ABSTRACT
In the late nineteenth century, Australian painters and nationalist writers looked increasingly to the bush and to those who lived there in their search for the essential Australia. Most of these artists were city dwellers in what had already become an urbanized nation, but they were unable or unwilling to create an urban myth which could capture the imagination: indeed, many of them recoiled from the squalour of the city (Davison, 1978). Australians continued to look to the outback in search of their distinctiveness. Historian Russel Ward, in his influential The Australian Legend (1958), celebrated the male bush worker as the typical Australian; laconic, practical, easy going, egalitarian and anti-authoritarian. More recently, this myth has been commercialized. It has been used in successful advertising campaigns to attract tourists to Australia, sometimes using Paul Hogan, the Sydney comedian and actor whose Crocodile Dundee films projected the same message overseas. No urban or suburban myths have succeeded in capturing the popular imagination in this way, but they have been created in the second half of the twentieth century in belated recognition of the essentially suburban nature of life in Australia. These have been as savage and hostile as the ‘typical Australian’ has been amiable.
