Australian Identity

Today marks the anniversary of the 1788 arrival of the First Fleet of British ships on Australian soil. Or, to look at it another way, today marks the anniversary of the subversion of hundreds of ancient indigenous cultures. Yet, looking into this audience today, I see a plethora of diverse races and ethnicities, united to celebrate Australia Day. Which begs the question – what defines Australian identity? Australian poet Dennis Haskell provides us with a somewhat elusive answer: “Identity is process not a fixity.” Our country exemplifies this perfectly – while we remain a predominantly white country, as time has passed, we are constantly undergoing a state of evolution. Renowned Australian poet A.B. Paterson laments this change; his poem Pioneers

Paterson’s application of imagery in Pioneers relies mostly on his descriptions of the Australian landscape. He refers to the “trackless bush in heat and storm and drought”, the “tangled scrub” and “forests grim”. Herein, Paterson paints a picture of the suffocating, almost intolerable circumstances of an Australian pioneer’s routine. So, by really sticking these conditions to us as readers, he thereby underpins and glorifies the tireless diligence of Australia’s colonisers – cementing and justifying his refusal to change. This is extended in his description of the pioneers as figurative “sons of field and flock.” Again, he relates back to this old-world, colonialist perspective. Visions of Australian farmland and stock emerge, connoting Paterson’s wistful reluctance for our identity to move on. Despite Paterson’s claims, persistence is still very much alive within Australian identity, as we recognise in Lesson’s Please Resist Me. However, Lesson’s progressive outlook on our melting pot of a nation opposes the ideology presented in Pioneers, as Lesson combats the conservative, traditionalist viewpoints of Australian identity, proclaiming that he is, “becoming a gun”. By fashioning himself as a metaphorical weapon against the resisting class of Aussie traditionalists, Lesson provides us with a tangible, persistent symbol of tenacity, as

While Paterson provides us with the quintessential, uniquely Aussie genre of bush poetry, he ignores the natural progression of cultures that we as nation rely on. Paterson makes use of rhyming scheme – a consistent pattern of AABB/AABB/AABB. When read alongside knowledge of Paterson’s predilection for traditional Aussie values, it becomes clear what this pattern conveys. It provides stability, which is indicative of Paterson’s old-school tendencies. So, we realise Paterson frequently regards stability and tradition as sacred, which we also identify in his employment of repetition. Repetition as a technique is indicative of rituals in itself – the reiteration of a single phrase or word constantly, suggesting again, stability. The specific type of repetition utilised by Paterson is anaphora — the repetition of the first part of a clause — and is frequently found in religious or devotional poetry, which is particularly fitting. He repeats: ‘Twas they who rode the trackless bush in heat and storm…/’Twas they who heard the master-word…/’Twas they followed up the trail…” Thereby, he emphasizes the Aussie working spirit, lamenting its absence from his then-current identity. Alternatively, Lesson’s Please Resist Me rejoices at the eclectic, capricious nature of our national identity. Like Paterson, Lesson also exploits repetition when he expresses his