Editing Melbourne (section)

=== '''Books about Oz''' ===

* Bill Bryson's ''Down Under'' (2000) is probably the most widely read book on modern-day Australia, being a blend of wit, folk and sharp observations. That said, the American writer did not spend long in the country and it has the shallow feel of a pre-Olympics quickie.
* Robert Hughes' landmark history ''The Fatal Shore'' is superb and particularly good on brutal colonial treatment of Aboriginals. So, too, is Donald Horne's caustic polemic, ''The Lucky Country'' (1964). This is arguably post-war Australia's most influential work of non-fiction. It is also the most misappropriated title of any Australian book. He coined "lucky country" ironic and caustic epithet. The full sentence reads, ''Australia is a lucky country, run by second-rate people who share its luck.'' Meaning Australia showed less enterprise than almost any other prosperous industrial society and simply based its prosperity on raw material extraction. So no change there.
* Paul Sheehan's 1998 book ''Among the Barbarians'' is a critique of Australia - from the stultifying conservatism of the post-war years to the rise of Pauline Hanson, a blue collar Sarah Palin, and the creation of a cruel gulag of Detention Centers. Despite what most travelers think, Australia is a deeply conservative and religious nation and can be quite racist, which this book helps to explain why.
* On the fiction front, there is Tim Winton's much-loved ''Cloudstreet'', Murray Bail's ''Eucalyptus'', and Peter Carey's Booker prize-winning ''True History of the Kelly Gang''. John Birmingham's ''He Died with a Felafel in his Hand'' is a firm favourite for all those in share houses ''(by the way who has my copy?)''.
* Clive James's ''Unreliable Memoirs'' series falls somewhere between fiction and non-fiction - although some of James' best writing about his homeland is in his essays.
* Geoffrey Blainey's ''A Shorter History of Australia'' is a useful primer. Given the importance of Gallipoli, the country's oft-quoted foundation story, there is Les Carlyon's stunning history.
* One of the best recent histories is ''Unknown Nation: Australia after Empire'' by James Curran and Stuart Ward. For a social history of Australia in the 60s and 70s, look for books by the journalist Craig McGregor.
* Bruce Chatwin's ''The Songlines'' is a cult favourite that helped re-enchant Australia and, incidentally, changed the way modern travel writing is being written.

Patrick White was awarded the 1973 Nobel Prize for literature. He greeted the news that he had received the award for Australian of the Year in 1973 with, ''Something terrible happened to me last week. There is an organisation which chooses an Australian of the Year who has to appear at an official lunch in Melbourne Town Hall on Australia Day. This year I was picked on as they had run through all the swimmers, tennis players, yachtsmen.'' He was right, as he is largely forgotten today. Sport though? Everywhere.

The BBC discuss Australia's cultural heritage with the prize-winning authors Thomas Keneally and Kate Grenville, and the Aboriginal opera singer and composer Deborah Cheetham. Listen to it [http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b016w7zr here].