Australian Stories matching your query...

Australian folklore, its traditions, customs and beliefs are based on both Indigenous and also non-Indigenous people's knowledge and experience of history in Australia. Some of Australia's folklore remembers the relationship between Europeans and Aborigi...

Unknown artist, Ben Hall, the bushranger, c. The exploits, capture and death of 'Brave' Ben Hall in the 1860s are part of Australian folklore, as well as marking a historical shift in the treatment of bushrangers. Hall's exploits and the apparent ineffi...

The bush has an iconic status in Australian life and features strongly in any debate about national identity, especially as expressed in Australian literature, painting, popular music, films and foods. The bush was revered as a source of national ideals b...

McFarlane & Erskine, Gold escort attacked by bushrangers, 187-, print: lithograph. Image courtesy of the National Library of Australia: nla.pic-an8420450. Black Caesar escaped into the bush in 1790 with a musket where he later joined five or six other es...

Australian children's literature rests on the enthusiasm and talents of many individuals, including a great many more Australian writers, illustrators and books than can be listed in this article. The earliest books published for children were mostly ins...

Chinese New Year is the longest and most important celebration in the Chinese calendar. Memorabilia is displayed in museums like the Chinese Museum, Melbourne, and the Golden Dragon Museum, Bendigo. Bendigo Chinese Association Golden Dragon Museum....

For example, for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders these ceremonies bring together all aspects of their culture - song, dance, body decoration, sculpture and painting. Anny Nungarrayi (centre) with other Warlpiri women perform a traditional dance dur...

Aboriginal dancers telling Dreamtime stories at the Sydney Olympics opening ceremony. The Dreaming for Australian Indigenous people (sometimes referred to as the Dreamtime or Dreamtimes) is when the Ancestral Beings moved across the land and created life...

Mr Salchany, lighthouse keeper of Neptune Islands signals a passing ship, 1963. In Australia, lighthouses are built in harbours, on islands, coral reefs and beaches. Courtesy of the Australian Heritage Photo Library, Department of Environment, Water Her...

Australian novels are an impressive collection of written works, and represent a dynamic body of excellent writers, some with significant international awards to their credit. The Australian poet Alec Hope said that, 'The Bunyip of Australian literature ...

Australian language, letters and literature in Australia has been influenced by Aboriginal storytelling, convict tales and the desire by colonists to relate their experiences in a new country. Similarly, the bush ballads of Henry Lawson and Andrew 'Banjo...

Image courtesy of the Australian War Memorial. The myth of the digger and the larrikin hero is an important part of the Australian experience of pastoralism, the goldfields, bushranging, shearing and droving. The slang term 'digger' re-surfaced during th...

The songs and music that has come from people's experiences of living and surviving in the Australian bush has become known in Australia as 'bush music'. The convict songs of the early days of the Australian colonies became the foundation of Australia's ...

Portrait of Slim Dusty at the Australia Day Concert (i.e. Australia Day Live), Sydney Entertainment Centre, 1984, transparency. Country music, a derivative of folk music, originated in southern and western USA and consisted mainly of rural songs accompan...

In the early days of the Australian colonies, convict ballads and songs became the foundation of Australia's later day folk music and its first original compositions. Bush songs, ballads and music influenced and defined the folk music of the 1950s. Indi...

Indigenous music in Australia uses the environment itself to generate unique sounds and rhythms. Australian musicians performing across a range of genres, or styles, have achieved international recognition with a unique Australian approach. The opera sin...

Australia experiences a range of 'natural disasters' including bushfires, floods, severe storms, earthquakes and landslides. Fire can often follow drought, and drought can be followed by flood. I love a sunburnt country, a land of sweeping plains, Of ra...

Modern Australian poetry seeks to tell Australian stories and truths with a poetic significance so that 'they sear into the soul and can never be untold' (Dorothy Porter). The Jindyworobaks encouraged Australian writers to express themselves in language ...

Some trading ships were going to the East Indies for spices and lost their way in high winds and seas - literally 'bumping' into Australia's west coast. From 1788, English ships brought convicts and settlers to the colonies. Australia's first known ship...

Employing dream imagery, poetry and precarious juxtapositions, Australian artists in the 1930s and early 1940s responded to European surrealists and were part of an international surrealist movement - 'in all its clarity'. Many of Australia's best known a...