All except Prague, Bugsy.

>>I only say this because it appears that Pericles... can recognise it in Vienna, Paris, Rome, Prague, Moscow, Berlin and Amsterdam, where he has obviously either visited or lived at some time.<<

I took Prague into the mix on advice from a good friend.

But you are entirely and completely correct when you surmise that as far as I am concerned...

>>...having one is obviously not necessary<<

I have never been accused of (or congratulated for) having a skerrick of culture myself, having been brought up in the drab post-war years in nondescript surroundings, far away from any cultural hub.

Nor have I ever seen the need to either invent or create a culture for myself, which is what I suspect Australia attempts from time to time.

I am of course assuming culture is separate from courtesy, good manners, politeness etc. Which are often confused with "being cultured", when they are merely forms of good behaviour, which can be learned.

An Australian culture whew! I definitely know we have one but describing it is another matter.

I teach a bit of English to an Vietnamese immigrant and over the last couple of years I have seen something infused into him from this country.

The best I can do for now is an attitude to things that aren't the way they should be, especially if they are unfair, and an expectation they should be and can be fixed.

Egalitarianism is probably regarded as hackneyed now but I think still works as one of the descriptions of our culture.

I like this from Raimond Gaita

“a group of German Jews who'd escaped to England and because they were German, not because they were Jews, were incarcerated as enemy aliens and some of them were sent to Australia on a ship called the 'Dunera', and so they came to be called 'The Dunera Boys'. And one of them tells a story that as they were being marched to a camp on the fringes of the desert I think, he was a straggler and the Australian soldier guarding him handed him his rifle, and said, 'Here mate, hold this while I go and have a piss'. And Dunera boy said, 'I knew then that I was in heaven.' I've always loved that story and I tell it often to friends in England when they ask what it is that I love about Australia. It's a wonderful story in itself, but the reason I so loved it is I could recognise in the men and women I'd grown up with in country Victoria, I could recognise that soldier in them, and the spirit of that soldier in them. And it seems to me that sort of utterly guileless egalitarianism, and I come across it all the time still in this country.”

We should never underestimate what a truly high ideal egalitarianism really is.

As others have correctly said, it depends on how you define "culture". It's a notoriously difficult concept to pin down, but I tend to go with something like "The set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes an institution, organization or group" [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture ]. The main point is that culture is shared, learned and transmitted to new group members, including succeeding generations.

In that broad sense, of course Australia has a distinctive culture, but it is a work in progress, being historically relatively recent in comparison to other national cultures. I think that the Australian culture to which Poirot alludes in the OP - and which the erstwhile Howard government attempted to enshrine in citizenship requirements - is still evident, but most obviously so outside the metropolitan areas where most Australians reside.

Values like egalitarianism, a fair go and mateship, and less savoury ones like the 'Yellow Peril' and racism towards Aborigines are part of it, as are practices such as the shout, larrikinism etc.

As I said, it's a work in progress, but I'd like to see the more positive and distinctive cultural elements retained in the increasingly heterogeneous mix.