Australia’s First and Most Important War

Geography has always featured in Australian historical writing. This was particularly so in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century. Exploration was at the centre of popular history and featured in school text books. The voyages of European seamen were traced on maps of the continent. They were followed by the expeditions of the inland explorers. Atlases used in schools until the 1950's contained a series of maps depicting the progress of the settler's advance into Aboriginal Australia. On these maps black was succeeded by triumphant yellow until the last unknown regions were traversed by the intrepid frontiersmen. The explorers were succeeded in popular histories by the pioneers who were confronted by the land itself. They endured flood, drought and fire and in doing so developed characteristics which came to be seen as distinctly Australian. In popular literature, it was the Outback-not the coastal cities-which shaped the national ethos. Both sides of politics found their rural heroes. The (conservative) right celebrated the squatter. The (progressive or liberal) left venerated the semi-nomadic tribe of bush workers, shearers and their precocious unionism.