The Australian Canon
The Great Works of Australian Literature and the Arts
A nation without a past is a nation without a future.
The great works of Australian culture are essential to understanding our past and our present; but they are increasingly being discarded and/or denigrated in our schools and our universities.
Genius is defined as “the prevailing character or spirit of Australia”.
By exploring the works in the Australian Canon developed here at the Centre for the Australian Way of Life, new generations of Australians can connect to the classic works that tell us who we are; which made us who we are.
This site provides essays, commentaries and Podcast episodes to help Australians make those connections, as they read, watch, view and listen to the great works in the Australian Canon.
Each canonical work will be analysed
Over time an introductory commentary will be provided on every work in the Canon.
Go to the Index, below, and you will see links highlighted wherever these posts have already been published.
Key Essays on the Australian Canon
Why the Canon is needed; what’s in it; and what’s so good about it.
Relevant IPA Research
Read Commentaries on Individual Works (Indexed by Category)
Questions We’re Frequently Asked
Another criterion is the hope that every Australian would be familiar with the work.
For a song like Waltzing Matilda, a poem like Clancy of the Overflow, or a short(-ish) and very entertaining read like My Brilliant Career by Miles Franklin, this is an attainable goal. We will literally be saying: “you must read this” (while in the case of the latter saying, at least watch the excellent 1979 movie with Judy Davis). For this reason too we have selected not books of poetry by our best-known poets, but rather particular poems. I would rather a young Australian read one poem by the ‘Bard of Bunyah’, Les Murray, than be daunted by a recommendation to read a publication from just one period of a long career, or even a collected works. I want Noonday Axeman to be a gateway drug to the sensibility of a very fine poet and patriot. But then as well as the very popular (and accessible) The Getting of Wisdom, by Henry Handel Richardson, we have also included that author’s epic trilogy, The Fortunes of Richard Mahony, which chronicles the rise and fall of an Anglo-Irish doctor who travelled to Australia to seek his fortune on Ballarat’s goldfields.
The Genius of Australia is available as a Podcast or can be watched on YouTube.
Subscribe to the Podcast via these links:
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The main image is from a larger illustration by the great illustrator, artist and cartoonist, John Spooner.
It shows the “Jolly Swagman” of Waltzing Matilda fame, with his “jumbuck” (the sheep he had just stolen), reading contentedly under the Cooolabah tree the works of the Australian Canon.
You can see the whole image represented here.
If you are not already a member of the Institute of Public Affairs, join here.
You can make donations here.
For all other inquiries, please contact cpeterbudge@ipa.org.au.
Latest Posts
Wake In Fright
Ted Kotcheff, Wake In Fright, 1971 Note: Contains spoilers You know a film is truly seminal when it finds its way into the vernacular: a ‘Wake in Fright moment’ is now Australian for being confronted by menacing people, alien to you, in a harsh setting you can’t escape. At time of writing, a 4K-resolution [...]
Song of Australia
Song of Australia (1859), Caroline Carleton At a trivia night you might be asked, “What were the four songs Australians could vote for in the 1977 plebiscite to choose our new national anthem?” You should get ‘Advance Australia Fair’. I mean, it is the current anthem. I reckon you’d get ‘God Save the Queen’ too, being [...]
Johnno
David Malouf, Johnno, 1975 David Malouf (1934 - ) published Johnno 50 years ago when he was 40 and you can still argue it is the finest thing he ever wrote. This is not to decry the ravishing cadences of An Imaginary Life—his story of the poet Ovid and his encounter with a Wolf boy which [...]
Waltzing Matilda
Waltzing Matilda (1895), Banjo Paterson ‘Waltzing Matilda’ perhaps doesn’t belong in the Canon’s Poetry section and might be better placed in the Song section. It is, after all, best known as a song, Australia’s unofficial national anthem, but its author Andrew Barton ‘Banjo’ Paterson did include it in Saltbush Bill, J.P., and Other Verses, his 1917 poetry [...]
The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith
Thomas Keneally, The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith, 1972 Here is Thomas Keneally writing in 2013 about the background to his most notable book which appeared in 1972: At the time I started to write the book, Australians had passed, by a huge majority, a referendum that enabled the Federal Government to legislate for Aborigines. This signalled the [...]
Gallipoli
Peter Weir, Gallipoli, 1981 It’s an odd thing to look up Gallipoli on the internet. No one ever forgets this extraordinary visualisation of the journey and the pity of war which deepened a nation’s sense of how an Empire could use its youth as fodder for the machines of death and the conveniences of military strategy. Yet [...]
