1 John Rickard Australia: A Cultural History (Melbourne: Longman, 1988), p 1. See also Katharine Brisbane, ed. Entertaining Australia: Two Hundred Years of Opera in Australia (Melbourne: Macmillan and ABC, 1988), P 10: ‘From the start the entertainment culture [in Australia] was provincial yet, paradoxically, international in a real sense. In due course it matured into a cosmopolitan culture, gathering to itself the tastes and cultural traditions of many nationalities.’Google Scholar

2 Malouf, David, keynote address, ‘Australian Identities’ Conference, University College, Dublin, July 1996.Google Scholar

3 Astley, Thea, ‘Being a Queenslander: A Form of Literary and Geographical Conceit,’ Southerly 36: 263. I borrow the term ‘imagined community’ from Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism (1983; rev. ed. London: Verso, 1991).Google Scholar

4 Kouvaris, Linda, ‘An Act of Affirmation,’ Centre for the Study of Australian Music Newsletter 2 (1995), 4.Google Scholar

5 Brier, Percy, ‘Autobiography of a Musician’ mimeo (10 copies published Brisbane: Eric Blyth Brier, 1973); Percy Brier, ‘One Hundred Years and More of Music in Queensland’, mimeograph [1971], ARMUS Library, University of Queensland.Google Scholar

6 ‘The Pioneers of Music in Queensland’, mimeo (Brisbane: Musical Association of Queensland, 1962), p [1].Google Scholar

7 Brier, Percy, ‘One Hundred Years and More of Music in Queensland’, Chapter 1.Google Scholar

8 Stable, J.J., Introduction to J.J. Stable and A.E.M. Kirwood, eds, A Book of Queensland Verse (Brisbane: Queensland Book Depot, 1924), p xii. Fifty years later, in Because I Was Invited (Melbourne: OUP, 1975), p 61, Judith Wright voices the same idea: ‘In the “frontier” countries, life was at first a hard and raw struggle. Man was in opposition to nature, first and foremost, in a physical battle for survival. Hence what counted, in their societies, was usually material success; the life of the mind, education, and culture took a very minor place.’Google Scholar

9 Eva Mary O'Doherty, ‘Queensland’, in Byrnes and Vallis, eds, The Queensland Centenary Anthology, p 12.Google Scholar

10 See Stable, J.J. and Kirwood, A.E.M., eds, A Book of Queensland Verse (Brisbane: Queensland Book Depot, 1924); Henry Arthur Kellow, Queensland Poets (London: George Harrap, 1930); Cecil Hadgraft, Queensland and Its Writers (St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1959); R.S. Byrnes and Val Vallis, eds, The Queensland Centenary Anthology (London: Longmans, 1959).Google Scholar

11 Carole Inkster in Philip Candy and John Laurent, Pioneering Culture: Mechanics' Institutes and Schools of Arts in Australia (Adelaide: Auslib Press, 1994), P 270.Google Scholar

12 Brisbane, , p 68; Brier, ‘One Hundred Years and More of Music in Queensland’, Chapter 1.Google Scholar

13 Brisbane, p 68.Google Scholar

14 Fotheringham, Richard, ‘A Short Guide to the Theatre in Queensland’, unpublished paper acknowledged in Queensland: A State for the Arts, Report of the Arts Committee, February 1991 (Brisbane: Arts Division, Department of the Premier, Economic and Trade Development, 1991).Google Scholar

15 Brier, , ‘One Hundred Years’.Google Scholar

16 West, John, Theatre i Australia (Stanmore, NSW and North Melbourne: Cassell Australia, 1978), p 58; Brisbane p 68.Google Scholar

17 Dawson, Jenny, ‘Opera in Colonial Brisbane’, M.Mus. dissertation, University of Queensland, pp 172–173.Google Scholar

18 West, p 65.Google Scholar

19 Brier, , ‘One Hundred Years’, Chapter 5.Google Scholar

20 Queensland: A State for the Arts.Google Scholar

21 West, p 76.Google Scholar

22 Brier, ‘One Hundred Years’, Chapter 13.Google Scholar

23 Brier, ‘One Hundred Years’, Chapter 2. Brisbane gives 1924 as date for QS&M orchestra name change.Google Scholar

24 Brier, 100 Years, Chapter 5.Google Scholar

25 Covell, Roger, Australia's Music: Themes ofa New Society (Melbourne: Sun Books, 1967), p 124.Google Scholar

26 Astley, p 263.Google Scholar

27 Sitsky, Larry, interviewed by Belinda McKay, 28 September 1993.Google Scholar

28 Brumby, Colin, ‘Touring in the Outback’, Opera News (10 Jan 1970), p 13; Patricia Kelly, ‘Fellowship Allowed Brumby to Write Operas’, Opera Australia (March 1991).Google Scholar

29 McKay, Belinda, ‘Beethoven by Bus: Nancy Weir and Queensland Music.’ Queensland Review 2.2 (1995), pp 27–38.Google Scholar

30 Queensland: A State for the Arts, Report of the Arts Committee, February 1991 (Brisbane: Arts Division, Department of the Premier, Economic and Trade Development, 1991), p 3.Google Scholar

31 Queensland: A State for the Arts, pp 34, 63. The review was requested by Labor premier Wayne Goss, who was also Minister for the Arts.Google Scholar

32 The Federal Labor government's elevation of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra to the status of national flagship sparked fears that the other ABC orchestras would be deprived of Federal funding. These fears were exacerbated by the Coalition's 1995 budget, which slashed funding to the ABC. Theatre critic John McCallum reports the belief in the theatre community that ‘up to 10 theatre companies nationwide will have their Australia Council funding withdrawn next year and will therefore collapse’ (John McCallum, ‘Small Theatre: Exit Stage Right, Bleeding’, The Australian 11 November 1996, p 13).Google Scholar