Many Australians are reacting fiercely today to threats to Australia’s character and culture from ideological or national groups. What character and culture, some are asking? Indeed, the more extreme deny that such a character and culture exist. In the final chapter of my book, PRISON HULK TO REDEMPTION, I sketch what I understand as Australia’s character and culture.

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An excerpt from chapter 19, ‘Cultural Continuities in 1900’, Prison Hulk to Redemption, available through Amazon.

From the outset [of Prison Hulk to Redemption], I endeavoured to depict a new, independent nation emerging from Captain Phillip’s seminal act of planting the Union Jack in the soil of Sydney Cove. In a remarkably short time, the inaugural members of this new nation began to refer to their land and themselves as Australia and Australians, though still closely connected to their origins in the British Isles. The fiery and intemperate William Charles Wentworth embodied those who experienced no doubts about themselves and the new nation they were forging. But what, precisely, does this Australianness entail?

Australianness represents a profound modification of Britishness, the unifying culture of the British Isles—England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland—rooted in the broader culture of Christian Europe. Although Australians retained many traditions, customs, and social and political institutions from Great Britain, as well as the arts and literature, and were content to do so, their experiences led them to develop fundamentally distinct identities from their counterparts in the British Isles. The varied physical environment contributed to the emergence of a unique, independent expression of Britishness. Consequently, all traditions, customs, and institutions brought over by the First Fleet were transformed, regardless of how subtle these changes might sometimes have been. Although this transformation began as soon as Captain Phillip planted the British flag, it was not until the 1880s that overseas observers began to notice a distinctly Australian character.