The edition that the Bulletin brought out in 1988 to commemorate Australia’s bicentenary ended up being both a literary treasure trove and a historical time capsule. In its pages are found an essay on national identity — what else? — from Manning Clark (‘Some time during the 21st century, a nation of borrowers has to become a nation of creators’); a Bush rhapsody composed by Frank Moorhouse (the Bushman was still ‘the personification of Australia’); and a kindly take on Australia’s bush capital from Blanche d’Alpuget (‘It has charms that reveal themselves only to its residents, and only over time’)....
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Nick Bryant is a BBC correspondent, formerly in Sydney and now in New York.
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