1. The Australian Legend and the Frontier Thesis

Russel Ward outlined his interpretation of the Australian national character in his 1958 book, The Australian Legend.

METHOD
The Turner 'Frontier Thesis
Ward took F.J. Turner's 'Frontier Thesis' from American history and applied it to Australia. Turner described how the American frontier had developed individualism as the dominant spirit in the United States. The availability of fertile land on the American frontier for individuals to take up and therefore achieve economic independence had provided the environment for this feeling.

The Australian Frontier
Ward reversed this for Australia. He claimed that the Australian frontier had produced a collectivist ethos, the 'bush ethos'. Australia's geography had made it impossible for the small man to succeed by himself.
In The Australian Legend, Ward argued that 'scanty rainfall and great distances ensured that most of the habitable land could be occupied only sparsely and by pastoralists'.

The Society Created By Australia's Geography
The pastoral properties, because of the dry climate and infertility of the soil, were so large that there were few pastoral properties and therefore few landowners.
However, the pastoralists, known as 'squatters', employed many hands, such as stockmen to look after the sheep and cattle, and shearers to shear the wool from the sheep. Ward contrasted this experience with that of the small American farmers who were in large numbers on the American frontier:

The plain fact is that the typical Australian frontiersman in the last century was a wage-worker who did not, usually, expect to become anything else.... his economic interests, unlike those of the American frontiersman, reinforced this tendency towards a social, collectivist outlook. By loyal combination with his fellows he might win better conditions from his employer, but the possibility of becoming his own master by individual enterprise was usually but a remote dream.

Australian National Characteristics
Ward wrote that this type of society had produced what he saw as the national values of Australia:
a. Mateship - a concern for the welfare of your fellowman.
b. Egalitarianism.
c. Anti-Authoritarianism.

See a summary of the ABC 1992 video on Ward's thesis, Sydney or the Bush.

Assessing How the Bush Myth was Created and its impact on the collective memory of Australians
On the 20th anniversary of the publication of The Australian Legend, the academic history journal, Historicial Studies, Australia and New Zealand, devoted its October 1978 issue to reappraising the strength of the Bush myth that Ward described in 1958.
Three articles dealt with the Australian Legend or Bush myth.

(1)Russel Ward in his article "The Australian Legend Revisited", emphasised that he was not so much saying that the Bush myth was reality in the nineteenth century, but tracing how a myth or national ethos had been created in the nineteenth century.

(2)Graeme Davison in "Sydney or the Bush" described how city intellectual in the 1890s disillusioned with urban squalor, competitiveness, poverty, and class distinctions had created an imagined country side of idyllic, egalitarian, and healthy settings that was more a product of their imagination and dislike for their own urban environment than the realities of rural life. This theme was also taken up in the ABC 1992 video The City and the Country.

(3)J.B. Hirst's article "The Pioneer Legend" noted the wide appeal of the Bush myth as a pioneer legend. It was malleable enough to include a range of pioneer experiences, individualistic and collectivist.

The Bush Myth and the Role of Women
One reappraisal missing from the 1978 set of articles was the observation that the Bush myth excluded women. This was later taken up by Kay Schaffer Women and the Bush (Cambridge, 1988). The ABC 1992 video The Drover's Wife also pursued the theme that the Bush myth is a masculine myth in which, contrary to what we know from history, women are not present.

Marilyn Lake in her article in Historical Studies in 1988 dealing with the idea of Masculinism also addressed how and who created the Australian Legend. She sees it as an assertion of men's interests similar to Feminism's assertion of women's interests. Lake believes the Bush myth was created by bitter urban male intellectuals  who did not like to be tied down by women and child, but preferred to live boozing away amongst male company.

The Small Urban Population of Australia

An argument against the Australian Legend is the statistical information that Australia has been a small mainly urban country throughout its history

Australian Non-Aboriginal Population American Population

• 1858 1 Million 1790 4 million

• 1918 5 Million 1830 13 million

• 1959 10 Million 1860 31 million

• 1982 15 Million 1900 75 million

• 2002 20 Million 1915 100 million

• 1967 200 million

• 2006 300 million

For the first 40 years 1788- 1828 white settlement was largely confined to small areas of the Australian continent.

Australia was comparatively highly urban.

In 1861

• NSW 41.1 percent urban

• Qld 40.6 percent urban

• Victoria 51.9 percent

In 1976 Australia was 86 percent urban (an urban area is one with a population of more than 1000)

Urban as 100,000 people of more in 1981:

• Australia - 63.5 percent

• United States - 55.5 percent

• Canada - 54.1 percent

• England and Wales - 51.6 percent

For comparing Australia and America’s more urban and rural population see:

• http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h980.html

Australia as Urban and Coastal:

2001 Census:

• 85 percent of Australians lived with 50km or 30 minutes drive of the beach.

• Only 13 percent of Australians lived in rural areas or small communities. This figure has been declining steadily:

Declining Percentage of rural population of Australian States

Urbanisation in Australia compared to Overseas

Country	Urban/Rural Percentage
Australia	84.5 Urban to 15.5 Rural (1966)
New Zealand	70 Urban to 30 Rural (1966)
USA	70.9 Urban to 29.1 Rural (1960)
Canada	74.3 Urban to 25.7 Rural (1966)
UK	79.1 Urban to 20.9 Rural (1969)
France	71.4 Urban to 28.6 Rural (1968)
Sweden	78.9 Urban to 21.4 Rural (1965)
Japan	67.7 Urban to 32.3 Rural (1965)
Chile	70.8 Urban to 29.2 Rural (1969)
Cuba	55.3 Urban to 44.7 Rural (1966)
Tanzania	5 Urban to 95 Rural (1967)