General Aspects.

Australian society is made up of people from a rich variety of cultural, ethnic, linguistic and religious backgrounds, and this is a defining feature of modern Australian society. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have inhabited Australia for tens of thousands of years. Most Australians are immigrants or the descendants of immigrants who arrived during the past two hundred years from more than 200 countries. 

Mainland Australia is the world’s largest island - but smallest continent. 

Official Name: Commonwealth of Australia

Capital: Canberra

Continent: Oceania

Language: English

Other Languages: 

Mandarin (1,7%)

Italian (1,5%)

Arabic (1,4%)

Greek (1,3%)

Vietnamese (1,2%)

Population: 22,68 million (2012)

Music:

The first to create and transmit music in Australia were the Aborigines, their culture conveyed hereby instruments accompanying the songs were mostly wind, as the didgeridoo. In the beginning the music of non-indigenous origin folk style was usually the main theme was hidden and remote places, as always, in Australia's relationship with the land is a constant in the cultural manifestations.

Some of the songs were dedicated to the hardships and feelings of the new lands. The first settlers, who came in waves, Scottish, Irish, etc., continued the reason mentioned, over time added their own contribution to Australian music. The country type music emerged from this trend, then would emerging jazz. In the second decade of the last century and especially after World War II musical style became very popular.

The rock and pop has also been well received in Australia, groups like AC/DC or Midnight Oil are quite popular. Meanwhile the opera began to develop for a couple of centuries now Australian opera company is one of the most prestigious in the world and offers concerts in various locations including Auckland, New Zealand.

The Opera House of Sydney is known worldwide, this building so particular that resembles the sails of a sailboat is the icon of the city, also is the most recognized for conducting concerts and shows in direct. Each state has its own symphony orchestra, with all the effort as a whole and in particular that is aimed at the creation and musical performance throughout the country is not surprising that the cultural quality of Australia is the delight of locals and tourists.

Didgeridoo Sounds

Midnight Oil - Beds Are Burning

AC/DC - Back in Black

Art:

Visual Arts

Aboriginal Australian Art

Aboriginal people from Australia have a rich living culture stretching back at least 50,000 years. Since early 1970, aboriginal artists or from Torres Strait Islands have attracted international attention to their art and culture. The visual arts of Australia relate a different history about the country.  The works reflect problems that the contemporary Australia is confronting, including environment problems, the break up with urban means and changes inside the community.

The art of the aboriginal Australian people is product of a technique connected with their life way and earth, which are represented with lines that define many shapes. They use ochre, yelow, red, black and white colors. In many works, they represent kangaroos, turtles, lizards, crocodiles, and hunters.








Contemporary Aboroginal  Art









Main Painters

Albert Namatjira (1902–1959) was an Aboriginal artist from the western MacDonnell Ranges in Australia. The most famous Aboriginal artist and one of Australia's most famous artists, he was one of the pioneers of contemporary Indigenous Australian art.

Norah Simpson (5 July 1895 – 19 February 1974) was an Australian modernist painter. She began this kind of art in 1913. Her works have a strong influence of French art. 

Architecture

Australian architecture has had some special adaptations to compensate for distinctive Australian climatic and cultural factors. During the 19th century, Australian architects were inspired by developments in England. The architectural styles were strongly influenced by British designs. The Australian architects were inspired by developments in England. However, buildings were remodelled due to the unique climate of Australia, and 20th-century trends reflected the increasing influence of America. From the 1930s on, North American and International influences started to appear. Many urban designs and diversifications of cultural tastes, and requirements of an increasingly multicultural society.  

Main Architects

Philip Cox (born 1 October 1939)

Buildings: Sydney Olympics, Australian National Maritime Museum, Sydney Football Stadium, and Flinders Park in Melbourne.

John James Clark (23 January 1838 – 25 June 1915)

• The old Treasury Building in Melbourne, now the City Museum.

Clark began designing this building in 1857 when he was nineteen.  Construction began in 1858 and was completed in 1862.

• Melbourne City Baths

It was designed by Clark and his son Edward James in 1904.

• Melbourne (Queen Victoria) Hospital pavilion.

Clark’s original design for the Queen Victoria Hospital occupied an entire block in Melbourne’s CBD. In later years the hospital was relocated and subsequently a significant portion of the building was deconstructed.

Federation Square.

Parliament House, Canberra.

Melbourne City Baths.

Californian Bungalow Style.

The Sydney Opera House.

The Sydney Harbour Bridge.

The City Museum.

A typical Queenslander house.

The Queen Victoria Building, Sydney.

The Royal Exhibition Building, Melbourne.

• Australian 2005 (Photos)

• Australian Art 

• Australian Architecture

Literature:

Australia’s Aborigines had a rich oral tradition. It included not only sacred mythology, but also ordinary tales and stories—some oral history, or presumed to be so. A number of the stories existed in several versions; the version used depended on the situation and the storyteller. See Also Australian Literature. 

Australia’s six states became a nation under a single constitution on 1 January 1901. Today Australia is home to people from more than 200 countries.

Australian qualities: convicts, the bush, bushrangers, folklore, tales of pioneering, family sagas, floods, droughts, bushfires, battlers, Aboriginal people, Irishmen and lost children.

Early Australian novelists included: Marcus Clarke, (Stella Maria Sarah) Miles Franklin, Clarence (Clarrie or Den) Michael James Stanislaus (CJ) Dennis, Edward Dyson and Doris Pilkington. 

The most eminent fiction writer after 1945 was Patrick White, who won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1973. In a dozen novels from Happy Valley (1939) to Memoirs of Many in One (1986), White examined, often satirically, the conflict between inner consciousness and social existence.

Children's literature

Australia has a strong tradition of children's books. The earliest books published for children were mostly instructive tales - stories to teach children how to behave. By the late 19th century, Australian writers began to focus on stories showing real life experiences and everyday adventures, such as settling in Australia and family life.

Some children's books , are:  Norman Lindsay's “The Magic Pudding and May Gibbs”,  Snugglepot and Cuddlepie. Ruth Park also wrote the famous children's series The Muddle-Headed Wombat.

Theatre

Australian playwrights were largely ignored for a hundred years or so. Betty Roland had to wait 70 years to see her play performed, as the theatre owners were much more interested in bringing new overseas plays to Australia than taking a risk with local material. The Lighthouse Keeper's Wife by Mary Wilkinson was performed briefly in 1922, but the work of Tasmanian Catherine Shepherd has not been performed since its debut in 1942. However, the ABC began radio broadcasts of live drama in 1932, which focused attention on plays. 

Poetry

Henry Kendall, encouraged by Harpur, was the first Australian poet to draw his inspiration from the life, landscape and traditions of Australian, and its influence on human beings. George Gordon McCrae incorporated Aboriginal themes into his poetry. The English-born Adam Lindsay Gordon, with his Bush Ballads and Galloping Rhymes (1870), 'revitalised the traditional ballad form by infusing it with bush themes'.

Modern Australian poets were influenced both by the 'literary nationalism' of the late 1890s which espoused Australian values as well as the contemporary modernist writings which challenged writers to use their imagination and be innovative in describing what was 'real'.

'Sandgropers and Islanders' - Dorothy Hewett

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