The Australians Quotes

“Charles Bean, the official historian of Australia’s part in World War I, was unusual in dealing closely with the deeds of the soldiers on the front line, and not just the plans and orders of their leaders. At the end of his account of the Gallipoli landing in the Official History, he asked what made the soldiers fight on. What motive sustained them? At the end of the second or third day of the Landing, when they had fought without sleep until the whole world seemed a dream, and they scarcely knew whether it was a world of reality or of delirium – and often, no doubt, it held something of both; when half of each battalion had been annihilated, and there seemed no prospect before any man except that of wounds or death in the most vile surroundings; when the dead lay three deep in the rifle-pits under the blue sky and the place was filled with stench and sickness, and reason had almost vanished – what was it then that carried each man on? It was not love of a fight. The Australian loved fighting better than most, but it is an occupation from which the glamour quickly wears. It was not hatred of the Turk. It is true that the men at this time hated their enemy for his supposed ill-treatment of the wounded – and the fact that, of the hundreds who lay out, only one wounded man survived in Turkish hands has justified their suspicions. But hatred was not the motive which inspired them. Nor was it purely patriotism, as it would have been had they fought on Australian soil. The love of country in Australians and New Zealanders was intense – how strong, they did not realise until they were far away from their home. Nor, in most cases was the motive their loyalty to the tie between Australia and Great Britain. Although, singly or combined, all these were powerful influences, they were not the chief. Nor was it the desire for fame that made them steer their course so straight in the hour of crucial trial. They knew too well the chance that their families, possibly even the men beside them, would never know how they died. Doubtless the weaker were swept on by the stronger. In every army which enters into battle there is a part which is dependent for its resolution upon the nearest strong man. If he endures, those around him will endure; if he turns, they turn; if he falls, they may become confused. But the Australian force contained more than its share of men who were masters of their own minds and decisions. What was the dominant motive that impelled them? It lay in the mettle of the men themselves. To be the sort of man who would give way when his mates were trusting to his firmness; to be the sort of man who would fail when the line, the whole force, and the allied cause required his endurance; to have made it necessary for another unit to do his own unit’s work; to live the rest of his life haunted by the knowledge that he had set his hand to a soldier’s task and had lacked the grit to carry it through – that was the prospect which these men could not face. Life was very dear, but life was not worth living unless they could be true to their idea of Australian manhood.”
― John Hirst, The Australians: Insiders and Outsiders on the National Character since 1770

“Australians, like other peoples, tend to think they are highly distinctive, but the characteristics they value may be an extension or an exaggeration of what they brought from the mother country. In some respects they may be more like the peoples of other new lands settled by the British than they are willing to acknowledge. Australian soldiers and Australian nurses of World War I felt themselves to be very different from their English counterparts but the English were inclined to see all the colonials — New Zealanders, Canadians and Australians — as similar and different from themselves.”
― John Hirst, The Australians: Insiders and Outsiders on the National Character since 1770

“All Western liberal democracies recognise the importance of the principle of ‘fairness’, but Australia probably emphasises it more than most. Our belief in the ‘fair go’ has evolved to become part of our national culture, even though it is not entirely clear what this term means. In the mid-nineteenth century, a ‘fair go’ seems to have referred mainly to the importance of opening up opportunities so that everyone could compete. It was consistent with what today we think of as a meritocratic ideal. In the early decades of federation, however, governments increasingly pursued a national agenda intended to blur social divisions and build a strong sense of belonging and sameness, and the ‘fair go’ ideal in this period came to be identified with the political manipulation of distributional outcomes associated with an egalitarian ethic. This national interventionist strategy has, however, been in retreat for 30 years or more (although it remains relatively strong in the area of social policy), and survey evidence demonstrates that most Australians today have a much broader understanding of ‘fairness’ than mere egalitarianism. The ‘fair go’ today still recognises the ideal of equalising outcomes, but it also encompasses the competing ideals of meritocracy (reward for effort and talent) and fair exchange (the liberal principle of the right to private property provided it has been acquired in accordance with the rule of law). The egalitarian definition of fairness, which is taken for granted by the social policy intelligentsia as the only relevant definition, does not therefore do justice to what most Australians mean by a ‘fair go’ in the contemporary period. Indeed, if our social affairs intellectuals and pressure groups ever got their way, and taxes and welfare benefits were both raised even higher than they are at present in order to narrow what they call the ‘income gap’, the result would be the very opposite of what most Australians think a ‘fair go’ entails.”
― John Hirst, The Australians: Insiders and Outsiders on the National Character since 1770

“If you want to know what it is to feel the ‘correct’ social world fizzle to nothing, you should come to Australia. It is a weird place. In the established sense, it is socially nil. Happy-go-lucky, don’t-you-bother, we’re-in-Australia. But also there seems to be no inside life of any sort: just a long lapse and drift. A rather fascinating indifference, a physical indifference to what we call soul or spirit. It’s really a weird show. The country has an extraordinary hoary, weird attraction. As you get used to it, it seems so old, as if it had missed all this Semite-Egyptian-Indo-European vast era of history, and was coal age, the age of great ferns and mosses. It hasn’t got a consciousness – just none – too far back. A strange effect it has on one. Often I hate it like poison, then again it fascinates me, and the spell of its indifference gets me. I can’t quite explain it: as if one resolved back almost to the plant kingdom, before souls, spirits and minds were grown at all: only quite a live, energetic body with a weird face.”
― John Hirst, The Australians: Insiders and Outsiders on the National Character since 1770

“Towards the end of the eighteenth century, Englishmen began building houses on the east coast of this warm land of curious life and unknown vastness. They had selected, more by luck than exploration, the banks of a magnificent harbour, a place which posterity generally recognized as one of the best sites in the world.”
― John Hirst, The Australians: Insiders and Outsiders on the National Character since 1770

“May 1915. The Australians, who were about to go into action for the first time in trying circumstances, were cheerful, quiet and confident. There was no sign of nerves nor of excitement. As the moon waned, the boats were swung out, the Australians received their last instructions, and men who six months ago had been living peaceful civilian lives had begun to disembark on a strange and unknown shore in a strange land to attack an enemy of a different race. The boats had almost reached the beach, when a party of Turks, entrenched ashore, opened a terrible fusillade with rifles and a Maxim. Fortunately, the majority of the bullets went high. The Australians rose to the occasion. Not waiting for orders, or for the boats to reach the shore, they sprang into the sea, and, forming a sort of rough line, rushed at the enemy’s trenches. Their magazines were not charged, so they just went in with cold steel. It was over in a minute. The Turks in the first trench were either bayoneted or they ran away, and their Maxim was captured. Then the Australians found themselves facing an almost perpendicular cliff of loose sandstone, covered with thick shrubbery. Somewhere, half-way up, the enemy had a second trench, strongly held, from which they poured a terrible fire on the troops below and the boats pulling back to the destroyers for the second landing party. Here was a tough proposition to tackle in the darkness, but those colonials, practical above all else, went about it in a practical way. They stopped for a few minutes to pull themselves together, got rid of their packs, and charged their magazines. Then this race of athletes proceeded to scale the cliffs without responding to the enemy’s fire. They lost some men, but did not worry. In less than a quarter of an hour the Turks were out of their second position, either bayoneted or fleeing. But then the Australasians, whose blood was up, instead of entrenching, rushed northwards and eastwards, searching for fresh enemies to bayonet. It was difficult country to entrench. Therefore they preferred to advance.”
― John Hirst, The Australians: Insiders and Outsiders on the National Character since 1770

“May 1915. The Australians, who were about to go into action for the first time in trying circumstances, were cheerful, quiet and confident. There was no sign of nerves nor of excitement. As the moon waned, the boats were swung out, the Australians received their last instructions, and men who six months ago had been living peaceful civilian lives had begun to disembark on a strange and unknown shore in a strange land to attack an enemy of a different race. The boats had almost reached the beach, when a party of Turks, entrenched ashore, opened a terrible fusillade with rifles and a Maxim. Fortunately, the majority of the bullets went high. The Australians rose to the occasion. Not waiting for orders, or for the boats to reach the shore, they sprang into the sea, and, forming a sort of rough line, rushed at the enemy’s trenches. Their magazines were not charged, so they just went in with cold steel. It was over in a minute. The Turks in the first trench were either bayoneted or they ran away, and their Maxim was captured.”
― John Hirst, The Australians: Insiders and Outsiders on the National Character since 1770

“The maid-servant in Victoria has all the pertness, the independence, the mode of asserting by her manner that though she brings you up your hot water, she is just as good as you,”
― John Hirst, The Australians: Insiders and Outsiders on the National Character since 1770

“By the term Australian we mean not those who have merely been born in Australia. All white men who come to these shores – with a clean record – and who leave behind them the memory of class-distinctions and the religious differences of the old world; all men who place the happiness, the prosperity, the advancement of their adopted country before the interests of Imperialism, are Australian. In this regard all men who leave the tyrant-ridden lands of Europe for freedom of speech and right of personal liberty are Australians before they set foot on the ship which brings them hither. Those who fly from an odious military conscription; those who leave their fatherland because they cannot swallow the worm-eaten lie of the divine right of kings to murder peasants, are Australians by instinct – Australian and republican are synonymous.”
― John Hirst, The Australians: Insiders and Outsiders on the National Character since 1770

“This book collects what outsiders have said about Australians and Australian characteristics and what Australians have said about themselves. In some quarters this will be regarded as an unfashionable book because it believes that there is such a thing as an Australian national character.”
― John Hirst, The Australians: Insiders and Outsiders on the National Character since 1770