Bicentenary Follies: Australians in Search of Themselves

Abstract

Dr Marcus is lecturer in anthropology at the Research Centre for Women's Studies, University of Adelaide. There is an uneasiness about the Australian bicentenary celebrations that exacerbates the usual swings of political mood. But it would be wrong, I think, to attribute the uneasiness to a slowly awakening consciousness of the reality of settlement, or to a realization that the prosperity of some rests upon the exploitation of others. The uneasiness flows from a fear that the emptiness of Australia's inner space may well correspond to a cultural and spiritual emptiness. Ever since the English deposited the first batch of convicts and gaolers on the eastern coast, there has been a feeling that the Australian experience somehow made a man different. Even those who returned to the mother country seem to have felt that the contact with the rigours of the climate and the ferocity of the Australian frontier had a lasting effect on the formation and nature of the individual. For those who remained, the poverty and hardships of taming the bush led to a way of life that stood in stark contrast to that of the comfortable middle classes of England. The difference that living in such conditions made was to become the grand theme of Australian literature and history. Within the imperial power relation which governed economic and political goals, the eventual cry for independence led to the birth of the anxious nationalism that continues to characterize Australian cultural production.