Tense Past - Narratives of gaps and silences

The business of Australia's history has never been so contentious. All of us are these days called upon to negotiate our view of the past in order to obtain a position in the now. It is about identity. About finding a place in ourselves for the sense we make of that which has made us. The selfassured patriotism which secured the Australian population's notions of itself in the first half of the twentieth century is crumbling. Recent decades have unravelled our ability to believe in the nostalgic propositions which have been woven into the Australian Story.