What does it mean to be an Australian? How has the idea of Australia functioned as a force of desire for white Western explorers, settlers and adventurers from European discovery to the present? How has Australian culture, and more specifically cultural attitudes concerning women, been shaped by the dominant myths of the bush, mateship, and man's relation to the land—all of which contribute to Australia's and the world's sense of an Australian national identity?

This study provides a new approach to these questions. It explores cultural myths of masculine identity to determine not so much what they say about men and women but how they construct ideas about masculinity and femininity and how these ideas circulate in Australian culture. The approach is interdisciplinary. The questions are posed with reference to a diverse body of materials which can be said to contribute to an understanding of the Australian cultural tradition. They include: the narratives of early exploration and settlement; the nationalistic literature of the 1890s and its critical reception; major twentieth-century historical studies of Australia; modes of landscape representation in Australian writing, film and popular culture; contemporary cultural studies of national identity, including feminist approaches; recent Australian films, including Picnic at Hanging Rock and Crocodile Dundee; and the continued vitality of myths about Australian identity as evidenced in current newspaper articles and television news reports, popular programs and advertisements, as well as attitudes about Australia and Australians which are asserted in everday life.