Topic
Australians, colloquially known as Aussies, are the citizens, nationals and individuals associated with the country Australia. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or ethno-cultural. For most Australians, several of these connections exist and are collectively the source of their being Australian. The country's law does not provide for any racial or ethnic component of nationality, instead relying on citizenship to define one as an Australian. In early colonial times, the term was primarily used for the native-born children of British and European settlers and convicts, before later broadening in scope. Since the postwar period, Australia has pursued an official policy of multiculturalism; it has the world's eighth-largest migrant population, with immigrants accounting for 30 percent of the population in 2019. Australian culture is of primarily Western origins, and is derived from its British, Indigenous and migrant components.
“Distance is the continual theme and has been one of the main conditioning factors in Australian history. She was distant and dependent, a continent swinging on a long chain in antipodean darkness.”
“[At the time of Federation] Most Australians were still strangers in a new land. The land was only half won.”
“I have just finished writing a full-sized novel; title, Such is Life; scenery, and northern Vic.; temper, democratic; bias, offensively Australian.”
“Earth is here so kind, that just tickle her with a hoe and she laughs with a harvest.”
“Surely what the Americans have done by war, Australians can bring about in peace.”
“Australia began her political history as a crouching serf kept in subjection by the whip of a ruffian gaoler, and her progress, so far, consists merely in a change of masters.”
Quotes via Wikiquote (CC BY-SA), each with its original source.
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