It was a year which looked to be dominated by the "big issues": the republic, Aboriginal land rights, Pauline Hanson and the Asian economic meltdown.
In February an often rowdy Constitutional Convention revealed the deep divisions within the republican camp. And the bitterest debate was not whether a president should replace the queen as head of state but how such a person should be appointed or elected.
There was also the threat of the so-called race-based federal election which the government might have called over its controversial legislation to contain indigenous claims over vast areas of outback.
The pundits, who are generally pessimistic, claimed the poll would divide the nation, set race relations back years and seriously damage multiculturalism.
And in the midst of it all a red-haired Mrs Hanson and her xenophobic cohorts were strutting their stuff on the national stage. A deal over preferences in the Queensland state election in June had delivered them 12 MPs in the tropical state's parliament.
The same professional forecasters saw it as One Nation's time in the sun, and on the strength of the Queensland result the fledgling party was even tipped to win a balance of power in the federal parliament.
The alarm bells rang. Old absent friends and citizens of the country who hadn't been here for years were on the phone trying to find out what had happened to the happy-go-lucky country of their memory and myth.
On top of it all came the ominous storm clouds from exotic Asia. The previous Labour government of Paul Keating had wanted to reposition Australia, as the marketing people say, both economically and psychologically to become an adjunct of the tiger economies.
Yet developments in the destabilised region were threatening to overshadow the economic sunshine most Australians, at least those with jobs, were basking in.
But by year's end all the threats and uncertainty seemed to have vanished from the national consciousness and none more spectacularly than Mrs Hanson herself. So what went right? And for how long?
After two weeks of the bruising Constitutional Convention the republican issue fell into a deep slumber largely through sheer exhaustion. Not even the successful state visit in September of the Irish President, Mrs McAleese, managed to stir it.
Some nifty footwork by Prime Minister John Howard meant the race-based election never happened because the government's land rights bill was pushed through the Senate. Instead, the poll, in which he was returned on October 3rd, was dominated by more prosaic arguments about tax.
Shortly before, and the day after President McAleese left the country, Pauline Hanson delivered what was to be one of the set pieces of her campaign.
In the dusty stockman's bush town of Longreach she gave a spiteful sermon about the special welfare benefits Aborigines allegedly enjoyed over all others, regardless of their pitiful position on just about every index of disadvantage, unemployment and ill-health.
Pauline played the race card for all it was worth in what should have been her core constituency and despite the predictions . . . nothing happened.
Few One Nation voters, who polls said could represent up to 20 per cent of the electorate, showed up. Hanson herself exploded at the media as the strain of her comically-organised "campaign" showed through. And the two Aboriginal nurses who came in silent protest left with smiles.
The wheels had fallen off the wagon, and two weeks later on election night Hanson lost her seat in parliament.
Despite all the hype and hysteria it seemed enough voters saw through the empty rhetoric. The one Senate position the party won is now under legal challenge because the candidate had not renounced her British citizenship - a breach of the constitution.
At the time of writing, as we prepare for Christmas at Bondi Beach, most people seem to be complaining about the cloudy start to summer and the long southern hemisphere holidays. The "big issues" seem far behind us.
The economy has survived the Asian turmoil, at least so far, although the developing internal strife in neighbouring Indonesia promises political as well as economic instability will continue to infect the region.
Yet the shorthand headlines in today's newspapers indicate the agenda in 1999 and beyond might not be so different.
"Apathetic youth derails the republic," complains one columnist. Next year we vote in an historic referendum which should finally decide the R question and perhaps deliver a president in time for the centenary of Federation in 2001.
But the result and timing are still far from certain.
"PM seeks pact with Aborigines" is a turnaround which is in the news. Mr Howard has finally moved to make a meaning reconciliation with indigenous Australians by the historic benchmark of 2001.
But first there are the Sydney 2000 Olympics, which have already been threatened with Aboriginal boycotts and demonstrations.
And perhaps most ominously of all "One Nation stays united" is a report from the party's crucial Queensland conference. The party might be besieged by infighting, resignations and scandals but it's striving to reinvent itself, perhaps without Mrs Hanson, ahead of the New South Wales state elections next March when it will make another grab at power and can't be written off too soon.
So what really happened to those big issues? A stay of execution perhaps, the forecasters getting it all wrong again or the Lucky Country just living up to a once ironic description?
Over the next two years we shall have a chance to find out. They will not be going away.