beaches and the vast open spaces – they are not obsessively concerned about economic performance. As for long-term planning, well, in the long-term we’re all dead. In Australia the quo truly has status.
The Australian character of the nineteenth century was a mixture of Protestant, Catholic and Enlightenment values. But coursing through the veins of white Australians was European Romanticism. The most popular books in the early days of the colony were romantic: the novels of Sir Walter Scott for instance. As the decades passed romanticism developed an Australian flavour. The bush and bushrangers, the people of the outback, and common soldiers at Gallipoli were romanticised and passed into folklore. No doubt this romanticism had strong links to Irish mythology, but it also had important connections with English and German Romanticism. And while Australians would seem unlikely candidates for the label ‘romantic,’ this influence, although overlaid with laconic self-mockery, runs deep in the Australian character.
Nowadays it is considered politically incorrect to search for or talk about an Australian character since this merely reveals a portrait of dead, white, Anglo-Celtic males. And now that Australia is a multicultural society, it is considered mischievous and morally repugnant to emphasise the virtues (if any) of such a privileged, once-powerful group which dominated the virtuous citizenry. The fact remains, however, that Australian management in the twenty-first century shows the powerful influence of men and women from Anglo-Celtic backgrounds.
The early rulers of this country had to deal with Anglo/ Celtic men and women who held sceptical, if not cynical, views about power, authority and political leadership (if such it can be called). This scepticism developed, in part, because Australians understood the negative consequences of allowing one’s freedom to be surrendered to leaders, governors, politicians or policemen. Australians appreciate the reply of the army officer who was asked to rate a junior officer’s ‘leadership potential’: ‘I believe this officer has leadership potential,’ the officer wrote, ‘I believe his men would follow him anywhere, but it would be out of a sense of curiosity’.
Australians will follow pompous fools to watch them fall into error and then, with a wry smile, allow them to mend their ways. This is the local sport known as puncturing pomposity and pretentiousness, or ‘cutting through the crap’, and explains Australians’ dislike of role-playing. They like to cut through the surface layer of role performance to get to the natural person. And natural men and women are, or should be, ‘good blokes’. This approach to social relationships has earned them the vulgar tribute: they don’t bullshit. Good blokes combine a down-to-earth, unpretentious, self-effacing demeanour with an unapologetic self-confidence. Australian poet Les Murray calls this character ‘sprawl’: loose-limbed in its mind, it leans on things. Its roots are Irish and it is the image of the Australian character: laconic, democratic and ironic. However, this emphasis on under-stated achievement is often misunderstood or denied, especially if Australians are judged by the sporting people who have adopted American manners.
The stereotypical Anglo-Celtic Australian appears to the outsider as relaxed to the point of apathy. Yet it is a watchful apathy since Australians live according to the ‘silence of the law’. That beautiful phrase, coined by English philosopher Thomas Hobbes, describes the strength of liberal democracies: the respect for and internalisation of the law and its universal application. If the law is neither respected nor applied universally the result is tyranny. When the law is noisy the result is totalitarianism, or the sort of communitarianism that is inimical to most Australians. So when Australians are referred to as ‘wallies’ – lazy, self-interested hedonists – one learns to recognise the sound of competing values. It has to be said that in many countries the law is decidedly noisy.
In Australia the silence of the law is accompanied by the noise of celebrities. To be a celebrity, even if only for a day, is an American dream. It can be an Australian nightmare. To survive celebrity status in Australia one must appear to be unaffected by one’s success. This means eschewing party politics, any form of formal authority, or support for any paranoid minority. In fact, it is wise to say very little and even wiser to control the temptation to put on a show for an audience, unless one is engaged in the activity (usually sport) for which one was originally recognised. Australians respect people who are artless, unsophisticated and unwilling to modify their behaviour for the social occasions that demand it. Their quiet confidence is supported by an almost wicked sense of humour, ironic, self-mocking, sentimental about family and close friends, and tough-mindedly realistic about the external world. And the external world in Australia is tough: the geography presents individuals with unbelievable challenges that usually end in heartbreak.
When free migrants arrived in the 1840s, many expected to work and master the land. It defeated them as it defeats everyone. But this defeat is the inspiration for much local poetry. Australians are not so callow as to be optimists about life in the bush. Not for them the view that life is, or ought to be, wonderful.
Beyond the cities and the coastal fringe, life is indescribably hard and gives rise to pessimism and even nihilism. But pessimism can be lamented and the lamentations are the very stuff of romantic poetry. And if nihilism is a dominant theme in the works of Henry Lawson and Joseph Furphy, it can be inspirational for those individuals confronted with the abyss who are determined to survive and overcome the tragedies of life.
If this sounds like the eccentric German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche that is because Australia has had its Nietzscheans and some of them have said so: Norman Lindsay for example. Australians have developed their own brand of Nietzscheism, a tragic vitalism that, unlike Crocodile Dundee, does not win out in the end. The optimistic ending to modern travails points to the commercial motives of Hollywood. Life for battling Australians was tragic, thus the last Shakespearean words of Joseph Furphy (writing as Tom Collins, a government official of the ninth class) in his masterpiece, Such is Life:
Now I had to enact the Cynic philosopher to Moriarty and Butler, and the aristocratic man with a ‘past’ to Mrs Beaudesart; with the satisfaction of knowing that each of these was acting a part to me. Such is life, my fellow mummers – just like a poor player, that bluffs and feints his hour upon the stage, and then cheapens down to mere nonentity. But let me not hear any small witticism to the further effect that its story is a tale told by a vulgarian, full of slang and blankly, signifying – nothing.3
According to Harry Heseltine, ‘nothing’ is a word which echoes throughout Australian literature. Presided over by Nietzsche, rather than Henry Lawson, Australian literature is based on a unique combination of glances into the pit and the erection of safety fences to prevent any falling in. If mateship dominates Lawson’s and Furphy’s writing, it is because behind it was an even more acute awareness of horror and emptiness. Mateship, egalitarian democracy, nationalism and realistic toughness can be seen as defences against the possibility of falling into the abyss. The main concern of early Australians was ‘to acknowledge the terror at the basis of being, to explore its uses, and to build defences against its dangers’.4
Joseph Furphy described his brilliant novel about mateship, the bush and local characters as: temper, democratic; bias, offensively Australian. And so it is. Such is Life (and much Australian literature) is a study of role- playing and the absurdity of human endeavour. All the novel’s characters are playing roles for other role-players. Society is a confidence trick which makes bearable the loneliness of the authentic life. The choice is between the best confidence trick and a confrontation with the abyss. Society is mostly bluff and bullying and those who succeed compromise themselves. Insincere role-players become sick at heart: many of the characters of Australian fiction and poetry are nauseated because their tough-minded realism is unable to contain the nihilism of Australian life.
Norman Lindsay countered the appalling emptiness of Australian life with a philosophy of ‘creative effort’ which combined the philosophies of Plato and Nietzsche (who do not mix easily). Nietzsche sought to transcend the Christian ethic of humility and compassion by affirming life itself which, in its natural form, is red in tooth and claw. The challenge for human
