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"Australia is not a poor man's America. Its dreams are different - not epics of belligerent triumph, mechanically subjugating the wilderness, but elegies that stoically accept man's necessary defeat by inimical nature. Americans are fanatical optimists, while Australians are laconically, humourously tragic. The American dream deludingly promises to deliver whatever you wish for, and when it fails to do so the result is disillusionment, fury, a craving for revenge. The dreaming of the Australian Aborigines has nothing to do with fame and riches, swimming pools and high-rises; it is a reverie, a morose reminder of our mortality."
- Peter Conrad, from an article in the Herald.