Light on the Hill: Reflections on a cultural history

While everybody’s proudly displaying the flag and eating damper and lamingtons, racing ferries up and down the harbour, hurling frozen chooks at Watson’s Bay, celebrating en-masse two-hundred and twenty-six years of nationhood (or one-hundred and fourteen and a bit, if you’re being pedantic), I’ve put together a list of a cross-section of books, films and pieces of music which encapsulate what my Australia is, how I see the nation and our chequered history.

BOOKS

THE LAND: Murray Bail’s Eucalyptus

MAVERICKS AND DREAMERS: Peter Carey’s Oscar and Lucinda, Norman Lindsay’s The Magic Pudding, Matthew Condon’s The Trout Opera, Tim Winton’s Cloudstreet, Ruth Park’s The Harp in the South and Playing Beattie Bow, Elliot Perlman’s Three Dollars, Tim Winton’s Shallows

THE FRONTIER: Kate Grenville’s The Secret River, Rohan Wilson’s The Roving Party

BRIDGE BUILDING: Kate Grenville’s The Lieutenant, Ross Gibson’s 26 Views of the Starburst World: William Dawes at Sydney Cove, 1788-91

FILMS

Gallipoli (Peter Weir, 1981)

Bran Nue Dae (Rachel Perkins, 2009)

Ten Canoes (Rolf de Heer, 2006)

The Dish (Rob Sitch, 2000)

Romulus, My Father (Richard Roxburgh, 2007)

MUSIC

Ross Edwards – Dawn Mantras, Symphony No. 1, Maninyas, Piano Concerto

Crowded House, Split Enz

Iva Davies – Ghost of Time

Jenny M Thomas & The System – Bush Gothic