Growth of nationalism

By the late 1880s, a majority of people living in the Australian colonies were native born, although over 90 per cent were of British and Irish origin.[202] Historian Don Gibb suggests that bushranger Ned Kelly represented one dimension of the emerging attitudes of the native born population. Identifying strongly with family and mates, Kelly was opposed to what he regarded as oppression by Police and powerful Squatters. Almost mirroring the Australian stereotype later defined by historian Rusel Ward, Kelly became "a skilled bushman, adept with guns, horses and fists and winning admiration from his peers in the district."[203] Journalist Vance Palmer suggested although Kelly came to typify "the rebellious persona of the country for later generations, (he really) belonged...to another period."[204]

 
The bush balladeer Banjo Paterson contributed a number of classic poems to Australian literature.
The Australian Native (1888) by Tom Roberts of the Heidelberg School of art.The origins of distinctly Australian painting is often associated with this period and the Heidelberg School of the 1880s–1890s.[205] Artists such as Arthur Streeton, Frederick McCubbin and Tom Roberts applied themselves to recreating in their art a truer sense of light and colour as seen in Australian landscape. Like the European Impressionists, they painted in the open air. These artists found inspiration in the unique light and colour which characterises the Australian bush. Their most recognised work involves scenes of pastoral and wild Australia, featuring the vibrant, even harsh colours of Australian summers.[206]

Australian literature was equally developing a distinct voice. The classic Australian writers Henry Lawson, Banjo Paterson, Miles Franklin, Norman Lindsay, Steele Rudd, Mary Gilmore, C J Dennis and Dorothea Mackellar were all forged by—and indeed helped to forge—this period of growing national identity. Views of Australia at times conflicted—Lawson and Paterson contributed a series of verses to The Bulletin magazine in which they engaged in a literary debate about the nature of life in Australia: Lawson (a republican socialist) derided Paterson as a romantic, while Paterson (a country born city lawyer) thought Lawson full of doom and gloom. Paterson wrote the lyrics of the much-loved folksong Waltzing Matilda in 1895.[207] The song has often been suggested as an Australia's national anthem and Advance Australia Fair, the Australian national anthem since the late 1970s, itself was written in 1887. Dennis wrote of laconic heroes in the Australian vernacular, while McKellar rejected a love of England's pleasant pastures in favour of what she termed a "Sunburnt Country" in her iconic poem: My Country (1903).[208]

A common theme throughout the nationalist art, music and writing of late 19th century was the romantic rural or bush myth, ironically produced by one of the most urbanised societies in the world.[209] Paterson's well known poem Clancy of the Overflow, written in 1889, evokes the romantic myth. While bush ballads evidenced distinctively Australian popular medium of music and of literature, Australian artists of a more classical mould—such as the opera singer Dame Nellie Melba, and painters John Peter Russell and Rupert Bunny—prefigured the 20th century expatriate Australians who knew little of 'stockyard and rails' but would travel abroad to influence Western art and culture.[210]