ABSTRACT
Some sense of Australian identity did develop in the nineteenth century, especially towards its end. Its basis was a belief in the existence of an Australian ‘type’. The national type was given not only physical and racial characteristics, but also a moral, social and psychological identity. The fact that nineteenth-century Australians could see themselves in terms of a developing national type does not mean that this is necessarily an accurate and objective explanation of what was happening. The concept of national types fitted snugly into the nineteenth-century intellectual landscape, a central feature of liberal, national and racial ideology. When attempts were made to discern a national type in Australia the first candidates were the Aborigines. Sportsmen such as Spofforth, the ‘demon bowler’, and rowing and athletic champions became colonial heroes, the vindicators of the national type. The fetish for decorative national motifs reached a peak in the 1880s.
