Connecting you with Australian culture online
October - a breath of fresh art
Barbara Tucker, Albert Tucker, Arthur Boyd and Sidney Nolan, Hurstbridge, c. The Angry Penguin painters are considered to be the major figures of a modernist movement in Australian art, based in Melbourne, which has determined and shaped Australian conte...
Works by many contemporary visual artists in Western Australia demonstrate a vital consciousness of the land. Western Australian art traces a presence on the land, a cultural loss and, ultimately, a belief in the future. Contemporary artists such as pai...
Australia is a unique and diverse country in every way - in culture, population, climate, geography, and history. For articles on specific topics about Australian history and culture visit our Australian Stories Index. Australia's population is concentrat...
The first ship and crew to chart the Australian coast and meet with Aboriginal people was the Duyfken captained by Dutchman, Willem Janszoon. In 1770, Englishman Lieutenant James Cook charted the Australian east coast in his ship HM Barque Endeavour. Coo...
Until the Second World War, Australia was one of the world's leaders in aviation in terms of both air mileage and prominent aviation pioneers. Since the early development of powered flight in Australia in 1910, various air services have been established:...
The introduction of camels and the so-called 'Afghan' cameleers proved to be a turning point in the exploration and development of the Australian interior. Image courtesy of the State Library of South Australia: B 14739. Image courtesy of the State Libra...
Creating the Canning Stock Route was the answer to a host of challenges presented by the Australian outback. Surveyed and created in the early 1900s, the scale of the Canning Stock Route is epic. John Carty, oral historian and anthropologist from the Au...
Observations of Australia's unique fauna and flora, combined with considerations of the continent's geographical isolation, contributed toward Charles Darwin (1809–1882) developing his theory of evolution by natural selection. Darwin's theory of ev...
Gp Capt Eaton Charles, CO RAAF Station Darwin. Image courtesy of the Charles Eaton Photographic Collection and Peter Dunn's Australia @ War. Eaton entered Australian aviation legend when commanding the air searches for two lost aircraft, the Kookaburra ...
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....
Australian designers, by their very nature, look for simple and elegant solutions for challenges in often ordinary situations, balancing creativity with cost-effectiveness and innovative construction. Inspiration comes not only from historical and interna...
Sir Donald Bradman is an Australian sporting legend. During his 21 years of first-class cricket, Bradman achieved everything that was possible in the sport - he captained his South Australian Sheffield Shield team; was a State selector; Test selector; an...
J. C. Armytage, Return of Burke and Wills to Coopers Creek, engraving, in Australia by Edwin Carton Booth, opp. Explorers set out to discover rivers and land suitable for agriculture as well as to survey the land. A major expedition usually produced a p...
Each year the Sydney Festival offers a rich and diverse program spanning all art forms including dance, theatre, music, visual arts, film, forums and large scale free outdoor events. The National Multicultural Festival is held over two weeks and features...
The Great Depression (1929–32) was a time of extreme hardship for people in Australia. Even before the devastating stock market crash on Wall Street (the centre of stock market trading in New York, United States of America), unemployment in Austral...
Russell Drysdale, Picture of Donald Friend, 1948. Hill End, a gold-rush town, 85km north of Bathurst in central New South Wales (NSW) is a sacred site in both NSW and also Australian art history. These artists include: John Olsen, Margaret Olley, Jeffre...
Eventually, the arrival of people from diverse societies created a cultural diversity that is now an integral part of Australian society and identity. Image courtesy of the Migration Museum, History Trust of South Australia. Migration Museum, History Trus...
Image courtesy of the National Trust of Queensland, Hou Wang Temple. The businesses in Chinatowns offered accommodation, medicinal herbs, fresh food grown by Chinese market gardeners and groceries. A Chinese school, a language and culture centre and a Ch...
Traditional Indigenous architecture was domestic - across a range of well crafted and technologically designed shelters and residential camps. Courtesy of Queensland Museum and Aboriginal Environments Research Centre. Annual base camp structures, whether...
UNESCO states that Indigenous populations number some 350 million individuals in more than 70 countries in the world, and that this represents more than 5000 languages and cultures. Today, many Indigenous peoples live on the fringes of society and are de...
If you can see this message, you are probably not seeing this site in the way it was designed. This site uses cascading style sheets (CSS2) to control the way in which elements are displayed on the page.
You will still be able to access everything in this site, but we do recommend you upgrade your browser to a more recent, standards compliant, browser.