SOURCE: White, Richard. “Bohemians and the Bush.” In Inventing Australia: Images and Identity 1688-1980, pp. 85-109. Sydney: George Allen & Unwin, 1981.

In the following essay, White details the rise of national consciousness among Australian writers, artists, and intellectuals in the 1880s and 1890s.

The brave Bohemians, heart in hand, March on their way with spirits free; They count not moments, sand by sand, But spill the hour-glass royally. With wine and jest and laughter long, Their lives appear to pass, may be; But still beneath the river's song, There sounds the sobbing of the sea. 

Victor Daley¹

From the 1880s, just as ‘The Coming Man’ was coming into his own, a conscious attempt was being made in Australia to create a distinctively national culture. At the same time, it should be remembered, literary, artistic and musical nationalists in Europe and North America were also ransacking history, nature and folklore...