That wasn't quite the direction I was taking with this, Lexi.

>>Pericles: Cultures, images, people, and perceptions - of course these vary. However, I was more interested in how you saw us as a nation, how you saw our national identity.<<

I was suggesting that there is, and can be, no abstract definition of our "national identity", only an image that we have manufactured for ourselves. And because it is an image, it cannot stand up to any scrutiny beyond the most superficial.

Nations are saddled every so often with a stereotype. The British stiff upper lip, German efficiency, Japanese industry, American insularity etc., just as we have the "bronzed Aussie surfer" image overseas. I'm not sure that it actually means anything. How many surfers are there in Australia, and how many of them are "bronzed"?

Our own image is equally unreal, an amalgam of Gallipoli-Kokoda fortitude and outback-pub mateship, neither of which is particularly meaningful.

The fact that people get homesick after prolonged periods away from their homeland has, I suspect, very little to do with the cultural features of the country in question. As Douglas Adams famously pointed out:

"...every being in the universe is tied to his birthplace by tiny invisible force tendrils composed of little quantum packets of guilt" (The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy)

In the same way that Australians get teary on the Heathrow tarmac the first time the QF2 hostie gets on the PA system, I suspect that even boat people, having fled a repressive and murderous regime, might experience the same tingle up the spine when they hear an accent from their home town.

This might come as a shock to 'Aussies', those flag draped goons who get pissed everywhere and act like arseholes at sports events, those bumper sticker fascists who demand that we 'love the flag or f... off', those xenophobes who shout about the nation being full, so f... off, and so on.

Yes, the 'identity' of Australians is as much that as the benign 'good chap' (special conditions apply for sheilas) who wanders around the world talking loudly and wearing almost nothing in other peoples countries, oblivious to these peoples sensibilities and cultures.

One thing we can be sure of though, just as the first whities came to this spot of land from Londinium, so too did the word 'mate', and, Heaven help us, the concept of 'mateship'.

Never heard of a 'china plate'?

The only image that is more puke-making than 'an Aussie' as described above, is a politician or 'community leader' who talks about the 'unique' or the 'quintessential' idea of 'Aussie mateship', as if this was somehow a genuine creation of white Australia since just before 1902.

'Mateship' has become a limiting stone around our necks, just as the shibboleth of 'the lucky country' has, or the 'Aussies play sport fairly', or any other gross exaggeration of some imagined national affliction.

Time to grow up posters, and accept that we are humans, and share the exact same human qualities as other humans, including a propensity to look after our immediate community when under stress, like a massive bushfire, flood, cyclone, war, and so on.

"Australian Identity"
People like to keep telling each other it's "mateship, having a laugh, taking it on the chin and not taking things too seriously".

Sadly this may exist in some parts of Australia (mainly outside the cities). In the city (Sydney) we have many, many honest people trying to correspond to these principles and other sociable and generous principles- yet sadly we can't help but feel that the unofficial "Australian spirit" is instead:

1- Angry, pretentious, judgemental old-English 'class' bigotry, to the point where people are desperate to buy whatever they can to have something to gloat over
2- Being whiny about everything, but too lazy to get off our arses and do something about it (even down to spending a few minutes studying candidates when an election looms).
3- Apathy and meek obedience to even ridiculous demands
4- Misanthropy
5- Being self-absorbed and inconsiderate
6- alcoholism

Generally, the people who are not like this (I'd say about 1.8 million at a rough guess) have to carry the rest, along with all their baggage, on their own backs.

Thanks for all your inputs - for sharing your thoughts so openly. To me, I guess it's what I feel in my heart about this country, "I love a sunburnt country, a land of sweeping plains..." part of it is the Australian language (a special brand of Antipodean English that we speak but which, alas, many of our authors neglect to use in their writing). We've inherited generations of wisdom, skill, poetry, song, all the sunsrises and sunsets of knowledge past - we're the sum of all of the people who went before us. We're as Australian as a Chiko roll or a kookaburra's raucous laugh. There's a certain lust for life in our language. As Bryce Courtenay points out, "It is covered in yellow dust and hardened by drought, then made soggy again with too much rain, rendered tough once more by bad times and fluffy as a lamington by good fortune yet again restored. It's the language of an uncertain ambivalent land not yet entirely sure of who it is, though bloody certain it isn't returning to where it came from."

I knew there was a very good reason why I have never picked up a book by Bryce Courtney, not just because I thought he was the Governor General.

Somehow, 'poetry' and 'literature' are not exact replications of what we really are, are they?

They are just 'poetry' and 'literature' in the end.

I read 'They're A Weird Mob' in the UK when I was about 10 and 'knew' that Nino was a true reflection of an Australian.

Waddya know?

When I got here, with my well thumbed copy, I was quite right.

So Lexi, there can be exceptions to my rule above, I do concede.

Hi Lexi.

I ask this same question for 34 years now. As a former Digger, it was the varied Straylian accents of my comrades that prompted me to ask : “Are you from so & so mate?”

The question of identity per se…Gallipoli is seen by many as 'the' place in our history that gave us the Aussie “image” known until recent times. Our black humour in times of tragedy, with the indomitable ability to take the piss in the most extreme situations, & laugh in the face of fear itself.

A wonderful yarn from one of my Corporals when he was the lead scout in the Vietnam War. He spotted a large linked chain used for pulling trees over (prior to the deployment of Agent Orange to defoliate vegetated areas). Giving the signal, he called up the battalion command group to observe first hand what he had found. By this time over 300 men were on high alert in an area full of VietCong. When the very worried Lt/Colonel had settled in beside the Cpl he calmly turned his head back around, saying to him : “Just imagine the size of the dog on the end of the chain there… hey Boss…!” The Cpl telling me this yarn over 30 yrs ago, had the most wonderful Cunnamulla drawl.

The same spirit, & the same irreverent attitude has been alluded to in studies from First Fleet & afterwards.

But the latter day Aussie…who are we? We are rapidly being Americanised. = de Australianized.

Here in the Territory, throughout the various remote communities you can see American rapper culture plainly evident, Fiddy Cent, bandanas with Rastafarian motifs, baseball hats on backwards or worn sideways. There is very little - if any at all Australian popular culture, seen in role models, save the odd AFL player who takes the time & effort to visit these communities.

We have become the ‘Melting Pot’ that the White Australia Policy of a century ago had sought not to be.

Whether it is the Ocker, the Sporting hero/heroine, the Oscar awarded thespian, the quiet achiever wherever...