Australia has scant literary, or for that matter artistic, culture.
Ned Kelly is a meme at this point.
Native invasion has also reached meme status, because it's the best we've got.
Henry Lawson is a competent writer, but it seems to me that he writes himself into the corner of being a one-trick-pony.
Haven't read J.M. Coetzee, but apparently he writes with pretence of meaning.
Patrick White is adept at creating psychologies, and he did want to write about Australia. But his heart was in England. He had no ear for the Australian language, either. A non-Australian would be forgiven for thinking he was writing about British towns, environs and people.
Peter Carey's short stories are pretty damned good. I think he should be more well known.
Tim Winton. Haven't read him, however: apparently he's a fine writer, but he stays away from anything profound, or can't get near it to begin with.
So do we just give it time? Or do something?
The problem is not Australia's own fault so much as due to the fact that it is small (23.13 mil. people), and this country is so young relative to the rest of the world (only 229 y/o). Further, due to the fetishisation of the past/history, a feeling of inferiority is created, since the rest of the world has already "had" their culture, and it is so to speak too late for us. Like an adolescent trying to join a conversation with elderly people who clearly have much life experience.
My first and only thought is that we use two things in tandem to our advantage: a) this late-comer syndrome; the fact that we can observe these older cultures in action and learn from them; the need to finally say something using what we've learned, and b) multiculturalism. I don't say multiculturalism to mean some leftist attitude, nor some conservative critique of cultures. I just mean that Australia's population is multicultural enough that the theoretical Australian artistic presence could be very eclectic -- that is, drawing upon many sources, both learned from other cultures and those within our own. This, for better or worse, falls in nicely with the postmodernist dogma that originality doesn't exist; just combinations of things that have already been done.
The other option, which tastes sour to me, is that of whoring ourselves out to the Meme in exchange for scraps of culture cringe. (see: "hey cunt", general loose slander, "spiders", "everything in australia wants to kill you", bogans, beer, "radiation"). I mean, memes become memes for a reason, right, but especially on the internet we sell ourselves, and get sold as, one sided, monolithic. No culture is monolithic of course.
So what do we do? Be patient and give it time? Or actively try to create something? If everyone just sits back and waits for someone else to do it, nothing would get done.
If the latter, then how?