One pleasant surprise of being on Mastodon is my reading of and interaction with Australians here.
As a consequence, I've started to think more about Australia and what it does and does not have in common with the UK and other English speaking countries with a settler colonial history.
I've also been prompted to think more about the influence of Australians on British culture. Three names that come to mind are Clive James, Richard Neville, and Germaine Greer.
Clive James exercised a formative influence on critical writing about television in the UK. I'm not sure that influence was entirely benign, but it was certainly important.
Richard Neville is largely forgotten these days, but he was an important figure in the British counterculture of the late sixties and early seventies. I will be posting more about him in the near future.
Germaine Greer must count as the most important of the three. Her 1970 "The Female Eunuch" set the agenda for much of the debate about feminism in Britain in the years that followed.
Image: A composed satellite image of Australia -- Wikimedia Commons -- Public domain.
