instil fear, leading in the late
1820s to the establishment of Macquarie Harbour, Port Arthur,
Port Macquarie, and Moreton Bay on the Brisbane River.
The establishment of colonies
Free settlement
nonetheless continued to grow, leading to the declaration of
colonies throughout the continent: in 1825 Van Diemen’s Land
became a separate colony, in 1826 Western Australia was
founded, followed by Melbourne in 1835 and South Australia,
proud of having no convict taint, in 1836. These all became
self-governing colonies within the British Empire.
By the 1840s, exploration of the continent’s vast expanses by
Charles Sturt, E.J. Eyre, Ludwig Leichhardt, Burke and Wills,
and others completed the Australian map, dashing hopes of a
fertile inland as the extent of its dry and barren centre was
substantiated. The settlements by the sea flourished,
establishing the still-persistent custom by the populace of
clinging to the coastline; today over 80 per cent of
Australians live in six coastal cities, and nearly 90 per cent
can be classified as urban dwellers. Convict transportation
ended in New South Wales in 1840, and throughout Australia by
1853. Opportunistic adventurers, in most cases British men of
means, took up huge tracts of land at the edges of the
explored regions, claiming ownership by virtue of settlement
and developing a ‘squattocracy’ that would dominate as
Australia’s landed gentry to the present day. The population
remained overwhelmingly Anglo-Celtic in composition and
values, while the increase in native-born Australians led to a
growing sense of national identity, especially among the
working class.
The gold rush
It was the gold rush of the 1850s,
both in New South Wales and the newly-proclaimed colony of
Victoria, that significantly transformed the demographic
structure of the country, as vast numbers of middle-class
migrants and skilled artisans from all over the world joined
the ranks of those locals who clambered to the gold fields.
For the first time Australia became the focus of international
attention. The results of so much immigration and the
subsequent development of an industrial and cultural
infrastructure to support them led to a more complex and
self-conscious Australian society. The phenomenon of
‘Marvellous Melbourne’, developing in one decade to a
cosmopolitan city of stature and for a time the wealthiest
place within the British Empire, is the most startling example
of the rapid transformation made possible by mineral wealth.
In the 1880s, while Melbourne grandiosely expanded its
cultural institutions and architectural monuments, development
of Australian heavy industry accompanied the discovery of
enormous mineral lodes at Broken Hill in western New South
Wales. These discoveries were an important step, leading to an
industrial ethos within Australian society. Still, vigorous
trade-unionism in the country grew initially out of the
activities of shearers and pastoral workers, leading by the
1850s to the first eight-hour-working-day legislation in the
world.
Rise of Australian nationalism
By the 1890s, as
gold-engendered prosperity collapsed and economic depression
permeated society, the strength of the trade unions encouraged
nationalistic sentiments among Australian workers. Similarly,
in art and literature, ambitious attempts were made to hone a
specifically Australian world-view and cultural contribution.
Artists of the Heidelberg School and writers such as Joseph
Furphy, with his novel Such is Life (written 1895),
forged a style using themes of the Australian landscape and
the Australian vernacular idiom. The nationalist sentiment of
Banjo Paterson’s "Man From Snowy River (1890) is unmistakable.
The establishment of John Archibald’s newspaper The
Bulletin in 1880 promoted national issues and an
Australian style of writing and humour.
The move towards federation of the separate Australian
colonies into a single nation gained its strongest impetus
after a speech by venerable politician Sir Henry Parkes at
Tenterfield, New South Wales, in 1889. Popular opinion for
federation was led by the Australian Natives’ Association
(native-born white settlers) and the Federal League, and by
the end of the century a popular referendum accepted a
constitution, which was enacted as a statute by the British
Parliament. Australia was officially proclaimed a nation
within the British Commonwealth on 1 January 1901, making the
six colonies six states.
The period from Federation until the First World War saw a
coalescence of national outlook, including the selection in
1913 of a new national capital, removed from inter-state
rivalries, to be built at Canberra. The seat of government was
Melbourne until 1927, when Canberra’s Parliament House was
finally opened. Australia remained overwhelmingly British in
cultural and political attitudes. The government established
consisted of a two-tier parliamentary system, presided over by
a Prime Minister; each state had a premier and its own
governor-general, and the entire system was overseen by a
Governor-General nominally appointed by the British Monarch.
One of the first acts of the infant government was the
Immigration Act, establishing the White Australia policy in an
attempt to ensure a European, preferably British, population.
While directed at the fear of the ‘Asian hordes’ to the north,
the policy also effectively marginalised indigenous
Australians, who were for the most part confined to mission
stations.
The opening of the Commonwealth Bank in 1912 and the coining
of separate currency in 1910 established an economy not
entirely dependent on Britain’s. Progressive measures adopted
included universal suffrage in 1902, and, with the rise of the
Australian Labor Party, an acceptance of a minimum wage law by
1907. Culturally, the ‘Mother Country’ was still the
destination of all home-grown talent, whether in medicine, the
arts, or higher learning. Only in the field of sports,
especially cricket, rugby, and swimming, did Australia begin
to nurture local teams and individual ability; it is one of
the few countries to be represented at every modern Olympics
Games. Exploits in aviation and exploration, especially
Mawson’s expedition to Antarctica 1911–14 and Kingsford
Smith’s trans-Pacific flight of 1928, produced local heroes
and major achievements that were hailed as Australian, not
British, accomplishments.
First World War
The First World War
brought Australia on to the international stage as a separate
nation. While conscription was defeated by popular vote at
home, despite the efforts of xenophobic Prime Minister Billy
Hughes (1864–1952), thousands of Australians signed up to
fight with the British forces, both in the Middle East and in
Europe. Australia also took over the governing of German New
Guinea, its first foray into extraterritorial administration.
The disastrous events in 1915 at Gallipoli in Turkey, in which
the troops of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps
(ANZACs) sustained enormous losses, served as a ‘crucible of
nationhood’, establishing a sense of national pride and a
questioning of total dependence on British power. ANZAC Day,
on 25 April, remains the most patriotic and Australian of
occasions throughout the country.
In 1918, Australia’s population reached five million.
Returning soldiers found Australia in the 1920s increasingly
divided between the growing urban population and the concerns
of farmers and pastoralists. Immigration from other European
countries grew as the United States closed its doors to most
migrants in 1921. Labor Party versus anti-Labor battles
determined government policies at all levels, becoming a
persistent feature of Australian political life.
Modern technology brought Australia into the 20C by decreasing
the geographical and social distances on the continent and
increased the country’s connections to the outside world.
Significant developments include the establishment in 1920 of
QANTAS (The Queensland and Northern Territory Air Services)
and The Flying Doctors’ Service in the Outback, the arrival of
telegraph, telephone and radio services, and improved
shipping.
The building of Sydney’s Harbour Bridge between 1923 and 1932
was hailed as a major engineering feat as well as an emblem of
Australia’s modernity. The Australian Broadcasting Commission
(ABC) was formed in 1932, offering a venue for local
production and support of Australian artists. Artists by the
1930s still overwhelmingly went abroad to pursue culture, but
literature and art created at home became more vigorous, with
efforts such as the Angry Penguins movement in Melbourne and
the arrival of European-trained immigrants in all the capital
cities.
Oldfield (Aus.) purposely
struck, bowled to the head by Larwood (Eng.), Adelaide 1933 |
The Great Depression of the 1930s had as devastating a social impact on Australia as elsewhere; here economic collapse led to a restructuring of the banks, with increased tensions caused by the continued dependence on British financial policy and institutions. Nowhere is Australian obsession with and domination of sport against the ‘Mother Country’ more symbolically demonstrated than in the infamous ‘Bodyline’ controversy of 1932. The English team purposefully pitched at the Australian batsmen. Bert Oldfield was concussed during an at bat in Adelaide. The indefatigable cricketer Don Bradman (b. 1908), the pride of all Australia, was deliberately abused by British bowlers in a test match; Australia at the time was desperately seeking a loan from the Bank of England, a loan that was made contingent upon Australian authorities dropping their protests against the British cricket team. On the playing field, allegiance to England was eschewed in favour of loyalty to the nation long before any political distancing occurred.
Second World War
The Second World War
again brought Australia into global affairs, this time with
more recognition of the country’s place in the Pacific realm:
primary attention was given to the defence of Australia
against Asian forces, although Australians still fought under
British command. Australian troops were particularly effective
in the early North African desert campaigns such as Tobruk and
El Alamein. With the fall of Singapore in 1942, during which
Australian troops were seen to be abandoned by the British,
and with the entry of the United States into the war after
Pearl Harbour, the Prime Minister, Labor stalwart John Curtin
(1885–1945), shifted Australian efforts to the Pacific and
established closer political alliance with the United States.
General Douglas Macarthur used Australia as a base for
coordinating Pacific operations, bringing large numbers of
American troops to Australian shores for the first time.
In 1942, the Japanese bombed Darwin, a Japanese submarine
entered Sydney Harbour, and Japanese troops invaded New
Guinea. On every front, Australian troops were present,
playing a decisive role along with the US Navy in the Battle
of the Coral Sea and halting Japanese advances in New Guinea.
Australia also played a leading role in the post-war
establishment of the United Nations; Dr H.V. Evatt was the
organisation’s first President of the General Assembly.
1945 onwards
After the war,
Australia, acutely aware of its isolated position as an
underpopulated European nation at the southern end of Asia,
responded with massive assisted-immigration programmes,
initiated by Labor leaders Ben Chifley (1885–1951) and Arthur
Calwell (1896–1973). These programmes saw the arrival in
Australia not only of British migrants, but for the first time
large numbers from non-English-speaking countries. These ‘New
Australians’ began the transformation of the country into the
multicultural society it is today. Asians were still
effectively banned from immigration well into the 1970s. The
need for a more independent and vigorous economy also led to
the implementation of large-scale engineering projects, most
notably the Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric Scheme, an
unprecedented technological programme to harness water for
irrigation and supply electricity to New South Wales. The
‘Snowy’s’ work force was comprised of people from 35
countries, many of whom remained to become Australian
citizens.
The 1950s brought to power the newly organised Liberal Party,
conservative in policy, under Robert Menzies (1894–1978), who
would dominate Australian politics into the 1960s. Menzies
oversaw the period of post-war prosperity of full employment
and material growth, maintaining
a staunchly pro-British view while involving the country in
prevalent Cold War policies. The visit of Queen Elizabeth II
in 1954, the first visit by Australia’s monarch, generated
overwhelming excitement; over 70 per cent of Australia’s
population made an effort to see her in person. Australian
troops were sent to Korea in 1950. Communism was seen as a
threat at home and abroad, and the British were allowed to
test atomic bombs in the desert regions of Maralinga and Emu
Junction. Under Menzies, literary censorship still banned
books such as James Joyce’s Ulysses and schoolchildren
used textbooks that referred to their near-northern neighbours
as ‘The Far East’. Aboriginal children were still removed from
their families, and they were not granted citizenship until
1967. Television was first introduced in 1956, not
coincidentally the year of Australia’s international debut as
the host of the Melbourne Olympic Games.
Menzies sent advisors to Vietnam as early as 1962 and
introduced conscription. His successor Harold Holt (1908–67)
continued the commitment to Vietnam, coining the phrase ‘all
the way with LBJ’ after the visit by US President Lyndon
Johnson in 1966. By 1971, public sentiment against Australian
involvement in an Asian-American conflict was so strong that
most troops were recalled; in all, 500 Australians died in
Vietnam and 2400 were wounded. Culturally, the period was
still one of expatriation, both to Europe and America, but the
so-called ‘cultural cringe’ (a term coined in 1950 by writer
A.A. Phillips began to diminish, as new galleries and learned
institutions opened, and writers and artists began to explore
the peculiarities of the Australian cultural condition.
Prime Minister Holt’s
death by drowning in 1967 paved the way for Labor’s win in
1972 led by a visionary Gough Whitlam (b. 1916). The time was
right for change, and Whitlam set about implementing these
changes. He ended conscription and recalled troops in Vietnam
even before he was sworn in. He granted independence to Papua
New Guinea, and initiated free higher education and health
care. He strongly supported the arts, abandoning stringent
censorship laws and subsidising the Australian film industry.
Whitlam was instrumental in the purchase in 1973 of the
controversial Jackson Pollock painting Blue Poles for
an enormous sum, Australia’s first venture into the world of
art politics. In the same year, Queen Elizabeth II opened the
Sydney Opera House; her trip generated far less fanfare than
the first one. Whitlam also extended Aboriginal rights and
returned land to them, infuriating pastoralists and mining
interests.
Burdened with a conservative Senate, which refused to approve
Labor’s budget, and an unfriendly Governor-General, Whitlam’s
government was doomed. Governor-General John Kerr dismissed
the government on 11 November 1975; while such powers were
theoretically at the Governor-General’s disposal, no
representative of the Crown had previously taken such a step.
The move effectively began a viable Republican movement which
questioned Australia’s continued allegiance to the British
Crown, a debate that continues in earnest today.
The 1970s also saw the official end of the ‘White Australia’
policy, and Asian immigration began. The first Vietnamese boat
people arrived in 1976, adding another dimension to the
country’s growing ethnic communities. Australian literature
gained international attention: in 1971, Germaine Greer, while
resident in London, published The Female Eunuch and in
1973, Patrick White became the first Australian to win the
Nobel Prize for literature. The environmental movement came
into being, and remains a powerful if beleaguered force today.
The 1980s saw the election of popular Labor Prime Minister Bob
Hawke (b. 1929), who would serve until 1991, when his power
was usurped by his former treasurer Paul Keating (b. 1944).
Labor, however, lost the support of its traditional unionist
and working-class constituency, as it became increasingly
right-wing in policy.
The 1980s is already being termed the ‘decade of greed’, as
entrepreneurs took advantage of world-wide economic conditions
to create lavish financial empires, only to see them collapse
by the end of the decade. Figures such as Alan Bond and
Christopher Skase became international celebrities; indeed, it
was Bond’s Australia II that won the America’s Cup in 1983, an
event that caused national celebration. Australian domination
in international sports such as cricket and rugby, and media
successes such as Crocodile Dundee in 1985 increased the
country’s international standing; indeed, the media paved the
way for global moguls such as Rupert Murdoch and Kerry Packer.
The Bicentennial celebrations of 1988 symbolised the country’s
status, as major public events such as the Tall Ships Parade
highlighted white Australian achievement, and Aboriginal
demonstrations spoke to the continuing inequality of
indigenous people.
Australia today
Today, Australia is a
multicultural society with a global outlook. Advanced
communications has finally allowed the continent to overcome
its ‘tyranny of distance’, with major cultural and scientific
achievements created locally. Australia produced the first
successful frozen embryo fertilisation in 1984, and Australian
scientists made the most significant breakthroughs in the
process of gene-shearing. Australian Peter Doherty won the
1997 Nobel Prize for Medicine, for research initially carried
out at the John Curtin School of Medicine in Canberra.
Culturally, the arts, architecture, and cinema are as
sophisticated and complex as anywhere in the world; the
‘cultural cringe’ has been put to rest, although international
recognition still seems necessary for public approbation.
While xenophobic racism occasionally rears its head, and the
continued neglect of Aborigines causes world-wide concern,
multicultural integration is admirably successful, and is
perhaps Australia’s greatest contribution to contemporary
society.
The most significant event of the 1990s has been the Mabo
decision, by which the High Court in 1992 legally overturned
the concept of terra nullius, leading to Native Title
legislation to ensure Aboriginal land rights; the decision has
world-wide implications and will be a major test of Australian
democratic institutions.
A new Liberal-National Party coalition government (that is,
conservative) led by John Howard, elected in 1996, seems
intent on economic rationalisation in step with
Thatcher-Reagan policies, decimating many of the social
programmes of the last twenty years. The government was
nonetheless instrumental in introducing stringent gun controls
precipitated by the Port Arthur tragedy of April 1996.
The 2000s started with the Sydney Olympics, a tremendous
success, both as a sporting event and as a representation of
the country to the world. In fact, much of the country's
energies have been consumed by its approach to refugees
arriving by boat. This period should have been marked by
its strong and beneficial influence in the immediate region
starting with Australia's lead in the UN's successful
military establishing democratcy in East Timor.
Instead, the anxiety which marked the "yellow peril" of the
start of the 20C was revisited. Following the false
claims in the the Children Overboad (they were swimming not
being tossed in the ocean for the Australian Coastguard to
rescue) and the Tampa Affair (Norway ended up accusing
Australia of failing its obligations to distressed mariners),
the nation adopted the island of Nauru as a client state,
giving aid in return for hosting dention centre for
ocean-going refugees. Anyone in Australian waters deemed
to be a potential refugee can be arrested and taken to Nauru
where they have no recourse, no access to judicial remedy, and
no legal access to the press or the public.
On the other hand, the most frequent immigrants to Australia
are from China and India.
The financial difficulties of the 2008 crisis was largely
avoided because the economy was based on mineral extraction
and shipping to China. The Labor Party was in power,
though weakly, from 2007 to 2013, including a period when
Julian Gillard was the country's first female Prime Minister.
The Republican debate, land rights for Aborigines, and
environmental issues remain in the political and ethical
domain.
The history of
Western art in Australia began with the navigational records
and drawings by those accompanying the first explorations of
the South Pacific. The brilliant naturalist Joseph Banks
(1743–1820) saw to it that Captain Cook’s voyages included
excellent naturalists and draughtsmen: Daniel Solander
(1736–82) and Sydney Parkinson (c 1745–71) on the first voyage
in the Endeavour; William Hodges (1744–97) and German-born
George Forster (1754–94) on the second; and John Webber
(1752–93) on the third. All of them collected natural
specimens and eventually published numerous images of natural
wonders, geographical settings, and native peoples that would
determine the European vision of the Pacific for many years.
Equally significant were the depictions from the French
voyages of the late 18C and early 19C: the fascinating prints
of Tasmanian Aborigines made on Baudin’s 1800 voyage by
François Peron (1775–1846) and Nicolas Petit (1777–1804), and
the elegant interpretations of sea-life and native fauna
completed by Charles-Alexandre Lesueur (1778–1846). Lesueur’s
enchanting depiction of a wombat, one of the first published
in Europe, is still widely reproduced.
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Period of settlement
The earliest
depictions after colonial settlement exhibit the amateurs’
fascination with antipodean difference, and style of
draughtsmanship learned by naval officers of the day. They are
most interesting for their attitude to the natives they
encountered. The Port Jackson Painter (fl. 1790s) portrays
them in The ‘Hunted Rushcutter’ (1790) as playfully
aggressive, while his 'Wounded native' (c 1790), in a pose
like the Roman sculpture of The Dying Gaul, embodies
connotations of the ‘noble savage’. Governor Hunter’s
(1737–1821) delightful notebook of native flora and fauna,
produced during his tenure as governor in the 1790s, expresses
the simple joy of discovery of new birds and plants (Hunter’s
entire journal has been reprinted by the National Library of
Australia, 1989). The Austrian Ferdinand Bauer (1760–1826)
accompanied Flinder’s circumnavigation of the continent in
1802–03, and produced the most exquisite natural illustrations
ever created, some of them published by the artist in 1813 as
Illustrationes Florae Novae
Hollandiae. In contrast, Flinders’ landscape artist,
William Westall (1781–1850), was disappointed by the lack of
the sublime or exotic in the Australian countryside; despite
some insightful renditions of Aborigines, most of his
landscapes demonstrate the prevailing early perception of
Australia as a barren and uninteresting place.
Bauer, Hakea |
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In most cases, these
early works mimicked modes of 18C British painting. Convict
Thomas Watling’s (b. c 1762) views of Sydney in 1800 are
exemplary, in which his dismay about the ‘otherness’ of the
Australian landscape led to a combination of picturesque
motifs learned at home, and emphasised the civilising effect
of the British presence on the land itself. The first
panoramic views of the new colony by John Eyre (b. 1777) and
others appealed to the home audience when exhibited there, and
began the rage for ‘traveller’s views’ of the Australian
landscape and native life that led to substantial production
of prints and illustrated books for London society.
Naturalist-artist John Lewin (1770–1819), accompanying
Governor Macquarie on his crossing of the Blue Mountains in
1815, created watercolours that successfully depicted the
Australian bush, correctly delineating eucalyptus trees that
defied rendering through standard pictorial technique. Lewin
made the first known drawing of a koala, and his painting of
fish done in 1813 is considered to be the first oil painting
completed in the colony. It is Lewin’s image of the kangaroo
that provided the iconographic prototype of the animal that
became a metaphor of antipodean oddity. In the 1820s, Joseph
Lycett’s (c 1775–1828) prints in his Views of Australia
(1824) presented the Aborigines in Arcadian landscapes,
practising their traditional way of life and in possession of
their land.
By the 1830s, Australia had become a destination for settlers,
as well as adventurer-explorers. The artist Augustus Earle
(1793– 1838) represented the latter, visiting the continent
while travelling the world, then returning to England to
produce sympathetic depictions of Aborigines already
marginalised by European settlement, as well as adventurous
narrative works such as Wentworth Falls (1830) and the
picaresque rendering of a night-time camp in newly explored
territory, A Bivouac of Travellers in a Cabbage-Tree
Forest (c 1838). In contrast, John Glover (1767–1849),
already a well-known landscape artist in England, settled in
Tasmania permanently at the age of 64 in 1831. While he
created some fanciful images of Aborigines in the bush,
Glover’s main concentration in works such as My Harvest
Home (1835) and A View of the Artist’s House and
Garden, in Mills Plains, Van Diemen’s Land (1835)
emphasises the creation of familiar Englishness in this
fertile new country. Glover nonetheless made great efforts to
depict the Australian bush with accuracy, one of the defining
characteristics of early colonial art being the correct
rendering of a gum tree.
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Australia’s coming of
age as an independent settler colony is mirrored in the more
ambitious paintings of the 1840s and 1850s. Conrad Martens’
(1801– 78) romantic views of Sydney continued a British
painterly tradition influenced by Turner, with a concentration
on the harbour’s water and atmosphere and more grandiose
renderings of the virgin landscape. Even Martens’ late work of
the Zig Zag Railway near Lithgow (1872), a wonder of
engineering, stressed the majesty of the landscape rather than
technology’s scarring of the land.
In Melbourne, the gold rush of the 1850s saw the arrival of
several Europeans who brought German and French landscape
traditions to the fore. Louis Buvelot (1814–88), a Swiss
painter, domesticated the Australian landscape, with his
plein-air technique learned from the French Barbizon School.
As Christopher Allen states in his Art in Australia
(1997), Buvelot’s great contribution was as an influence on
local artistic practices. Similarly, the Austrian Eugen von Guérard (1811–1901) applied elements of
the Germanic landscape style in his sublime views of the
Victorian countryside and, most notably, in his North-East
View from the Northern Top of Mount Kosckiuszko (1863),
a fine combination of geographical accuracy and romantic
sentiment.
Landscape painting and national identity
Increasing cultural aspirations accompanied the growth of the cosmopolitan centres of Melbourne and Sydney at the end of the century. Most ambitious young artists travelled to Europe for training and acquired stylistic self-consciousness. As Australia began to formulate a distinct national identity in the 1880s, several artists who began painting together outdoors in the Melbourne countryside around Heidelberg (thus known as the Heidelberg School) sought to create a national style, focussing on depictions of Australian sunlight and images of the bush. The central figures of the groups were Tom Roberts (1856–1931), Charles Conder (1868–1909), Arthur Streeton (1867–1943), and Frederick McCubbin (1855–1917). Paintings such as Roberts’ Shearing the Rams (1890), Streeton’s Golden Summer, Eaglemont (1889), and McCubbin’s The Pioneer (1904) still stand as aesthetic icons and have become some of the most reproduced images in Australian art. These artists’ approach to the landscape and Australian life represent the greatest artistic achievements of the 19C; their interpretations determined the directions Australian art would take into the 20C. Landscape painting of the bush became the most accessible mode for portraying Australianness, as the works of popular painter Hans Heysen (1877–1968) and Arthur Streeton’s later Land of the Golden Fleece (1926) attest.
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McCubbin, The Pioneer |
By the turn of the
century, most Australian artists still needed to become
expatriates to be taken seriously. Some stayed in Europe so
long that it is difficult to consider them Australian
painters: Rupert Bunny (1864–1947) gained an international
reputation for his large-scale paintings of elegant women in a
decorative French style, while John Russell (1858–1931)
emulated the work of his friend Vincent Van Gogh. George
Lambert (1873–1930) also established himself as a successful
English society painter before the First World War led to his
appointment as an official Australian war artist.
It is significant that some of the greatest artistic
achievements in these formative years were in the field of
illustration. The most ambitious publishing achievement of the
time was the massive Picturesque Atlas of Australasia
(1885), coordinated by Sydney artist Julian Ashton (1851–1942)
and including lithographs and engravings by the colony’s best
artists. The illustrators of The Bulletin of the
1880s and 1890s, initially editorial cartoonists, developed
‘The Black and White School’, creating memorable images that
became part of the national psyche. Norman Lindsay
(1879–1969), the most well-known member of the prolifically
artistic Lindsay family, caused a scandal with his many prints
and paintings of voluptuous nudes, but is perhaps most famous
for his delightful children’s book, The Magic Pudding (1918),
with his characters Bunyip Bluegum and Uncle Wattleberry.
Similarly, May Gibbs (1877–1969) created the most enduring and
beloved childhood creatures in her Gum-Nut Babies (1916)
and Snugglepot and Cuddlepie (1918). In design, the
period immediately following Federation in 1901 saw the
application of Arts-and-Crafts ideas and Art Nouveau style to
every medium, most notably using Australian flora and fauna as
motifs in stained glass, furniture, and tilework.
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Twentieth century
The First World War
marked a real watershed in cultural areas. Many Australian
artists worked for the war effort; some returned from Europe,
some stayed in England indefinitely. After the war, the battle
lines concerning modern art were firmly entrenched. In
Melbourne, Max Meldrum’s (1875–1955) tonal school fought
vehemently against the most modern intrusions, while in
Sydney, the most advanced efforts were being made by women
artists, many gaining knowledge of modernist ideas and
stylistic methods through reproductions, design and graphic
arts. Adelaide-born Margaret Preston (1875–1963) produced
stunningly modern examples of colour and form, and was one of
the first artists to incorporate Aboriginal elements and
themes into her paintings and prints; Thea Proctor’s
(1879–1966) graphics epitomised 1920s fashionable modernism;
and Grace Cossington Smith (1892–1984) created
Post-Impressionist masterpieces often focussing on urban
scenes and the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Post-Impressionist
colour theory was introduced by artists Roland Wakelin
(1887–1971) and Roy de Maistre (1894–1968), further examples
of designers who made the first breakthroughs into modern
modes. The efforts of Sydney publisher Sydney Ure Smith
(1887–1949) encouraged in his publications more contemporary
aesthetic modes and the development of an art-literate public.
The 1930s saw the arrival of European émigrés, many of whom
brought an understanding of the most advanced cultural ideas
and artistic styles. In Melbourne, the Russian-born painter
Danila Vassilief (1897–1958) was influential, both as a
painter and as a disseminator of modern aesthetic philosophy.
Increased awareness of modernist ideas coincided with the
appearance of several ambitious young artists encouraged by
the patronage of John and Sunday Reed and centred around their
home, Heide, in suburban Melbourne. Certainly Heide has a
legitimate claim as being the real birthplace of Australian
modernism. Aligned with the ideas expressed in John Reed and
Max Harris’ literary magazine Angry Penguins, artists
such as Sidney Nolan (1917–92), Albert Tucker (1914-99), John
Perceval (1923-2000), Joy Hester (1920–60), and Arthur Boyd
(1920-99) began to create distinctly Australian brands of
Expressionism and Surrealism. Social Realist directions also
became an important trend, with figures such as Noel Counihan
(1913–86), Josl Bergner (1920-2017) and Russell Drysdale
(1912–81) concentrating on grim images of real people in
difficult conditions, an art with a social conscience. A truly
original contribution to Surrealist art appeared in the work
of James Gleeson (1915-2008), who also published some of the
period’s best art criticism.
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Photography
In the 1930s, art photography also gained status, with figures such as the Sydney photographers Max Dupain (1911–92) and Olive Cotton (b. 1911), inspired by German photography that they discovered in contemporary art journals and books. Dupain’s most famous work, Sunbaker (1937), was actually taken at this time, but did not become a national icon until its reproduction in the 1960s. The Second World War brought to prominence Damien Parer (1912–44), probably Australia’s best-known photographer; his film Jungle Warfare on the Kokoda Front (1942), a documentary on the Australian fighting in New Guinea, won an Oscar in 1942. The next generation of photographers, most notably David Moore (1927-2003), were particularly influenced by documentary modes promulgated by British filmmaker John Grierson and the American photographer Walker Evans. Significantly, Moore, along with Laurence LeGuay, were the only Australian contributors to Edward Steichen’s famous photographic exhibition, 'The Family of Man' (1955).
Conservatism versus Modernism
The first modern art
exhibition—that is, one in which works of Impressionism,
Post-Impressionism and Cubism were seen in Australia—was the
Sydney Herald exhibition of 1939, still staunchly opposed by
the academic artists and institutions that dominated art
politics. The Menzies government in 1937 even organised an
Australian Academy of Art in an attempt to control artistic
directions. But many young artists were already taking up the
modernist call. Along with those of the Reed circle in
Melbourne, figures such as George Bell (1876–1966) vigorously
opposed government intrusion into the realm of artistic
expression, implementing The Contemporary Art Society as a
response to the ‘official’ Academy. The absurdity of such
attempts to limit the acceptable boundaries of artistic
expression was dramatically highlighted in 1944, when portrait
painter William Dobell’s (1899–1970) Archibald Prize-winning
portrait of Joshua Smith was declared by conservative artists
to be a caricature and therefore not eligible for the prize.
The debate reached the Supreme Court, prompting the first
legal consideration of any artistic topic in Australia; Dobell
won. Intriguingly, Australia at this time had the greatest
number of lucrative art prizes in the world, albeit for quite
conservative modes of artistic expression. The art-prize trend
continues today.
In the 1950s, most artists continued to travel abroad for
study and inspiration. But several Australian artists made
distinctly Australian contributions: Sidney Nolan began in the
1940s his famous series of paintings of that quintessentially
Australian hero, Ned Kelly, and continued to produce
interpretations of Australian lore and landscape. Albert
Tucker’s Images of Modern Evil series (1943–46) used
Surrealist forms to comment on the degradation of human
relations in wartime. Arthur Boyd continued his mythological
and Biblical visions, at times incorporating Aboriginal
themes, and devising splendid renderings of the Australian
landscape.
The tragic figure of Albert Namatjira (1902–59) came to
prominence in the mid-1950s. An Arrente Aborigine raised near
a mission school in the Central Desert, Namatjira learned
watercolour painting from South Australian Rex Batterbee and
painted complex landscapes in a Western style that initially
brought him fame and some fortune; he was the first full-blood
Aborigine to be granted citizenship, in 1957. Eventually he
was imprisoned for providing alcohol to his Aboriginal
relatives, and died in obscurity soon after he was released.
The battle of abstraction versus figurative art was especially
prolonged in Australia. By 1959, a group of Melbourne artists,
including Charles Blackman (b. 1928), Arthur Boyd, and John
Brack (1920-99), formed The Antipodeans, a group opposed to
non-figurative art; their Antipodean Manifesto,
written by art historian Bernard Smith (1916-2011), focussed
on the necessity of the image and the concentration on social
realities in art. At the same time, many painters took up the
abstract cause, evident most notably in Fred Williams’
(1927–82) brilliant interpretations of Australian hillsides;
John Olsen’s (b. 1928) abstraction inspired by the European
CoBrA movement; Ian Fairweather’s (1891–74) zen-like
calligraphic canvases; and Tony Tuckson’s (1921–73) paintings
and sculptures, inspired by Aboriginal and Tiwi motifs.
The 1960s in Australia as elsewhere was dominated by abstract
expressionism, at least on the art market level. Colour-field
painting made a brief splurge after The Field exhibition of
1968 in Melbourne, when many artists took to hard-edge and op
art styles. A self-conscious construction of art aligned with
alternative culture identified the most ambitious achievements
of the 1970s. This was the era of the ‘hippie trail’ through
Asia and Europe, the famous OZ Magazine trial in
London, and anti-Vietnam War demonstrations—all vectors of
artistic activity in Australia. The constant interchange with
European and American youth culture and artistic events led to
further integration of Australian art into international
directions. Mike Parr (b. 1945) carried out Dadaist
performances and installation pieces, while the
Bulgarian-French artist Christo came to Australia to wrap the
rocks of Little Bay in Sydney in 1969. Martin Sharp
(1942-2013), who had been part of the Oz Magazine
group, set up the Pop Art-inspired Yellow House in Sydney in
1970–72; Richard Larter (1929-2014) produced sexually
provocative canvases; and Jeffrey Smart (1921-2013) ventured
into hip Super Realism. The Sydney painter Brett Whiteley
(1939–92) embodied the tortured ‘artist-genius’, first coming
to prominence while living in London in the late 1960s. His
early works were quite masterful abstract paintings, while he
later moved into a mixture of mediums, both figurative and
decorative. His alternative and drug-induced lifestyle
epitomised 70s cultural attitudes, gaining for him more
aesthetic status than his later art-works warranted.
The establishment of the Australian Centre for Photography in
Sydney in 1974 indicates the growing recognition of
photography as a major form of artistic expression in the
1970s. Indeed, many of the most exciting directions of the
period, especially the vibrant contributions of feminist
artists such as Carol Jerrems (1949–80), Mickey Allen (b.
1944), Sue Ford (1943-2009), and Aboriginal artist Tracey
Moffatt (b. 1960), involved photographic experimentation.
In the last two decades, the ‘discovery’ of Aboriginal art,
along with Australia’s increasing interaction with
international trends, has led to an explosion of post-modern
and ‘post-colonial’ considerations in all artistic fields. The
most exemplary painter of the 1980s was Peter Booth (b. 1940),
who early in his career experimented with colour-field
abstraction, but finally developed an allegorical style that
stands on the cusp of modernist and post-modernist concerns,
with some mythic and apocalyptic overtones.
Art today
Contemporary
Australian art has lost all vestiges of provincialism, as it
participates equally on a global scene. Of singular importance
has been the recognition and encouragement of the production
on canvas in acrylic paint by traditional Aboriginal artists
of the Utopia group, most notably Emily Kame Kngwarreye (since
her death in 1996, called out of respect to her family the
substitute name of Kwementyai, or ‘no name,’ and her skin
name, Kngwarreye). Kngwarreye’s works have entered major
collections around the world, and her paintings were selected
to represent Australia at the 47th Venice Biennale in 1997.
Both contemporary Aboriginal artists, such as Sally Morgan (b.
1951), Robert Campbell Jr, Tracey Moffatt, Judy Watson, Lin
Onus (1948–96) and Gordon Bennett (1955-2014), and
non-Aboriginal artists such as Imants Tillers (b. 1950) have
now begun to incorporate traditional Aboriginal motifs and
iconic elements of colonial painting into their canvases and
multi-media presentations as a means of exploring Australian
cultural and racial attitudes.
Finally, photography and video, in a variety of manipulations,
continues to offer creative possibilities for interpretations
of post-modernist society, exemplified by the romantic and
disturbing tableaux of Bill Henson (b. 1955) and the feminist
explorations of Anne Ferran (b. 1949). On a popular level, one
cannot dismiss the immense iconographic power of the images of
artist Reg Mombassa (b. 1951), with his surfie-culture
‘Mambo’-philosophy t-shirts and books; and the poignant
sentiments expressed by cartoonist Michael Leunig (b. 1945),
printed in many newspapers and as books. It would be nearly
impossible to miss the decorative designs and paintings of Ken
Done (b. 1940), whose bright and cheerful scenes of Sydney and
the sea adorn everything from murals to tea-towels and
placemats. Done is actually a serious painter as well, who has
no qualms about putting his artistic talents to the most
profitable use, to the great enjoyment of tourists to the
continent.
No doubt many
visitors to Australia gained their first idea of Australia and
Australians, whether fanciful or not, from images appearing in
the recent spate of internationally-acclaimed Australian
films. Indeed, cinema has played a major role in defining
Australian cultural life since the invention of the medium. In
1894, the Edison ‘Kinetoscope’ was introduced in Sydney. The
enthusiastic reception that greeted this new entertainment was
a portent of things to come; by the 1930s, Australians were
the most frequent moviegoers in the world. Certainly film has
contributed more than any other factor to the disappearance of
Australia’s isolation from the rest of the world. In August
1896, the French film pioneers, the Lumière Brothers, had
already sent their agent, Marius Sestier, to the country.
Sestier shot several local scenes and events, including, quite
appropriately, footage of the 1896 Melbourne Cup, which
survives today as Australia’s oldest film.
Australia’s film industry originated in a seemingly unlikely
source. The Salvation Army, recognising film’s great
persuasive power, established in Melbourne in August 1897 its
Limelight Department, intent on producing morally uplifting
moving pictures. Its Soldier of the Cross of 1900,
interspersed with lantern slides and live evangelical sermons,
can be considered one of the world’s first ‘story’ films.
Most early filmmakers had less lofty moral intentions; they
looked instead to Australia’s recent past, and especially to
the legendary accounts of its bushrangers and outlaws, for
stories easily translated into cinematic entertainment. In
1906, Melbourne’s Tait Brothers chose the most popular legend
of all for their film The Story of the Kelly Gang,
shooting it on location throughout Victoria where the Kelly
Gang had actually operated only thirty years before. At 4000
feet of film and more than an hour long (five reels), the
Kelly Gang can make legitimate claim to being the world’s
first full-length feature film. (The still existing parts have
been conserved and can be viewed at the National Film and
Sound Archive in Canberra.)
Indeed, between 1906 and 1911, Australia produced more
feature-length films than any country; in 1907, versions of Eureka
Stockade and ‘Rolf Boldrewood’s popular tale Robbery
Under Arms appeared, and by 1908 the first of many film
versions of Marcus Clarke’s novel For the Term of His
Natural Life was produced. In terms of audiences,
Melbourne in 1910 had a purpose-built cinema that would seat
5000, mostly catered to by local production. This period
before the First World War is generally considered the golden
age of Australian film, although very few of these productions
survive today in their entirety.
Raymond Longford (1878–1959) was Australia’s first great film
director. Beginning as a film actor, Longford directed his
first film, The Fatal Wedding, in 1911. Longford was
associated throughout his life with actress and co-director
Lottie Lyell (1890–1925), who starred in his greatest work,
The Sentimental Bloke (1919), the definitive film
version of C.J. Dennis’s beloved vernacular poem. Filmed in
Sydney and mostly outdoors, the Bloke is still hugely
entertaining and a remarkable document of Australian popular
culture. Of Longford’s many productions, only this film and
his version of another Australian standard, On Our
Selection (1920), have survived. The Australian film
industry that Longford helped establish was essentially
overwhelmed by the appearance of Hollywood films; by the end
of the 1920s, Longford was forced to abandon film directing,
ending his days as a night watchman.
Australians were also among the first to produce serious
documentary film, known as ‘actuality filmmaking’. The pioneer
in this field was Frank Hurley 1885–1962), also a famous still
photographer. Hurley accompanied Mawson and Shackleton on
their Antarctic expeditions of 1911–13 and 1914–16, producing
extraordinary documentation of this unknown continent. During
the First World War, he was an official war photographer,
filming battles in Europe and the Middle East. After the war,
he produced a full-length documentary on The Ross Smith
Flight (1920), the record-breaking aeroplane flight from
England to Australia. During the 1930s, Hurley was
cinematographer on such films as The Squatter’s Daughter
(1933), a remarkable example of ideological filmmaking,
glorifying the established ‘squattocracy’ and British imperial
values. Hurley was a tremendous inspiration for later
documentary filmmakers, including Damien Parer (1912–44),
whose filming along with the Australian troops during the
Second World War in New Guinea, Kokoda Front Line
(1942), received Australia’s first US Academy Award.
Grand movie houses
The 1920s were in
Australia as elsewhere the era of grand movie houses, and
those built in most Australian cities were as elaborate as the
Hollywood palaces; Sydney’s extravagant State Theatre, built
in 1929, was hailed as ‘the Empire’s greatest theatre’, and
the Capital Theatre in Melbourne was completed by American
architect Walter Burley Griffin. One of the most original
architects of this period was Western Australian William
Thomas Leighton (1905–90), who specialised in theatres and
cinemas with streamlined design.
Australians became the most frequent moviegoers in the world;
in a nation with a population of six million in 1927, there
were at least 2.25 million movie admissions a week. But most
of the films shown were American or British; the local
industry found it difficult to compete with overseas products,
particularly after sound films became standard. Australian
Talkies Ltd. was established in 1930, but full-scale sound
production did not occur until entrepreneur and theatre owner
Frank W. Thring put his own money into the sound venture. Soon
another company, Cinesound, would also commence sound
production. In both cases, emphasis was first on shorts and,
most significantly, the production of newsreels for the
movie-houses: Cinesound produced news footage from 1932 until
1956, the year of television’s arrival.
Most of the locally-produced films of the 1930s attempted to
appeal to homegrown audiences with rehashes of standard
Australian stories and films featuring popular comedians and
vaudeville performers. Thring’s company, Efftee, brought to
the screen the popular stage comedian George Wallace in such
lightweight farces as His Royal Highness (1932).
Cinesound produced the only film featuring the stage and radio
character Roy Rene (1891–1954) in his comic role as ‘Mo’ in Strike
Me Lucky (1934), a peculiar mixture of Jewish humour and
Australian stereotypes. Cinesound was also responsible for the
continuing sagas of the ‘Dad and Dave’ characters from Steele
Rudd’s beloved tales, which had become popularised even
further in radio drama. The 1932 version of On Our
Selection was most notable for its ‘Bushland Symphony’,
one of the first attempts in a film to emphasise the sounds of
native birds accompanying scenes of Australian countryside.
Despite the paucity of opportunities for serious local
filmmaking during this period, some distinctly Australian
successes did occur, all of them the work of Charles Chauvel
(1897–1959) and his wife Elsa (1898–1983). Chauvel’s first
film as a director, In the Wake of the Bounty (1933),
was actually filmed on Pitcairn Island in a semi-documentary
style; evidence of Chauvel’s understanding of the Hollywood
movie business, this work became the first Australian sound
feature to have an American release. The film also launched
the career of Tasmanian actor Errol Flynn—the first of many
Australian film stars to journey on to international fame in
Hollywood. The Chauvels were responsible for producing the
most important Australian films of the 1940s: Forty
Thousand Horsemen (1940), with Chips Rafferty, a rousing
war story of ANZAC triumph; and The Rats of Tobruk
(1944), another near-documentary account of Australians in
battle, again starring Chips Rafferty, and a very young Peter
Finch. The Chauvels’ most extraordinary film, however, was
Charles’s last: Jedda, produced on location in 1955,
presents a tragic story of contemporary Aboriginal culture,
centring on the torments of an Aboriginal girl torn between
her ‘traditional’ life and white civilisation. Although the
film now appears ludicrously dated and uncomfortably
stereotyped, it was in the 1950s quite ahead of its time and
indicative of Chauvel’s heartfelt desire to confront
distinctly Australian issues and characters. Jedda stands as
one of the only truly Australian films made in the 1950s.
Post-war ~ foreign productions
The period after the Second World War and into the 1960s represents the nadir of local Australian filmmaking; most of the films produced during the 1950s involved overseas companies choosing Australia as an exotic location. In 1946, the British documentary filmmaker Harry Watt scored an international success with The Overlanders (1946), a dramatic re-enactment of outback cattle drovers’ adventures, filmed on location in the Northern Territory; once again, Chips Rafferty had the central role, this time as the typical Australian bushman. Watts’ success convinced England’s Ealing Studios to become the first overseas company to produce films regularly in Australia; such foreign productions became the norm. No government support of the film industry was forthcoming during the Menzies era, and the Prime Minister’s cultural attachment to all things British made any alliance with American film companies difficult. Some visiting American productions, using local technicians and some actors, were nonetheless successful: On The Beach in 1959, directed by Stanley Kramer, was filmed in Victoria; and Fred Zinneman’s The Sundowners (1960), with Robert Mitchum, Deborah Kerr and Peter Ustinov, was shot on locations throughout New South Wales.
Rebirth of Australian cinema
The ‘rebirth’ of
Australian cinema began with They’re a Weird Mob
(1966), financed by a British company, but based on the
best-selling comedy novel by ‘Nino Culotta’ (John O’Grady)
about an Italian immigrant’s adjustments to Australian life.
The movie was an immense success, especially in Sydney,
proving that there was indeed an enthusiastic audience for
locally produced films with local talent and in Australian
locations. Still, visiting productions, such as Tony
Richardson’s Ned Kelly (1971) with Mick Jagger, and
Nicholas Roeg’s infinitely more satisfying Walkabout
(1971), set in central Australia and including Aboriginal
actor David Gulpilil, continued to be the only serious films
made in Australia. A more riveting example of co-production
was Wake in Fright (1971; also known as Outback),
financed by US, Canadian and Australian money, directed by
Canadian Ted Kotcheff, and with stunning performances by Jack
Thompson and Chips Rafferty. A dark tale of one man(s personal
disintegration in the aggressive and violent atmosphere of an
isolated outback town, this grimly realistic slice of life
received rave reviews abroad. It was Australia's
official entry for the Cannes Film Festival, but could not
draw Australian audiences, still unprepared for serious
Australian film efforts.
The 1970s saw great change, with a resurgence of Australian
produced films, largely the result of government support,
especially under Gough Whitlam, of Australian filmmakers and
all the arts. The Australian Film Development Corporation
(AFDC) was established in 1971 to find investors for locally
produced films, and in 1973, the Australian Film School
(actually, the Australian Film, Television, and Radio School)
opened, nurturing a generation of filmmakers to the highest
standards. This resurgence coincided with the emergence of a
youth counterculture; consequently, some of the first efforts
to come out of this era were created primarily to challenge
conservative censorship laws. Tim Burstall's sexual romps Stork
(1971) and Alvin Purple (1973) are noteworthy only for
their unabashed male cheekiness and as proof that enough local
talent and technical skills existed to sustain a national
cinema. Similarly, one of the bestknown productions of the
early AFDC days was Bruce Beresford. The Adventures of
Barry McKenzie (1972), a broadly drawn and anarchic
caricature of Australian ockerdom in Britain that introduced
Barry Humphries -- Edna Everage to an international audience.
Significantly, the film marked the first big break for
director Beresford, who would, like Philip Noyce, Fred
Schepisi and Peter Weir, go on to Hollywood and international
acclaim. This situation, of acquiring local training and
support, then moving offshore to greater fame and larger film
budgets, became a familiar pattern in Australia, especially
for directors and cinematographers.
Australian cinema in the last 20 years has produced a
significant number of films acclaimed internationally, while
at the same time revealing distinctly Australian stories and
specifically Australian characters. The themes chosen by
Australian directors and writers most often deal with concepts
of national identity, whether through setting or historical
reference. On another level, however, their topics take on
broader issues that say much about the Australian psyche:
coming of age dilemmas as in John Duigan's The Year My
Voice Broke (1987) or Gillian Armstrong's My
Brilliant Career (1979); perseverance in the face of
adversity as in Henri Safran's Storm Boy (1976) or
Stephen Elliott's The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of
the Desert (1994); stoicism despite human brutality as
in George Miller's Mad Max series (1979-85); decidedly
black humour as in Jane Campion's Sweetie (1989) or
P.J. Hogan's Muriel's Wedding (1994); and
confrontations with strange landscapes and the other as in
Fred Schepisi's The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith (1978)
or Peter Weir's Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975).
Of greatest significance is the number of women directors who
have made major contributions in Australian film, not
pigeonholed into any genre, and certainly eschewing the
predictably feminine topics of light romantic comedies (a
theme that Australians do not film well). One need only
consider the work of these leading directors to recognise a
distinctly Australian approach to film, evident even when
these same directors gain recognition abroad and begin to make
films in Hollywood. Consider the following international
names:
Peter Weir (b. 1944) began his career with The Cars That
Ate Paris (1974), a black comedy about an Australian
town that makes money from car accidents; his next work, the
one that brought him international fame, was the hauntingly
imagistic Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975). The Last
Wave (1978) dealt with the confrontation of Aboriginal
spirituality and Western materialism, while Gallipoli
(1981) was a powerful indictment of war's futility through the
enactment of Australia(s most important historical event (the
latter greatly aided by playwright David Williamson's script).
Such recognised achievements brought Weir to America, where
his films included Witness (1985), Dead Poets
Society (1989), and Fearless (1993), all of them
dealing in some way with people outside mainstream culture and
surviving in unusual circumstances.
Similarly, Bruce Beresford (b. 1940) made such Australian
classics as The Getting of Wisdom (1977) and Breaker
Morant (1980), before making it big in Hollywood with Tender
Mercies (1983) and Driving Miss Daisy (1989). In
Australia, Fred Schepisi (b. 1939) directed The Devil's
Playground (1976), a grim depiction of life in a
Catholic boys college, and a brilliantly radical version of
Thomas Keneally's The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith
(1978), before making the American-financed production based
on Australia's famous Lindy Chamberlain trial, Evil Angels
(in the US, A Cry in the Dark; 1988).
Philip Noyce's nostalgic rendition of competition between
Australian movie newsreel companies, Newsfront (1978),
was made just before he went to America and directed Tom
Clancy thrillers to international boxoffice success. Gillian
Armstrong (b. 1950), the best known of Australia's many women
directors, made as her first feature film the distinctly
Australian My Brilliant Career (1979), and has since
gone on to direct such international hits as Little Women
(1994) and Oscar and Lucinda (1997). All of these
directors now work and live primarily in America.
On an even more popular level is the success of George Miller
(often referred to as Dr George Miller, to distinguish him
from George Miller, director of the immensely popular The
Man from Snowy River [1982]) and his Mad Max
trilogy (1979-85), the films that brought AustralianAmerican
Mel Gibson international recognition and a ticket out of
Australia. Miller has subsequently produced such Australian
films as The Year My Voice Broke (1987) and Philip
Noyce's Dead Calm (1989), while directing in Hollywood
Witches of Eastwick (1987) and Lorenzo's Oil
(1992). Miller's backing of the smash hit Babe (1995)
is a good example of the current situation in the Australian
film industry: while filmed in Australia with some Australian
actors and technicians, the financing was international, and
every attempt was made to make the film appear universal. The
phenomenon of Paul Hogan's Crocodile Dundee (1985),
the first blockbuster-Australian hit, remains an isolated
incident (Hogan, too, has gone on to Hollywood).
Australian cinema today
A more substantial
and varied industry exists today, one that is really part of
global cinema. The question now is what constitutes Australian
cinema: does it include only films made here, or can films
made by Australians elsewhere be gathered into the
nationalistic fold? One need only consider two recent examples
to see how complicated this question has become. New
Zealand-born Jane Campion, who began her film work at the
Australian Film School and completed her dark tragicomedy Sweetie
(1989) in Sydney, went on to win the Academy Award for
original screenplay for The Piano in 1994. The film
was touted as an Australian film by many, although it had a
New Zealand director, an Australian producer, New Zealand
locations, American cast, French coproduction, and American
distribution. The case of Baz Luhrmann is even more
telling. His first film, Strictly Ballroom (1992),
told a lighthearted story of Australian multiculturalism and
became an international success. On the basis of that film,
Luhrmann went to Hollywood to produce the overwhelmingly
popular modernday phantasmagoria of Romeo + Juliet
(1996). He now commutes between Australia and America,
creating innovative productions in both places.
Global filmmaking seems to be the direction determining
Australia's vigorous industry today; most of the best work
will be snatched up for international distribution, although
you can still see some good films here that may never make it
elsewhere. A film such as firsttime director Scott Hicks' Shine
(1996), gained attention, and an Oscar for actor Geoffrey
Rush, because it was first shown and lauded at the Sundance
Film Festival in the US. Other local gems, such as the
hilarious The Castle (1997) by Rob Sitch, Jane
Kennedy, and Santo Cilauro, and such earlier films as Nadia
Tass's Malcolm (1985), Paul Cox's Lonely Hearts
(1981) and Gillian Armstrong's Last Days at Chez Nous
(1991) are worth seeking out in art cinemas or on video.
More recent adventures include Little Fish (2005), an
emotionally charged depiction of life on the fringes of Sydney
directed by Rowan Woods, and Animal Kingdom (2010),
centred on an actual family of Melbourne criminals directed by
David Michôd.
Similarly, films with Aboriginal themes will be made in Australia, but find broad reception internationally. Rolf de Heer wrote and directed The Tracker (2002). Set in the outback in 1922, it starred David Gulpilil and Gary Sweet, Gulpilil being forced to track the apparent murderer of a woman. Phillip Noyce directed Rabbit-Proof Fence (2002), based loosely on a true story of two mixed-race girls who run away from a state school and are pursued as they spend nine weeks following the 1,500 mile long fence home. Also directed by Rolf de Heer, Ten Canoes (2006) is an incredible film not least because it is shot entirely in Aboriginal languages. The present day scenes are in black and white, the scenes of the story being told in the film are in colour. Some versions have David Gulpilil narrating, others are either without narration of with narration in Aboriginal languages.
Of the films made in
the teens deserving notice (in addition to Baz Luhrmann's The
Great Gatsby) are Jocelyn Moorhouse's The Dressmaker
(2015), a macabre and plot-filled tale
about a world-class dress maker (Kate Winslet) who returns to
her out-back town to uncover the details of strange death she
had been wrongly accused of as a youth. Another award
winning film set in an out-back community is Red Dog
(2011), directed by Kriv Stenders, the touching story revolves
around the townspeople's relation to a dog who goes looking
for his dead master. The out-back continues to fascinate
in David Michôd's
post-apolcalyptic noir story, The Rover (2014), noted
for fine acting by Guy Pearce and Robert Pattinson. On a
sinister note, Jennifer Kent's weird and scary The
Babadook (2014) revolves around a possession by a
frightening storybook figure. For a lighter film, Wayne
Blair's well-received The Saphhires (2012) chronicles
the start of an Aboriginal pop rock group during the Vietnam
era. Russell Crowe directed and acted in The Water
Diviner (2014), an engrossing portrayal of a father
seeking to know the fate of his sons who are missing following
Gallipoli.
Australia's
dependence on English cultural precedents is particularly
evident in the style and production of literature during its
colonial period; most books and journals were sent from home,
and from 1788 to 1830, only 28 works of literature of any kind
other than newspapers were published in Australia itself.
Imported British works stood as the main source of literature
throughout the century. Still, an Australian literary voice,
grounded in the stylistic richness of English prose and
poetry, began to develop almost immediately; by the end of the
19C, Australian writers had become instrumental in
establishing a national idiom and were well on the way to
defining a specific cultural identity. In style and theme,
Australian writers today, in a vibrant literary culture
supported by a strong publishing industry and an enthusiastic
reading public, continue to explore those ideas of national
identity and the complexities of the Australian psyche.
As with the beginnings of Australian art, literature about
Australia originated in the official reports and accounts of
exploration and early British settlement. Most notable among
these records are the published works of two members of the
First Fleet, Marine Lieutenant David Collins' An
Account of the English Colony in New South Wales
(1798, 1802) and Marine Watkin Tench's A
Narrative of the Expedition to Botany Bay (1789)
and A
Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson in New
South Wales (1793). Tench's accounts, recently
presented as pdf's by University of Sydney (a tip of the hat
to the University for its
work enabling links throughout this section), are
particularly lively, and fascinating for his sympathetic
portrayal of the indigenous people he encountered.
The first book of
general literature published in Australia appeared in Hobart
in 1818: Thomas Wells' Michael
Howe, the Last and Worst of the Bushrangers of Van
Diemen's Land, dealt with the popular themes of
adventure and lawlessness, ideas that would engage Australian
writers of all stripes for the next 150 years. Convict Henry
Savery's Quintus
Servinton (1831), also published in Hobart and
generally considered to be the first Australian novel, also
presents an enduring theme in colonial literature: the moral
effects of crime and punishment.
Aspirations towards loftier romantic sentiment, drawing on the
experience of life in this new country, appeared at about the
same time. Judge Barron Field (1786(1846) produced the first
book of poetry, First Fruits of Australian Poetry, in
1819, filled with whimsical and at times critical reflections
on Australian flora and fauna, such as "The
Kangaroo" (much ironic criticism of Field's writing has
centred on his apt yet unfortunate name. The first novel
printed in Sydney appeared in 1838, published anonymously with
the mysterious title of The Guardian: A Tale, By An
Australian. Intriguingly, the author was later revealed
to be a woman, Anna Maria Bunn, a genteel pastoralist's widow
-- early evidence of the importance of women authors in
Australian literary life.
Charles Harpur (1813-68) most eloquently epitomises the struggle faced by early nativeborn writers who longed to forge a true Australian literary style. He was the son of emancipists, a currency lad, and completely committed to Australia as his own country. Writing often under the pseudonym A Hawkesbury Lad, Harpur applied traditional poetic techniques of the era, ornate and ponderous, to themes and settings based on local conditions and experience. His nature and narrative poems, such as "Genius Lost" (c 1845) and "The Creek of the Four Graves" (1853), about the murder of settlers by Aborigines in the Hawkesbury region, demonstrate the best of colonial stylistic efforts. Despite his patriotic attempts to be acknowledged as the first ‘Muse of Australia’, Harpur’s works gained little audience in his lifetime; only in recent times has his originality and talent been recognised.
Native-born writers emerge
The growth of a
native-born population in the 1830s–1840s and the societal
upheavals caused by the gold rushes of the 1850s–1860s led to
an increasing self-awareness and conscious consideration of
Australia as place. Transient visitors wrote about Australia
from a variety of perspectives, from travellers’ tales to
social commentary; but those who were born here or chose to
stay permanently made the greatest literary contribution in
attempting to define the country’s geographical and human
peculiarities. Henry Kingsley (1830–76) exemplifies the
former; brother of English novelist Charles Kingsley, he
arrived in Australia in 1853 and experienced the Victorian
goldrush, then returned to England in 1859, where he wrote the
three volume The Recollections of Geoffrey
Hamlyn (1859), along with other novels and
stories incorporating Australian themes and descriptions of
the landscape. As a romantic tale of pastoral Australia before
the gold rushes, Recollections is considered the first
significant novel to capture some of the vernacular speech and
to include vivid descriptions of the character of the
Australian ‘bush’. While later criticised as unrealistic in
its views of bush life, the book established a colonial
romantic idiom that would influence many subsequent Australian
writers.
The concept of ‘the bush’, examined metaphorically in poetic
and prose form, became the most powerful and identifiably
Australian literary device for those writers who gained
prominence on the local scene in the second half of the 19C.
The Australian landscape and outback life provided a central
focus for writers’ ambivalent attitudes about the country
itself, from Marcus Clarke’s description of its ‘weird
melancholy’ in 1876, to Rosa Praed’s reminiscence in her My Australian Girlhood:
Sketches and Impressions of Bushlife (1902): ‘I
never smell the pungent aromatic scent [of gum
trees]...without falling again under the grim spell of the
bush’.
Such ruminations determined in various modes the work of those
authors who found favour with a new audience for Australian
writing, both at home and abroad. The tremendous popularity of
the poems of Adam Lindsay Gordon (1833–70) rests largely on
his narrative celebrations of bushlife, despite the fact that
the majority of his works were conventional verses having more
to do with his educated English background. Gordon’s fame was
certainly enhanced by the romantic saga of his reckless life;
he committed suicide the day after the publication of his most
popular collection, Bush
Ballads and Galloping Rhymes (1870). The volume
included his most famous poem, ‘The Sick Stockrider’,
considered by many to have established the distinctively
Australian ballad form, championing the idea of mateship and
the acceptance of bushlife’s harsh challenges. Gordon’s
posthumous fame was so great that his bust was added to the
Poets’ Corner of Westminster Abbey in 1934, the only
Australian so honoured.
A more lyrical ideal of the Australian landscape appeared in
the poems of another tragic figure of the period, Henry
Kendall (1839–82). His Leaves
from Australian Forests (1869) included his most
famous landscape poems, ‘Bell-Birds’ (1867), ‘September in
Australia’, and ‘Araluen’ (1870), melodic evocations of the
lush and cool fern-gullies of his native Illawarra district.
His life ended at the age of 43, a victim of alcoholism and
physical neglect. Unlike Gordon, Kendall’s work was
well-received in his lifetime and largely forgotten
afterwards, except as favoured recitation pieces in Australian
school-books.
Despite the conscious efforts of mid-century Australians to
distance themselves from the country’s penal origins, the
convict experience inevitably provided obvious themes for
literary exploration. It is not surprising that the first
Australian novel to gain enduring stature was Marcus Clarke’s
melodramatic consideration of the convict ‘System’, For
the Term of his Natural Life (1874) (originally
titled simply His Natural Life). Clarke (1846–81), of good
English family, arrived in Melbourne at 17 and began his
career as a journalist. He soon established himself as an
influential cultural figure in the colony. His Old
Tales of a Young Country (1871) compiled studies
of old Australian characters and contributed to a romantic
image of the young country’s past. On a trip to Tasmania to
research convict history for a Melbourne journal, Clarke
gained documentary material that would contribute to his
sensational masterpiece. His Natural Life is a
pessimistic and detailed condemnation of the horrific penal
system supported by convict transportation, upholding a
popular view that convicts were more ‘sinn’d against than
sinning’. On a more fundamental level, the book is an
examination of human capacity for evil. The melodramatic
twists of the plot contributed greatly to its continuing
popularity; his main character, Rufus Dawes, became
Australia’s first literary ‘hero’.
Despite the growth of cosmopolitan urban centres in the second
half of the 19C, Australia’s population was still too small to
sustain abundant literary patronage or any vigorous publishing
industry of its own. In such a society, it is not surprising
that literary achievement was often dependent on publication
in local newspapers and journals rather than books. Many
important writers began their careers in journalism, and major
contributions to Australian literature first occurred through
serialisation of stories in popular magazines, of which many
long-standing and short-lived ones were established in the
1850s and 60s. Such was the case with ‘Rolf Boldrewood’
(Thomas Alexander Browne; 1826–1915), son of English-born
‘squatters’, who arrived in Australia as a child in 1831.
Browne led an adventurous life, establishing pastoral
properties in Victoria, breeding livestock, serving as a
police magistrate on the goldfields, and retiring as a
gentleman farmer in Melbourne. Throughout, as ‘Rolf
Boldrewood’ (a name taken from his favourite author, Sir
Walter Scott), he published stories in Sydney and Melbourne
journals based on his experiences of pastoralist life and the
adventures of bushrangers in the Victorian countryside. His
immensely popular Robbery
Under Arms (1888) first appeared as a serial in
the Sydney Mail in 1882 and was published by Macmillan as a
book in 1889. Described by some as the ‘first Australian
Western’, the story is a still-readable adventure yarn, with
lively and diverse characters, and, most significantly, a
sense of place and vernacular language which would become
defining characteristics of the literary achievements of the
end of the century.
Nationalist writing
The last two decades
of the 19C were ones of growing cultural consciousness, tied
firmly to nationalistic sentiment. Nowhere are the ideals and
incipient mythology of ‘Australianness’ more accurately
articulated and, indeed, formulated than in the pages of The
Bulletin, a weekly periodical founded in 1885 in Sydney
by J.F. Archibald and W.H. Traill. While chiefly a journal of
political and editorial commentary, nurturing vehemently
Republican, pro-Federation, and anti-Asian views, The
Bulletin’s greatest accomplishment was its support,
especially in the 1890s, of local literary talent; the journal
promoted the writers who would become the most popular voices
of the bush ethos and the Australian idiom. As cultural critic
Geoffrey Serle states, the journal became ‘the forum for
outbackery’.
The decade’s main literary battle of romanticism versus
realism was most characteristically defined by two of The
Bulletin’s most famous contributors, A.B. ‘Banjo’
Paterson (1864–1941) and Henry Lawson (1867–1922). Universally
described as the ‘chief folk poet of Australia’, Paterson grew
up on the land and personally experienced bush life. He was
educated in Sydney in law and was an accomplished horseman and
gentleman athlete. He took the nickname of ‘Banjo’ when he
began to write for The Bulletin in 1889, with his
characteristic long verse, ‘Clancy of the Overflow’. Paterson
gained rapturous celebrity with the publication of his most
famous bush-ballad 'The
Man from Snowy River' in 1895. The first printing sold
out in a week, and it instantly became the most recognisable
example of the Australian ballad form; to this day, nearly
every Australian knows the opening lines of the poem, ‘There
was movement at the station/ for the word had got around/ that
the colt from Old Regret had got away.’ He extended the
popularity of his vision with other narrative poems, such as
‘The Man from Ironbark’ (1892) and ‘Mulga Bill’ (1902).
Paterson achieved international fame as the author (in 1896)
of the lyrics to ‘Waltzing Matilda’, Australia’s most famous song.
His lyrical evocations of an Australian Arcadia, filled with
horses and colourful bush characters, established the legend
of the Australian folk, separate from the realities of the
society’s increasingly urbanised existence.
Henry Lawson, whom historian Manning Clark dramatically
described as ‘Australia writ large’, epitomised all the
radical nationalistic fervour of the period and maintained
that his version of the bush and Australian life was a more
realistic, less mythologised, one than Paterson’s popular
image; at one point, he and Paterson engaged in a lengthy
debate on this topic, in verse form, in The Bulletin.
Lawson came from radical goldfield background, the son of a
Norwegian miner and a politically engaged mother; he
maintained his fervent Republican and socialist attitudes
throughout his life and in his political writings. He was in
Sydney by 1885, and began to publish verse, both character
studies of the bush and such politically motivated works as ‘A
Song to the Republic’ (1887), first published in The
Bulletin. While Lawson occupies nearly legendary status
today as Australia’s great literary figure, his verse
especially was uneven, degenerating eventually into
near-doggerel as he himself deteriorated through alcoholism
and mental illness. His short stories, however, are enduring
embodiments of the concepts of mateship, larrikinism
(hooliganism), and stoic acceptance of the hardships of bush
life. His ‘Drover’s
Wife’ (1892), a ruthless portrayal of a pioneer woman of
the outback, is a model of stylistic realism; and ‘The
Loaded Dog’ (1900) is a comic classic by any standard.
So great was his popular status in his lifetime that upon his
death in 1922, he was the first Australian writer granted a
state funeral.
The publishing activities of The Bulletin at the turn
of the century under the editorship of the learned A.G.
Stephens(1865–1933) continued to nurture local writers and
extend a particular vision of Australian life. In 1899, the
journal saw to the first publication in book form of Steele
Rudd’s memorable stories of a Queensland pioneer farmer
family, On
Our Selection. ‘Rudd’ was the pseudonym of Arthur
Hoey Davis (1868–1935); the Rudd family in his many character
sketches were based on semi-autobiographical reminiscences of
his own childhood on a small pastoral ‘selection’. His
well-developed characters, especially the increasingly
caricatured figures of ‘Dad and Dave’, appeared throughout the
20C in stories, plays, radio series, and film, epitomising the
battlers of Australian rural life.
Twentieth-century developments
Stephens’ greatest
achievement as an editor was the recognition and publication
in 1903 of the novel, Such
is Life, an immensely idiosyncratic tome by Joseph
Furphy (1843–1912), alias ‘Tom Collins’. Furphy was a
self-taught labourer from Shepparton, Victoria, who set out in
grandiose fashion to write a realistic tale of rural life,
‘temper, democratic; bias, offensively Australian’. The
opening line of this extraordinary book is ‘Unemployed at
last!’—a good indication of its anti-authoritarian stance.
Episodic yet ambitiously philosophical in tone, the book
displays Furphy’s complicated considerations of free will,
fate, and class struggle, couched in very Australian
story-lines about ‘squatters’ and toilers on the land. Largely
ignored for years, Such is Life was rediscovered by
literary critics in the 1940s as representing an important
turning-point in Australian fiction, and remains today a
widely-unread but highly-touted masterpiece.
Australia’s masculinist ethos is belied by the emergence in
the early 20C of major literary achievements by women, most of
them autobiographical in tone and noticeably ambivalent about
Australian society. ‘Henry Handel Richardson’, pseudonym of
Ethel Florence Lindesay Robertson (1870–1946), produced the
most accomplished and thoughtful literature of the period, all
of it written after she had moved to Europe, never to return
to Australia. In The
Getting of Wisdom (1910), she relied on her own
experiences as a boarder at Presbyterian Ladies College in
Melbourne to present a popular ‘coming of age’ novel.
Richardson’s greatest work was her dramatic trilogy, The
Fortunes of Richard Mahony (1917–29), based
emotionally on the trials of her family’s life in Victoria, as
her physician father, model for the novel’s protagonist,
descended into madness; cultural alienation is the real theme
of the books. Rich in details of the Victorian landscape and
societal conditions, Richardson’s volumes were, significantly,
hailed in England as stylistically sophisticated while
remaining relatively unknown in Australia. The author, like so
many Australian writers after her, faced the dilemma of all
‘cultural émigrés’, becoming more correctly an
English-language writer using Australian experience as themes
for her novels.
More clearly Australian and feminist in outlook were the
popular writings of Miles Franklin (1879–1954), whose stunning
début novel was the autobiographical My Brilliant
Career (1901), a forthright assertion of a woman’s
right to self-fulfilment. She, too, spent much time abroad,
mostly in the United States. She returned permanently to
Sydney in the 1930s, where she was fêted as an influential
cultural figure and published many affectionate recollections
of her early life on the Monaro Plains of New South Wales.
The period after Federation in 1901 until the 1920s saw little
production of serious literature. Surprisingly, the events of
the First World War itself, so devastating to the Australian
psyche, offered little inspiration to local writers, and the
ideal of the bush had lost its impetus in a more cosmopolitan
society.
The only significant work engendered by the war was C.E.W.
Bean’s The
Official History of Australia in the War of 1914–1918,
which began publication of its eventual twelve volumes in
1921. Lauded as an excellent example of analytical military
history, the work was also one of the first substantial
efforts devoted to Australian history itself; Bean was largely
responsible for cultivating the legend of the ANZAC ‘digger’.
Popularly, the most enthusiastic contribution of the time was
Songs
of a Sentimental Bloke (1915) by C.J.
Dennis(1876–1938). Beloved among the ANZAC soldiers during the
war, the vernacular poem tells the story of a city larrikin
transformed by love, and the escapades of his mate Ginger
Mick. While criticised for its over-exaggerated use of street
idiom, Sentimental Bloke was the source for
Australia’s best silent film in 1919 and caused Dennis to be
proclaimed unofficial poet laureate in the 1920s.
In a similarly popular direction, Australians made endearing
contributions in the field of children’s literature. Ethel
Turner’s (1870–1958) Seven Little
Australians, first published in 1894, became an
international success, translated into several languages.
While the bacchanalian figure of artist-writer Norman Lindsay
(1879–1969) wrote amatory novels that were long banned in his
own country (Redheap [1930]), his greatest audience as
a writer resulted from his delightful illustrated children’s
book, The Magic Pudding (1918). May Gibbs (1877–1969)
also contributed at this time to books for young readers with
her near-iconic stories of Snugglepot & Cuddlepie
(1918).
While expatriation, mainly to England, continued to be the
usual choice for those with serious cultural aspirations,
Australia in the 1920s and 30s began to develop a home-grown
cosmopolitanism which could sustain some significant literary
life. Vance Palmer (1885–1959) was probably the most
intellectual figure of the period, worldly and stylistically
rigorous. Along with his wife Nettie (1885–1964), an important
cultural commentator in her own right, Palmer as a journalist
and later author firmly promoted a literature that embodied an
‘Australia of the Spirit’. While he published essays, short
stories, novels and plays from the 1920s—his collected stories
Sea and Spinifex (1934) and his panoramic trilogy Golconda
(1948) are exemplary—his most significant contribution was The
Legend of the Nineties (1954), a critical examination of
that pivotal decade in the development of an Australian ‘inner
life’.
Two poets of distinction emerge during this period, both
linked in divergent ways to Bohemian Sydney. Mary Gilmore
(1862–1962) was from the beginning tied to radical causes,
even participating in the utopian Australian settlement in
Paraguay under socialist William Lane in the 1890s. Her poetry
was lyrical and short, her best work appearing in her last
book, Fourteen Men (1954), when she was nearly ninety.
Kenneth Slessor (1901–71) was initially inspired by the
pantheistic Romanticism of the Norman Lindsay circle, but his
finest poem, ‘Five Bells’ (1939), commemorating the drowning
of his friend Joe Lynch, presents a very modernist
contemplation of art, life and death.
A radicalised sense of the ‘spirit of the people’ also informs
the work of Katharine Susannah Prichard (1883–1969). A
founding member of the Communist Party in Western Australia,
Prichard’s politics informed most of her novels: Black
Opal (1921) was a story of the opal-mining communities’
struggle with mining companies; her most controversial work, Coonardoo
(1929), is considered the first novel to give a realistic
depiction of a contemporary Aborigine and black-white
relations.
The most ambitious novel completed in this period was the work
of another Western Australian, Xavier Herbert (1901–84). His Capricornia
(1938) is a sprawling story of settlement in the Northern
Territory, covering some 50 years and including some 100
characters. Radical in outlook, Anglophobic in tone, it is a
savage indictment of the treatment of Aborigines by white
settlers, and a love song to the beauty of the Australian
frontier. Herbert expanded on these themes in his enormous
Poor Fellow My Country (1975), at 850,000 words the
longest novel ever published in Australia. The story
culminates with the Japanese bombing of Darwin in 1942, the
flight of white settlers, and a prophetically pessimistic
appraisal of continued destruction of Aboriginal society. On a
less grandiose scale but with similar concerns is the work of
Eleanor Dark (1901–85), whose psychological portrayals were
both serious and widely read. She was best known for her
trilogy The Timeless Land (1941), historical fiction
about the early years of white settlement. Dark, too, is
sympathetic to the Aboriginal plight and presents a heartfelt
examination of their spiritual attachment to the land.
The problems facing expatriate authors and their subsequent
recognition in Australia is most clearly seen in the case of
Christina Stead (1902–83), one of the most stylistically
original novelists of her time. Raised in Sydney, Stead left
for England in 1928, married Marxist and writer William Blake,
eked out a meagre existence in Europe and America, and only
returned to live in Australia in old age. She crafted
exquisite and unconventional prose throughout. Her Seven
Poor Men of Sydney (1934) was firmly set in Australia,
but, more meditative in presentation of characters than
narrative, it was considered outside the mainstream of
Australian literary concerns. Her most recognised masterpiece
was The Man Who Loved Children (1941), supposedly
placed in America, but drawing on her own childhood for
inspiration. Essentially a ruthless exploration of a
dysfunctional family, the book was praised by American writer
Randall Jarrell as one of the greatest works of 20C fiction.
As with Stead’s other novels, The Man Who Loved Children
was not published in Australia until 1965, by which time there
were still debates about whether Stead could be considered an
Australian writer at all, since she had been away so long and
because she wrote about larger themes than the Australian
experience. Recent reprints and comprehensive critical studies
have now reclaimed Stead for the Australian canon.
Arrival of modernist ideas
Greater literary
self-consciousness and the arrival of modernist ideas led in
the 1930s and 40s to the establishment of many literary
journals that supported local writers and cultural discourse.
Meanjin, founded in Brisbane in 1940 by Clem Christesen
as a poetry review, evolved into the most important
liberal-humanist organ; it is still published at the
University of Melbourne. In 1950, the more right-wing,
avowedly anti-Communist Quadrant began publication.
One-time Quadrant editor, poet James McAuley
(1917–76), played a major part in the greatest literary
scandal in Australian history, the famous ‘Ern Malley’ hoax
carried out in the modernist journal. This quarterly
publication was founded in 1940 in Adelaide by John Reed
(1901–81) and Max Harris (1921–96) and quickly became the
focus for avant-garde cultural interests in the country.
McAuley and his fellow poet Harold Stewart (b. 1916), as
traditionalist lyricists, decided to expose what they saw as
the decadence and lack of craftsmanship of modernist writing
by concocting verses from a variety of incongruous sources.
They submitted these poems, created in an afternoon, to Angry
Penguins, presenting them as the posthumous works of a
mechanic/salesman ‘Ern Malley’. The poems were published in
the journal in 1944, and acclaimed by many for their stylistic
vigour. When McAuley and Stewart identified themselves as the
authors, the ensuing debates, which gained world-wide
attention, signalled the end of Angry Penguins and its
championing of modernism, although the movement in its
artistic form continued to resonate in the circle around John
Reed and his wife at their home in Melbourne. Many today still
consider the ‘Ern Malley’ poems to be among the authors’ best
works; the supposedly absurd phrase from one of the poems,
‘The Black Swan of Trespass’, served as the title for Humphrey
McQueen’s examination of Australian modernism in 1979.
Popular literature
In terms of popular
literature, the period from the Depression to the end of the
Second World War saw the emergence of several significant
writers whose works combined personal experience with
historical characters and an admirable depiction of the
Australian landscape. Ion Idriess (1889–1979) drew upon his
own adventures in the outback and ‘Up North’ to produce such
wildly popular adventure stories as Lasseter’s Last Ride
(1931), an account of the ill-fated gold-mining expedition of
Harold Lasseter to Central Australia; and Flynn of the
Inland (1932), based on the story of John Flynn, founder
of the Royal Flying Doctor Service.
Frank Clune (1893–1971) was from the 1940s one of Australia’s
best-selling authors, with adventurous works of historical
fiction, adventure, autobiography and travel (respectively, Dig
[1937] about Burke and Wills, The Red Heart [1944], Try
Anything Once [1933] and Tobruk to Turkey [1943]). Clune
popularised through his writings and radio broadcasts the
legends of Australia’s bushrangers and other heroes.
Another adventurer who became a best-selling author was ‘Nevil
Shute’ 1899–1960), pseudonym of Nevil Shute Norway, a British
pilot who settled in Australia in 1950. His fast-paced
narrative novels A Town Like Alice (1950) and On
the Beach (1959) became international favourites; the
latter, about the survivors of a nuclear holocaust, was made
into a big-budget Hollywood film.
One of the most enduring and internationally recognised
Australian writers of the time was Arthur Upfield (1892–1964),
who in 1929 introduced his famous character, the
half-Aboriginal Queensland detective, Napoleon Bonaparte, in The Barrakee Mystery. His
immensely readable ‘Bony’ mysteries, including Death of a Lake (1954), Murder Must Wait (1953),
and The Man of Two Tribes
(1956), combined bush-lore, outback characters, and brilliant
depictions of the Australian landscape with the intriguing
presence of his main protagonist; most of his novels are still
in print and many have been made into less-than-successful
television series. Upfield’s works were particularly popular
in the US, where the author became the first foreign writer
admitted to the Mystery Writers’ Guild of America.
Post-war literature
The stultifyingly
conservative atmosphere of 1950s Australia, with literary
censorship and suppression of political opposition by the
Menzies government, was nonetheless a fruitful period for
local writers. A strand of political dissension is most
clearly apparent in writings by members of Australia’s then
still-vigorous Communist Party, most notably Frank Hardy
(1917–94), and Judah Waten (1911–85). Hardy’s immense tome, Power
Without Glory (1950), a thinly-disguised
‘fictionalisation’ of the corrupt life of Melbourne
millionaire John Wren (1871–1953), caused explosive
controversy when it was published. The book led to a famous
libel trial against Hardy, which had more to do with his
political beliefs than anything he wrote. Waten’s works also
expressed his left-wing political views—his Shares in
Murder (1957) deals with human corruption and the power
of the police—but his most memorable writing appears in his
autobiographical short stories about a European Jewish migrant
family; these were collected under the title Alien Son
(1952).
The towering figure of the post-War years in Australia, at
least in hindsight, was Patrick White (1912–90), who in 1973
became the first (and so far, the only) Australian writer to
be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. White represents in
many ways the conquest of Australia’s ‘cultural cringe’, or at
least an honest confrontation of the ambivalent feelings of
those Australians who wanted to create a cultural life on
Australian soil in a less than encouraging society. Born in
London, he was brought to Australia as an infant, then was
sent to English boarding school at 13. He returned to
Australia briefly in 1929, then went to Cambridge and remained
in London throughout the 1930s, publishing his first novel, Happy
Valley, set in Australia, in 1939. After war service
with the RAF, he decided to return home, ‘to the stimulus of
time remembered’. On the voyage back, he wrote The Aunt’s
Story (1948), the first example of his unpredictable and
original style, a tale of visionary individualism and
perceptions of madness. When his novel The Tree of Man
(1955) gained international acclaim, White began to receive
critical if still ambivalent attention at home. Of his complex
imagery and characters, he stated that he wanted ‘to discover
the extraordinary behind the ordinary, the mystery and poetry
which could alone make bearable the lives of such people.’ He
became increasingly reclusive, appearing occasionally to
criticise national policies on the Vietnam War, environmental
issues, and treatment of the Aborigines. Indeed, he became a
kind of cantankerous moral conscience within Australian
society. His novel Voss (1957) is arguably his most
ambitious and best-known work. Based loosely on the 1840s
desert expedition of the German Ludwig Leichhardt, the book is
a philosophical exploration of spiritual journeys, tied to
details of the unforgiving landscape and the ambiguities of
physical existence. White received the Nobel Prize
specifically for The Eye of the Storm (1973), a
rumination on spiritual being and memory as explored through
the eyes of a dying Sydney socialite.
Several women authors made enduring contributions to the
literature of the period, extending the range of acceptable
subject matter and focussing specifically on their own
experiences of aspects of Australian culture as inspiration.
New Zealand-born Ruth Park (b. 1922) married the writer D’Arcy
Niland (1919–67; he wrote the popular The Shiralee
[1955] and The Big Smoke [1959) and lived in
working-class Sydney. Her memories of this time among the
Irish poor inspired her to write The Harp in the South
(1948), an evocative rendering of the slum-dwellers of the
city and their sometimes tragic situations. At the time it was
published, many were shocked at Park’s choice of topics, which
included abortion; today, The Harp in the South and
its sequel Poor Man’s Orange (1949) are considered
classics of the genre. Park has written several fascinating
volumes of autobiography, the most interesting of which, Fishing
in the Styx (1993), deals with her life with Niland in
Surry Hills.
Dymphna Cusack (1902–81), author of several novels, made the
biggest splash with her Come in Spinner (1951), a
gritty story of the arrival of American servicemen in Sydney
during the Second World War and their impact on a varied group
of women. The title derives from an Australian idiom used in
the popular game of two-up.
A vast outback station in the Kimberleys served as the setting
for Mary Durack’s (1913-1994) Keep Him My Country
(1950), a metaphorical tale of the relationship of a white
pastoralist and an Aboriginal girl. Larger questions of good
and evil, corruption and power, inform the psychological
dramas of Elizabeth Harrower (b. 1928). Her settings in such
works as Down in the City (1957) and The Watch
Tower (1966) were industrial and suburban, demonstrating
the increasing recognition of the real living conditions of
most Australians. Somewhat later, Joan Lindsay's Picnic
at Hanging Rock (1967) similarly engages this interest
in the out-back and small towns. Here we have an
ambiguous and at time humorous description of the
disappearance of a group of schoolgirls and their town's
attempts to discover their fate.
Despite the
increased concentration on decidedly Australian subjects and
attitudes in much of the literature of the post-War period,
the dualities of Australian allegiance to European, especially
English, culture continued to determine the achievements of
many of the country’s best writers. Martin Boyd (1893–1972),
son of the distinguished Boyd family of artists and writers,
explored in graceful historical fiction the effects of
inherited tradition on Australian characters; his
semi-autobiographical saga of the Langton family, presented in
five novels, is a finely detailed study of aristocratic ideals
and social conflicts in Victorian Melbourne. The middle
volumes of these novels, A Difficult Young Man (1955)
and An Outbreak of Love (1957), are perhaps the most
complex and representative of Boyd’s style.
Hal Porter (1911–84) also developed a rather self-conscious
style, eloquently used in his well-crafted short stories and
novels. His most evocative works were his autobiographical
novels, The Watcher on the Cast-Iron Balcony (1963), a
re-creation of his childhood and youth, and The Paper
Chase (1966), covering the years 1929–49.
The vexing problems of expatriation can be seen in the case of
George Johnston (1912–70), a Melbourne-born writer who worked
first as a journalist and war correspondent. The traumatic
experiences of the war and his disillusionment with life back
in Australia led him, with his wife, author Charmian Clift, to
leave first for London and then to the Greek Islands, where
they tried to support themselves and their family entirely by
writing; they did not return to Australia until 1964. While
many of his novels were historical and travel ‘potboilers’,
Johnston’s great achievement was My Brother Jack
(1964), a semi-autobiographical account of life in Melbourne
between the wars. This successful exploration of mood and the
texture of the city was followed by Clean Straw for
Nothing (1969), a continuation of his own journey,
through life abroad and a returning home.
That all of these authors felt the need to use a personal
voice to define the Australian experience speaks to the
increasing self-consciousness of Australia as a separate
nation and culture. The decades of the 1950s and 60s saw many
writers seeking to explain the specific nature of Australian
identity. Donald Horne’s (1921-2005) Lucky Country
(1964) and Geoffrey Blainey’s (b. 1930) Tyranny of
Distance (1966) were milestones of cultural critique
that are still quoted today; the titles of their books, in
fact, have become part of the Australian idiom. Even the
humorous best-seller, They’re a Weird Mob (1957) by
‘Nino Culotta’, was a perceptive consideration of Australian
customs and language. ‘Culotta’, supposedly an Italian
immigrant bewildered by the mores of his adopted country, was
actually John O’Grady (1907–81), a Sydney writer. Australia’s
fraught relationship with its British roots even affected the
writing of history; when Manning Clark (1915–91) began to
publish his seminal History of Australia (1962–87), he
was roundly criticised for emphasising the country’s
development as distinct from British imperialist achievements.
That Australia could have its own intellectual life, separate
from English academe, was still a controversial consideration.
Australian drama also came to maturity in this period. One of
the first landmarks was the 1948 production of Rusty
Bugles (1948), a comic denunciation of war rich in
vernacular language, written by Sumner Locke Elliott
(1917–91). By the time it was produced, Elliott had already
moved to the USA, where he became a successful television
playwright, with such classics as ‘The Grey Nurse Said
Nothing’ (1959); he did not return to Australia until 1974, by
which time his other plays, such as Careful He Might Hear
You (1963), had gained international recognition.
The play that is still considered as the ‘beginning of the
Australian national theatre’ was Summer of the Seventeenth
Doll by Ray Lawler (b. 1921), first produced in
Melbourne in 1955. A complex examination of such cultural
myths as mateship and outback stereotypes, the play was
immensely popular for its ability to capture Australian
vernacular speech. It was produced successfully overseas, was
restaged many times, and has been made into a film and, most
recently, an opera by Richard Mills.
The 1960s saw an explosion of dramatic endeavours, encouraged
by the emergence of alternative ‘street theatre’ and new
venues such as La Mama and the Pram Factory in Melbourne. Out
of this environment came some enduring talents, most notably
Jack Hibberd (b. 1940) and the most popular playwright of the
last few decades, David Williamson (b. 1942). Hibberd’s Dimboola
(1969), a comic send-up of country life and customs, was the
most popular production of all, and has become the most
performed Australian play. Williamson’s many satirical
portrayals of Australian society have become theatrical
standards: Don’s Party (1971), an hilarious commentary
on The Sixties Generation and Labor voters; The Club
(1977), about the politics of ‘footy’; Emerald City
(1987), a satirical story of Melbourne-Sydney rivalries and
the film industry; and Brilliant Lies (1993), an
insightful study of sexual harassment. Williamson has also
scripted several films, including Peter Weir’s Gallipoli
(1981). One of the leading theatrical voices today is Louis
Nowra (b. 1950), writing such black comedies as Così
(1992), about an opera production in a mental institution, and
Black Rock (1995), based on the murder of a Newcastle
teenager.
Poetry since the war
Somewhat
surprisingly, Australian poets have continued to sustain a
sizeable following and have produced significant contributions
to literary culture. One of the most admired figures is Judith
Wright (1915-2000), whose first volume The Moving Image
(1946) was greeted with great excitement by the literary
world. Her poems of nature, the transience of time, and the
quest for self-knowledge are prolific, enhanced by her active
support of Aboriginal and environmental causes. Wright
beautifully summarises the current desire for ‘reconciliation’
in a statement made in 1981: ‘Those two strands—the love of
the land we have invaded and the guilt of the invasion—have
become part of me. We owe it repentance and such amends as we
can...’
Christopher Wallace-Crabbe (b. 1934) is a poet firmly based in
Melbourne academic and suburban life, with reflections both
joyous and sombre on the state of modern existence; such
amusing titles as The Amorous Cannibal (1985) give an
indication of his free-ranging wit and romantic concerns.
A.D. Hope (1907-2000) was also an academic, writing verse rich
in mythological and Biblical allusions (see ‘Death of a Bird’
and ‘Meditation on a Bone’). The most popular poet of the last
few decades has been Les Murray b. 1938), described by
Wallace-Crabbe as ‘Oscar Wilde in moleskins [Australian
working trousers]’, for his lyrical championing of the old
bush imagery and exuberant Australianness. In such collections
as The Vernacular Republic (1976) and The Daylight
Moon (1987), Murray writes accessible verse about the
wonders of the Australian landscape and its people.
Aboriginal writers
Aboriginal writers
also began to gain recognition from the 1960s. The first
Aborigine to publish a literary work was David Unaipon
(1872–1967), whose Native Legends appeared in 1929;
Unaipon now features on the Australian $50 note.
Significantly, the first novel by an Aborigine did not appear
until 1965, when the-then Colin Johnson (b. 1939) published Wild
Cat Falling; Johnson is now known by his Aboriginal
name, Mudrooroo. Mudrooroo suffered the typical fate of many
indigenous people: raised in an orphanage, incarcerated for
minor offences, he struggled to gain some foothold in the
white world. Eventually Mudrooroo continued his studies,
travelled widely and even lived in a Buddhist monastery in
India. His first book is a ruthlessly honest depiction of this
struggle. His later Doctor Wooreddy’s Prescription for
Enduring the Ending of the World (1983) takes as its
central theme the story of G.A. Robinson and the Tasmanian
Aborigines; the tone, however, demonstrates Mudrooroo’s own
spiritual and philosophical vision, imbued with Aboriginal and
Eastern cosmology.
Protest poet Kath Walker (1920–93) also became better known by
her Aboriginal name, Oodgeroo Noonuccal, which she adopted in
1988 in opposition to the Bicentenary celebrations of white
settlement. Her first volume of poetry, We Are Going
(1964), was a warning to whites that Aboriginal people would
endure. Her delightful Stradbroke Dreamtime (1972) is
a collection of traditional Aboriginal stories based on her
childhood memories on an island near Brisbane.
Kevin Gilbert (1933–93) was an extraordinary figure in the
Aboriginal protest movement; while in prison, he learned to
read, and developed a great talent not only for writing, but
for painting and photography. Gilbert was instrumental in the
founding of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy in Canberra in 1972,
while producing poetry and, in 1988, the important anthology,
Inside Black Australia. In 1988, he received the Human
Rights Award for literature, which he declined until his
people were granted such rights.
Particularly poignant and significant for contemporary
Australians was the publication of My Place (1987) by
Sally Morgan (b. 1951), a Western Australian whose Aboriginal
heritage was hidden from her until she was an adult; the book
documents her coming to terms with her sense of belonging and
her desire to gain an understanding of her people’s cultural
traditions and art.
Roberta ‘Bobbi’ Sykes (1943-2010), sometimes called
‘Australia’s own Angela Davis’, is a black activist and
academic, born in Queensland and deceived by her own mother
about her mixed parentage (she is probably part
African-American). She was the first ‘black Australian’ to
graduate from Harvard University. Her three-volume
autobiography, Snake Cradle (1997-2000) is a harrowing
and at times painful story of racist violence and personal
endurance.
From the Sixties to the Nineties
While many ambitious
artists and writers still felt compelled as late as the 1960s
to emigrate—most notably, of course, Germaine Greer (b. 1939;
The Female Eunuch [1971]), Clive James (b. 1939; Unreliable
Memoirs [1980]), and Barry Humphries (b. 1934; My
Gorgeous Life [1989])—many more decided to stay to be
part of Australia’s multicultural transformation of the last
20 years. Literary themes broadened substantially beyond the
confines of strictly Australian experience, and increased
interactions with global cultural events determined the
directions that literature, both serious and popular, would
take.
Thomas Keneally (b. 1935) is a good example of a novelist who
straddles the line between popular and serious fiction, and
who has gained as much international as domestic success. His
first well-received work was Bring Larks and Heroes
(1967), based on Watkin Tench’s accounts of early Sydney; and
his Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith (1972), a grimly
humorous re-creation of a true story of Aboriginal-White
conflict, gained him an international reputation, especially
after its successful filming in 1978. But Keneally’s
subject-matter extends beyond Australian history, most notably
in Schindler’s Ark (1982), the story of Holocaust
survivors and their rescuer, Oskar Schindler; the book was the
source for Stephen Spielberg’s renowned film, Schindler’s
List (1993).
A more journalistic voice, in the spirit of the American Tom
Wolfe, is Frank Moorhouse (b. 1938), widely associated in the
1960s and 70s with the intellectual atmosphere of Sydney’s
Balmain. His collection of stories, The Americans, Baby
(1972) and The Coca Cola Kid (1985), offer humorous
insights into the Americanisation of Australian urban life.
Helen Garner (b. 1942) continues to write austere
considerations of the moral dilemmas of everyday life, such as
her first novel Monkey Grip (1977) and the screenplay
for the film, Last Days at Chez Nous (1992). Her book
The First Stone (1994), was a controversial editorial
on the issues arising from a case of sexual harassment at the
University of Melbourne, infuriating feminists and
conservatives alike. Garner's most recent book, the
well-received This House of Grief (2014), based on
fact, describes the trials of Robert Farquharson, who drove
his car into a dam, killing his three sons. Feminist
convictions certainly inform the fiction of Kate Grenville (b.
1950) in intriguing books such as Lilian’s Story
(1985), based on the life of Sydney eccentric Bea Miles, and Joan
Makes History (1988), an alternative history centred on
an Australian everywoman.
Perhaps the most diverse author of the present period is David
Malouf (b. 1934), a Queenslander of Lebanese background who
divides his time between Australia and Tuscany. Firmly
grounded in European tradition, Malouf ranges across a broad
spectrum of themes, from autobiographical reminiscences of
wartime Brisbane in Johnno (1975) to the more epic
events of early Queensland settlement in Remembering
Babylon (1993) and short stories and poems about place
and childhood experience. Malouf presented the 1998 Boyer
Lecturers for ABC Radio, in which he considered ‘the nature of
Australians’; these have been published as A Spirit of
Play (1998).
Peter Carey (b. 1943) is another Australian who, while living
in the USA, still draws most of his inspiration from
Australian history and characters. Described as a fabulist in
the spirit of Garcia Marquez and Donald Bartheleme, Carey’s
works appeal to a broad public. His most popular novels,
imagistic and historical at the same time, include Bliss
(1981), based on Mark Twain’s assertion that Australian
history is ‘like the most beautiful lies’; the picaresque Illywhacker
(1985); and Oscar and Lucinda (1988), which won the
prestigious Booker Prize and has been made into a film.
Tim Winton should be included among these journeymen
writers. His Cloudstreet (1991), written in an
Australian accent, presents a rough and tumble endearing
portrait of two families sharing a house in Perth just after
WWII. The generosity he shows his characters and the
telling descriptions of the natural setting cemented his
reputation here.
An enduring presence in Australian literary life today is
Elizabeth Jolley (1923-2007), British-born who migrated to
Western Australia with her husband in 1959. The characters in
her many novels and short stories are invariably life’s
misfits, lonely, eccentric and often deviant; as she states,
‘no one comes out on top in my fiction...’ Her novels are
especially favoured in the USA, especially Mr Scobie’s
Riddle (1983) and Miss Peabody’s Inheritance
(1983). Jolley’s Milk and Honey (1984) is her most
poetic and metaphysical novel, combining everyday characters
with grand literary allusions. She continues to extend her
dark vision of the world with delicate, sometimes disturbing,
examinations of societal losers and ‘others’.
The most extraordinary event in recent years was the
publication in 1981 of A Fortunate Life by Albert
Facey (1894–1982). A simple man with no formal education,
Facey wrote his life’s story with no ambition at publication;
it was submitted to a publisher by his son, who simply wanted
a few copies for the family. Its unpretentious and
matter-of-fact presentation of the unbelievable hardships of
one man’s life gained an immediate world-wide audience. Anyone
who wants to understand the roots of a distinctly Australian
world-view should read A Fortunate Life, the purest
form of autobiography.
That many of the best writers of the last 30 years have had
their fiction turned into film and television series simply
indicates the media-driven directions of contemporary culture.
Reaching a broader audience through film has certainly been
the experience of Australia’s most popular writers, in many
cases making them international celebrities. Morris West
(1916-99) is probably the biggest-selling author born in
Australia. His novels The Devil’s Advocate (1959) and
The Shoes of the Fisherman (1963), dealt with religious
themes and were produced as major Hollywood films.
Colleen McCullough (b. 1937) also gained enormous
international recognition after the televised version of her
book The Thorn Birds (1977), a family saga of
religion, sex and violence. McCullough also tackled a
multi-volume historical blockbuster about Ancient Rome, The
First Man in Rome (1990-2007). She now lives on Norfolk Island
and is still famous as Australia’s wealthiest author.
Film versions have also played a role in the success of Peter
Corris’s (b. 1942) Cliff Hardy series of crime stories, and,
more indirectly, his hilarious re-creations of 1940s Hollywood
through the Errol Flynn-inspired character of Richard ‘Box
Office’ Browning. Corris’s mysteries are probably the best
example of the crime fiction genre in contemporary Australia,
a field that has grown enormously in the last decade.
Another popular phenomenon was the publication in 1979 of Puberty
Blues by Gabrielle Carey (b. 1959) and Kathy Lette (b.
1958). Carey and Lette had performed a screamingly popular
cabaret act as ‘The Salami Sisters’. Their co-authored book
was a startling semi-autobiographical account of Cronulla
‘surfie culture’ from the girls’ point of view. While
enormously touted as a comic masterpiece and made into a
popular film in 1981, the book has a nasty-edged bite that
says much about the anxiety-ridden war of the sexes,
beach-style.
Some of the best writing at the start of the century centres
on descriptions of Australian history. Peter Carey's True
History of the Kelly Gang (2000) is told in a letter
from Ned Kelly to his as yet unborn daughter. The
language is of the era and pretty if the recounted events are
not. Kate Grenville's Secret River (2005) is a
fictional account (loosely based on Solomon Wiseman of
Wiseman's Ferry) of William Thornhill's transport for theft,
re-uniting with his family, eventual freedom, their settlement
along the Hawesbury River and, most telling, ruthless
suppression of the local Aborigines. The themes of
treatment of Aborigines continues in Alexis Wright' s (b.
1950) Carpentaria (2006). The story presents the
lives of Aboriginal people living on the Gulf in northwest
Queensland as white bureaucrats and mine owners doe their best
to ruin the land. Not all of the stories of white and
Aboriginal contact are unremittingly grim. Craig
Silvey's (b. 1982) Jasper Jones (2009) is a literate
coming of age mystery which includes an Aborigine set-up for a
murder charge, and his friends Charlie, an Anglo, and Jeffery,
a Vietnamese. Autumn Laing (2011) by Alex Miller
(b. 1936) is a romp through Australia's artistic
history. Based quite clearly on Sunday Reed's romance
with artist Sydney Nolan, Autumn at 85 recounts her affair 50
years previously with a younger artist. Her judgmental
pronouncements are given some black humour as the story
presents the damage done the spouses and their coping in
contrast to Laing's insistence of the price of artistry.
Writing for children
Before we start here,
we have already mentioned Norman Lindsay's Magic Pudding
(1981) and May Gibbs' Snugglepot and Cuddlepie (1918).
Two other books from an earlier era deserve mention.
Dorothy Wall's (1894-1942) Blinky Bill (1933) about a
young wombat's adventures in a well-illustrated book and C.J.
Dennis's A Book for Kids (1921), a lovely pile of
humorous poems and stories portraying all sorts of early
1900's Australian characters.
The Australian authors who seem to have gained the most praise
and produced the most original work recently have been writers
of fiction for children. While children’s literature is not a
new phenomenon in Australia, the level and standard of
production in recent years seems particularly stellar. Colin
Thiele (1920-2006), of course, produced the children’s
classics Storm Boy (1963) and Blue Fin (1969)
in the 1960s, and gained an international audience when these
stories of the sea and lonely children were filmed in the
1970s.
Currently, Paul Jennings (b. 1943) is Australia’s most
prolific and successful author; his quirky, magical short
stories, both in the series Round the Twist and in
books with titles such as Unbelievable! and Uncanny!
appeal especially to children between six and 12. Most
significant are the ambitious, thoughtful and complex
productions of two authors for older children: Victor Kelleher
(b. 1939) and John Marsden (b. 1950). Kelleher, who also
writes adult fiction, specialises in tales of
adventure-fantasy and sinister events, such as The Hunting
of Shadroth (1981), The Red King (1989) and Parkland
(1994). Marsden’s immensely suspenseful series, centred on a
group of children’s response to foreign invasion and nuclear
war, began with Tomorrow, When the World Began
(1993-99) and culminates after seven adventurous volumes. If
these admirable contributions to intelligent and complex
fiction for young people are not known abroad, then be sure to
buy them here. A pair of recently published books of
interest include Shaun Tan's (b. 1974) arresting picture book
Lost Thing (2000) which won an Academy Award in 2011
having been animated and Jackie French's (b. 1953) Hitler's
Daughter (1999) in which Anna tells her friend Mark
about WWII in the guise of Hitler's unknown daughter who
escapes from Europe to settle in Australia.
Current trends
Current literary
trends in Australia represent all the cutting-edge concerns of
global culture: post-modernism, gay culture, feminist
performance art, computer-generated poetry,
television-inspired comedy, punk and grunge. Many critics
maintain that Sydney especially is the quintessential
post-modernist city, the voice of the twenty-first century;
the alternative literary scene, with poetry readings in pubs,
internet journals, and multi-media presentations, tends to
support this claim. In a recent ABC television production
about ‘Bohemian Australia,’ a grunge-poet named Edward
Berridge (he created a poetry volume called Lives of the
Saints) asserts, as a proclamation against the supposed
dominance of Sixties-generated ideas, that he and his ilk
‘will be determining the intellectual agenda of Australia for
the next twenty-five years, so you better get used to it.’ Go
for it, Edward!
Guidebooks
General guide books are often convenient for their local maps and listings of popular entertainments. The better ones for Australia are Explore Australia, Claremont Penguin; Australia, Rough Guides; and the numerous Lonely Planet guides.
Andrews, Graeme. Ferries of Sydney.
Sydney, Oxford University Press, 1994.
Barker, Sue et al. Explore
the Barossa. Netland, SA, South Australia State,
1991.
Blair's
guide: travel guide to Victoria & Melbourne.
Hawthorne, Victoria, Universal, 6th ed. 1994.
Cronin, Leonard. Key guide
to Australia's national parks. Carlton, Victoria,
Reed New Holland, 1998.
Coasting:
Dirk Flinthart's real guide to the east coast of Australia.
Potts Point, NSW, Duffy & Snellgrove, 1996.
Emmett, E.T. Tasmania by
road and track. Parkville, Melbourne University,
1962.
Gunter, John. Sydney by
ferry & foot (Heritage Field Guide). Kenthurst,
NSW, Kangaroo Press, 1983.
Huié, Jacqueline. Untourist
Sydney. Balmain, UnTourist, 1995.
Lawrence, Joan. Sydney good
walks guide. Crows Nest, NSW, Kingsclear Books, 1991.
Odgers, Sally Farrell. Tasmania-—a
guide (Heritage Field Guide). Kenthurst, NSW,
Kangaroo Press, 1991.
Park, Ruth. The companion
guide to Sydney. Sydney, Collins, 1973, revised ed.
1999.
Rennie, Chris. The surfer's
travel guide. Doncaster, Victoria, Liquid Addictions,
1998.
Starling, Steve. Fishing
hot spots. Mills Point, New South Wales, Random
House, 1998.
Natural history
Numerous field guides
and key guides will be familiar to professional scientists.
Unfortunately, the best popular books on Australian flora and
fauna, the Encyclopedia of
Australian wildlife and the Complete book of Australian birds, both by
Reader’s Digest, are too heavy to travel with easily.
Davey, Keith. A
photographic guide to seashore life of Australia.
Sydney, New Holland, 1998.
Haddon, Frank. Australia's
outback: environmental field guide to flora and fauna.
Roseville, NSW, Simon & Schuster, 1992.
Johnson, David P (2004). The geology of Australia.
Cambridge, Cambridge University.
Laseron, Charles Francis. The face of Australia: the
shaping of a continent. Sydney, Angus &
Robertson, 1953.
Pizzey, Graham. Field guide
to the birds of Australia. Sydney, Angus and
Robertson, 1997.
Puffin
book of Australian spiders. Ringwood, Victoria,
Penguin, 1989. (Note: One of an informative series for
children.)
Simpson, Ken and Day, Nicolas. Field guide to the birds of Australia.
Ringwood, Victoria, Penguin, 1989.
von Hügel, Charles. New
Holland Journal, November 1833–October 1834. (Dymphna
Clark, trans.) Carlton, Victoria, Melbourne University, 1994.
Watts, Peter, et al. An
exquisite eye: the Australian flora & fauna drawings of
Ferdinand Bauer, 1801–1820. Glebe, NSW, Historic
Houses, 1998.
White, Mary E. The greening
of Gondwana: the 400 million year story of Australian plants.
East Roseville, New South Wales, Simon & Schuster, 1998.
Aboriginal culture
Caruana, Wally. Aboriginal art. London,
Thames & Hudson, 1993.
Edwards, W.H., ed. Traditional
Aboriginal
society. South Yarra, Victoria, Macmillan, 1998.
Horton, David, ed. The
encyclopaedia of Aboriginal Australia. 2 vols.
Canberra, Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander Studies, 1994.
Isaacs, Jennifer (ed.), Australian Dreaming:
40,000 Years of Aboriginal History. New Holland
Publishers, 2005.
Morphy, Howard. Aboriginal
art. London, Phaidon, 1998.
Ryan, Judith. Spirit in
land: bark paintings from Arnhem Land. Melbourne,
National Gallery.
West, Margaret. The
inspired dream: life as art in Aboriginal Australia.
South Brisbane, Queensland Art Gallery, 1988.
Art, architecture and cinema
Australia -
Archicture and Design. Mul Edition, DAAB Media,
2007.
Freeland, J.M. Architecture
in Australia. Ringwood, Victoria, Penguin, 1968.
Jahn, Graham. Sydney
architecture. Sydney, Watermark Press, 1997.
Kerr, Joan. The dictionary
of Australian artists: painters, sketchers, photographers
and engravers to 1870. Melbourne, Oxford University
Press, 1992.
Grishin, Sasha. Australian art: A history.
Miegunyah Press, 2013.
Maitland, Barry and Stafford, David. Architecture Newcastle: a guide. RAIA,
Newcastle, 1987. (Note: There are a number of Royal Australian
Institute of Architects publications in this city specific
series.)
Marsden, Susan. Heritage of
the city of Adelaide: an illustrated guide. Adelaide,
City, 1990.
Moran, Albert and Errol Vieth. Film in
Australia: An Introduction Sydney: Cambridge University
Press, 2006.
Sabine, James. A century of
Australian cinema. Port Melbourne, Reed, 1995.
Shirley, Graham and Adams, Brian. Australian cinema: the first eighty years.
Sydney, Currency Press, revised ed., 1989.
Smith, Bernard, ed. Documents
on art and taste in Australia, 1770–1914. Melbourne,
Oxford, 1975.
Smith, Bernard. European
vision and the South Pacific. Melbourne, Oxford,
1989.
Smith, Bernard and Smith, Terry. Australian painting, 1788–1990. Melbourne,
University of Melbourne, 1991.
Language and literature
Baker, Sidney. The Australian language.
Sydney, Currawong, 1966.
Bassett, Jan, ed. Great
Southern landings: an anthology of antipodean travel.
Melbourne, Oxford University Press, 1995.
Harman, Kaye. Australia
brought to book: responses to Australia by visiting writers,
1836–1939. Balgowlah, NSW, BooBook, 1985.
Hergenhan, Laurie. New
literary history of Australia. Ringwood, Victoria,
Penguin, 1988.
Pierce, Peter, ed. The
Oxford literary guide to Australia. Melbourne, Oxford
University Press, 1987.
Wilde, William, et al. The
Oxford companion to Australian literature. Melbourne,
Oxford University Press, 2d ed., 1994.
Wilson, Barbara. The
illustrated treasury of Australian stories & verse for
children. Melbourne, Nelson, 1987.
Cultural history
Clune, Frank. Saga of Sydney: the birth,
growth, and maturity of the mother city of Australia.
Sydney, 1961.
Davidson, Graeme. The
Oxford companion to Australian History. Melbourne,
Oxford University Press, 1998.
Flannery, Tim, ed. Watkin
Tench: 1788. Melbourne, Text, 1996.
Haskell, Arnold L. Waltzing
Matilda: a background to Australia. London, A & C
Black, 2nd ed., 1941.
Hughes, Robert. The fatal
shore. New York, Knopf, 1987.
Karskens, Grace. The Rocks:
life in early Sydney. Melbourne University, 1997.
Luck, Peter. A time to
remember. Port Melbourne, Mandarin, 1988.
Macintyre, Stuart. A Concise History of Australia.
Cambridge, Cambridge University, 2016.
Morris, Jan. Sydney.
London, Viking, 1992.
Palmer, Vance. The legend
of the nineties. Melbourne, Melbourne University,
1963.
Ripe, Cherry. Goodbye,
Culinary Cringe! St Leonard's, NSW, Allen &
Unwin, 1993.
Serle, Geoffrey. The
Creative spirit in Australia: A cultural history.
Richmond, Victoria, William Heinemann, 1987.
Sharp, Ilsa. Culture
shock!: A guide to customs and etiquette. Singapore,
Times, 1992.
Statham, Pamela, ed. The
origins of Australia's capital cities. Cambridge,
Cambridge, 1989.
Venturini, V.G., ed. Australia:
a survey. (Schriften des Instituts für Asienkunde in
Hamburg; vol. 27) Wiesbaden, O. Harrassowitz, 1970.
Illustrations
800px-Cathedral_Rock_NP_2.jpg - Cgoodwin
echidna.jpg - Ferdinand Bauer
400px-Crimson_Rosella_dec07.jpg - user:Fir0002
800px-Stinging_tree.jpg - Cgoodwin
nla.map-rm3889-v.jpg -
800px-Aboriginal_tent_embassy_Canberra.jpg - Roke
800px-Trim-the-illustrous.jpg - en:User:PanBK
preston-margaret-banksia-and-fungus.jpg - Margaret
Preston
800px-Majestic_Theatre_Malanda.jpg - WikiWookie
Ern_Malley.jpg - MSchnitzler2000
729px-Australia_satellite_plane.jpg - Reto Stöckl / NASA
Goddard Space Flight Center
Australia's geological history - Martyman
120px-Acacia_baileyana2.jpg - KENPEI
Acacia_acinacea_01.jpg - Danielle Langlois
256px-Acacia_aphylla_02.jpg - Danielle Langlois
Red gum in Flinders Range - Peripitus
Eucalyptus_torquata-1.jpg - Poyt448 Peter Woodard
Eucalyptus forest - స్వరలాసిక
Eucalyptus Coolabah - Ethel
Aardvark
Banksia aemula, Wybung Head - Lake Munmorah Photo - Cas
Liber
Grevillea at Cranbourn, Vic, Botanic Garden - Melburnian
Callistamon - JIm
Bendon from Karratha, Australia
Kangaroo grass - John
Tann from Sydney, Australia
Spinifex - Dcoetzee
Platypus - Peter Scheunis
Echidna at Melbourne Zoo - This file is a work by Ester
Inbar (user:ST or he:user:ST)
Koala climbing a tree, Great Otway National Park - Diliff
Wombat, Maria Island - JJ Harrison (jjharrison89@facebook.com)
Fruit bat, Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney - Daniel Vianna Mr.Rocks
Mother and infant bats - Adelaide Bat
Care
Eastern Wallaroo, Alice Springs - Michael Barritt &
Karen May
Wallabie - Thierry80
Magpie Lark - Redzef.42
Willie Wagtail - Jason Girvan
Magpie - jjron
Gallahs - Jim
Bendon
Cockatoo - JJ Harrison
Crimson rosella - JJ Harrison
Emu - Mistvan
Bower birds - Прямой
эфир
Rifle bird display - Francesco
Veronesi
Goanna - https://www.flickr.com/photos/brewbooks/2154119796
Frill necked lizard - https://easybranchesnetwork.wordpress.com/2015/11/13/macro-photography-the-lizard-c-kingii-by-thompjerry/
Coastal Taipan - AllenMcC.
Common brown snake -fir0002 | flagstaffotos.com.au
Eastern tiger snake - Matt
Bull ant - Quartl
Green tree ant - Lepidlizard
Dot painting - Australian Museum
Kangaroo bark painting - http://www.quaibranly.fr/en/
Southern Cross - Don Pettit, ISS Expedition 6 Science
Officer, NASA
Rover Thomas, Cyclone Tracy - National Gallery of Australia
Noel Pearson - US Dept of State
Pat Dodson - Sam Beebe (https://www.flickr.com/photos/sbeebe/)
Stan Grant - SBS
Lachlan Macquarie - http://acms.sl.nsw.gov.au/item/itemDetailPaged.aspx?itemID=430487
Gold Diggings - http://cs.nga.gov.au/Detail.cfm?IRN=170523
Abel Tasman's 1724 voyage - Dutch National Library
William Dampier's map - libweb5.princeton.edu
James Cook's 1770 map of the east coast of Australia
Henry Parkes moves federation - http://www.slv.vic.gov.au/miscpics/0/0/5/doc/mp005988.shtml
Troups at Gallipoli - www.acmssearch.sl.nsw.gov.au/search/itemDetailPaged.cgi?i...
Bodyline cricket - www.acmssearch.sl.nsw.gov.au/search/itemDetailPaged.cgi?i...
Queen Elizabeth and Robert Menzies - Australian News and
Information Bureau, Canberra [1]
Vincent Lingiari and Gough Whitlam 1975 - A.K.HANNA
Peron's Bedgi-bedgi of the Gwea-gal - National
Library of Australia Trove no. 1993709
Daniel Solander - Eucalyptus leaves - http://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-138432691?searchTerm=Daniel+Solander
Lesueur's King Island Wombats - http://www.flickr.com/photos/biodivlibrary/7979792552/in/set-72157631519809640/
Hakea - Bauer
View of Sydney - Lewin
Campbell's Wharf - Martins http://artsearch.nga.gov.au/Detail.cfm?IRN=189028
Macedon Ranges - Buvelot http://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/collection/australian/painting/b/apa00484.html
Waterfall on the Clyde River - von Guérard Art Gallery of
South Australia
Roberts - Shearing the Rams - Google Art Project, National
Gallery of Victoria 4654-3
Streeton Golden Summer at Eaglemont - Google Art Project, National
Gallery of Australia
McCubbin - The Pioneer - Google Art Project, National
Gallery of Victoria
Hopkins - A Young Gentleman of Culture on His Way to
California - Erika
Esau
Lindsay - Pannychis - http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/5/2/2/5225/5225-h/5225-h.htm
Gibbs - Fairies - https://www.pinterest.com/pin/345440233887790827/?lp=true
Preston, Implement Blue - https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/works/OA7.1960/
Dupain, Sunbaker - http://artsearch.nga.gov.au/Detail.cfm?IRN=102513
Gleeson, Reef - Nuswellbrook Regional Arts Centre, https://www.flickr.com/photos/haynes/3462711278