The 1890s was the period when The Bulletin magazine�s school of balladists and short-story writers were HOT! Balladist such as Banjo Patterson wrote the legendary �Waltzing Matilda� and The Man From Snowy River�. Then there was Henry Lawson, Australia�s finest short-story writer. They mainly wrote and celebrated the living in the Australian outback bush, its male traditions such as mateship, Aussie nationalism and the underdog. Basically, it was in defiance of the ruling English aristocracy. Joseph Furphy wrote his novel �Such Is Life�, and it was said that to be the last words of Ned Kelly, the bushranger and folk hero before he was hanged.

At a more popular level, Steele Rudd wrote �On Our Selection� series about life on poverty stricken bush properties. A little later, C.J. Dennis celebrated city larrikins in his poems about Ginger Mick and The Sentimental Bloke. These creative leap were the start of distinctive Australian literature which has continued strongly in the 20th century in the novels of Henry Handel Richardson, Miles Franklin, Christina Stead and Eve Langley, the short stories of Barbara Baynton, Gavin Casey and Peter Cowan, and the poetry of Christopher Brennan, Kenneth Slessor, R.D. Fitzgerald, Douglas Stewart and Judith Wright, to the writers of the present day.

Three classic Australian books are Robert Hughes� convict-era history �The Fatal Shore�, Jill Ker Conway�s childhood memoir �The Road from Coorain�, and Bruce Chatwin�s rendering of the Aboriginal relationship with the earth �The Songlines�.

Aussie novels that comment poignantly, sometimes humourously, on Australian life, history are Nobel Prize-winner Patrick White�s �Voss�, Peter Carey�s spirited �Oscar and Lucinda�, and David Malouf�s �Remembering Babylon�.

The next cultural boom in the 1960s and�70s The late 1960s and �70s were the next great period of Australian cultural growth. The perils of World War 2 gave a clear fillip to Australian nationalism, the 1960s and�70s were a time of steady economic growth and growing self-confidence. Massive immigration programmes brought millions of new migrants not only from England, but also Italians, Greeks and other Southern Europeans. The old, stale moulds which had contained Australian life for so long was finally broken open. Australians suddenly learned about salami, white wine, pizza, rock�n�roll, hippies, women�s lib and student power. Americanism also crept in at the expense of traditional British culture. All the right ingredients were there for an Australian cultural take-off.