Australian Culture

The culture of Australia contains elements from many sources including the Aborigine and Anglo- Celtic cultures. In the 1850’s, the Gold Rush and post war immigrants made Australia one of the most diverse cultures around today.

Most people have settled along the coast, leaving the outback sparsely populated.

The indigenous Australians have a long and colourful history, but as more and more people from Europe arrived, their way of life became severely impacted by the colonisation.

Australia has achieved international recognition with its arts – from film to dance. Most of the major cities are also name to symphony orchestras.

Australian architecture has produced many iconic structures, the most famous most probably being the Sydney Opera House. Sydney also has some examples of Georgian architecture in the form of their early government buildings. Again, the Gold Rush brought a mass of Victorian architecture to house the many immigrants, in the 1960’s areas of concern, were raised as more and more of the earlier architecture was destroyed in the building boom of sky-scrapers – particularly in Sydney. Green bans were introduced to help protect 18 buildings and the Royal Botanic Gardens (which was earmarked for a car park).

Australia has produced world recognised authors including Neville Shute, Peter Caney and Les Murray. Germaine Greer and Clive James have also achieved recognition, more so in the UK than their home land of Australia.

Australian cuisine is mainly based on the English cooking done by the early British settlers. The BBQ has always been and still is an important part of Australian life and is almost an iconic part of Australia and its culture. It is also seen as a social event. In many Australian cities, there is a good restaurant trade offering food from a wide range of countries like, Greece, Turkey and China.

Along with the food, Australians weigh their drink with great importance! 32 out of the top 50 Australian drinks are alcoholic and are locally flavoured.

The Aboriginal culture and their music remains a main part of Australian culture. Their most famous instrument is perhaps the didgeridoo. In modern music, Australia has produced many acts from The Seekers to AC/DC, INXS and of course Kylie Minogue, all of whom enjoyed success world wide.

The television in Australia is run in a way which is similar to the UK. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) is a station run like our BBC with no commercials. It mainly runs programmes bought from the UK’s BBC and ITV. Along side the ABC channel, there is channel 9 which mainly shows programmes from the US such as CSI and Two and a half men. There is a multicultural channel called The Special Broadcasting Service (SBS) who broadcasts TV and radio programmes in a range of languages. As for programmes exported over seas, Home and Away, Neighbours and Steve Irwins Crocodile Hunter have been aired regularly in over 120 countries.

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