THERE IS a song, I Still Call Australia Home, which carries the sentimental banner for all the myriad Aussies who live far from the sun strange marsupials, and the gloriously cathartic football code.
Yet the man who wrote and sang it was not much like the hackneyed stereotype of an Aussie male the sun bronzed giant squinting at the horizon from under his Digger hat occasionally letting rip with a pronouncement such as "Yaaair".
No, the late Peter Allen (first husband of Liza Minnelli, incidentally) was an effervescent, sexually ambivalent entertainer who loved big city life, who gave his all on stage and was exuberant and confiding in private interview. Allen pranced around the stages of the world dressed in frilled shirts, singing When My Baby Smiles At Me I Go To Rio. Many of his fans were surprised to learn that he, with the slight American accent he acquired, was actually an Australian. But when it came to the reflective part of the show and presumably, of his life it was of Australia of the little New South Wales town of Tenterfield where his grandfather lived, that he sang.
There are many variants of a dinkum (genuine) Aussie now, and the issue of Australian identities (purposeful plural) is a major item on the agenda of Dublin's first Australia Week, taking place from July 1st to 7th. A conference at UCD under the stewardship of David Day, professor of Australian history there, will examine the meaning of being Australian in the 1990s. There will be film, dance, art and, as everyone from the Australian Ambassador down has made a big point of emphasising, an Australian wine fair at Jurys hotel.
But the question of identity is at the core of the exercise. The Australians and Irish have shared a burden in the big English language countries of the West a crass stereotype. The Aussie is loud, vulgar, drunk most of the time, and there's more culture in yoghurt. The Irishman is wild, stupid, drunk most of the time and sets off bombs. In a supposedly sophisticated city such as London, where large numbers of both Australians and Irish people live, these images still have amazing purchase. The success and erudition of business executives, performers and writers of both nationalities is only making a dint in ideas cherished because dare one say they made the master race feel superior.
David Day of UCD, one of the instigators of Australia Week, says he will be glad to get back to his roots when his three year stint ends in a few months. The Australia he sees is one of vibrance and complexity, and definitely not, as he says, some of his students arriving thinking. "Ireland down there". The Irish influence is still strong, but the proportion of Australians directly descended from the Irish has dropped from around 50 per cent earlier this century to around 20 per cent.
The question of identifying Australian identity has never been an easy task. For the first century and a half of the colony turned country, Britain dominated. The "Coca Colony" culture took over in the 1950s and `60s. Prime Minister Harold Holt, before he drowned surfing (now that's an Australian image), coined the unfortunate phrase "All the way with LBJ" as Australia lamely followed President Johnson's boys into the jungles of Vietnam.
But since the start of the 1980s and David Day traces it back to after the second World War there has been a new confidence and pride in being Australian. This is complicated by the vast melting pot of races that the island continent holds. Pick any set of features or skin colour and there are so many in Sydney and Melbourne and unconsciously expect a matching voice and you will often be wrong pure Strine comes out.
One intriguing mix David Day was hoping to lure to his conference, from July 3rd 6th at UCD, was the Aboriginal Irish. "We've had a few Aboriginal people over since I've been here looking into their Irish roots," he said. "They are mostly the descendants of Irishmen on the frontier, and have a huge interest in Ireland." One of them designed the livery on Qantas, the national carrier.
Unfortunately, no bearer of a mixed Aboriginal Irish name could attend, but the conference will be graced by David Malouf, fresh from his success in the Impac book prize the poet Peter Porter and other writers including Katherine Gallagher and Rick Fenely. The President, Mrs Robinson, will host a reception with the theme of Australian identities on July 2nd, and has written a foreword to the Australia Week programme. On the programme's cover is a detail from one of the Sidney Nolan paintings held at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, and the Nolans will all be on display during the first week of July
Apart from David Day, the other driving force behind the event is an Irishman, Mark Hennessy of the Department of Geography at Trinity College. Hennessy's interest in Australia grew out of an Australian government scholarship there in 1984-85, when he was studying the effect of the white man's settlement post 1788 on the landscape.
He has not been back since, but has maintained links and became part of the Irish Centre for Australian Studies, the body behind the conference. "This is a floating body," Hennessy says. "We hold lectures and seminars, some academic, but a lot for the general public. There is such a strong link between Ireland and Australia so many people have family there or have been there. One of our best attendances was 300 people when Thomas Keneally gave a talk on the Republican movement."
The Australia Week project he says, started small, then, like Topsy, just grew. "Initially we had planned the conference at UCD, which was mainly to be an academic exchange of papers on history, geography and the arts. I knew the IMMA had some Sidney Nolans, so I asked if they could exhibit them at the same time. Then the Irish Film Centre came in, with the suggestion of an Australian film festival."
From there, says Hennessy, the thing really snowballed. The list of attendees grew and grew. A West Australian dance company called Field Works got in touch, wanting to perform. The Nolan display spawned "Aerphost", with the works of more than 30 contemporary Australian artists assembled for a show at the Debtor's Prison in Green Street, Dublin 7 (running until July 14th). The wine industry flared its discriminating nostrils.
And so, if you want to learn about that place which gave the world Clive James, David Campese and Nicole Kidman, as we would say in Yackandandah, let `er rip. I'll be the one in the corner sobbing nostalgically into a big glass of Penfold's Chardonnay and mouthing I Still Call Australia.. Home.
