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British & American Influence on Australia

Decent Essays

Before 1945, many people, including Australians themselves, considered Australia to be nothing more than a British colony whose national identity was virtually the same as the British. During this period of Australia's history, our modes of entertainment, food, fashion, sporting culture and our social values and attitudes were largely dictated by British culture.
One of the most significant changes to have taken place in Australian society since the end of WWII, has been its drift towards American, rather than British culture. As the American way of life was projected further into Australia via popular culture, it would rapidly alter the ways we spent our money, entertained ourselves, dressed and socialised.
Australia in the 1980s was a …show more content…

The quest for an Australian identity
While the British and American influence has played a major role in defining the shape of Australia that we know today, a number of other influences have contributed to the development of the Australian identity.
As new settlers in a harsh, unforgiving land, the Australian identity was long bound to the stereotype of the tough, heroic bushman who fought to tame a difficult landscape. Australian values like 'mateship', 'fair go' and the 'Aussie battler' emerged as a result of this myth. Throughout the prosperous post-war years, however, a new Australian ideal emerged. Typical Australians were no longer stoic bushmen, but laidback, pleasure-seeking suburbanites who owned a ¼ acre block of land and enjoyed 'the good life'.
As migrants poured into Australia over the decades, they introduced new stories, traditions and perspectives to Australian culture. The traditional concepts of an Australia as a white British colony, or a land of struggling bush-dwellers, no longer seemed to fit with the diverse new reality of society. Also, as Aboriginal people were finally acknowledged as the original owners of the land, the role of Indigenous values in the construction of a true Australian identity became apparent.
Australian society has absorbed many cultural influences across the decades - not just British and American, but Indigenous, Asian, European and many more. As such, the Indigenous and migrant influence has

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