Australiana Quotes

“Invisible magpies warbled in the plane trees. Softly, gently, never running out of melodic ideas, they perched among the leaves and spun out their endless tales.”
― Helen Garner, Joe Cinque's Consolation: A True Story of Death, Grief and the Law

“...I'd felt dread about how average and suburban Brisbane seemed. The normalcy was stifling and that I yearned for bigger things, that I missed New York.”
― Bri Lee, Eggshell Skull

“Back then the towering gums marched down to the water and the area was sparsely populated with fibro weekenders - simple cottages and boat sheds - mainly owned by coal miners from the nearby Hunter Valley. My grandfather worked in the mines. He'd lend my family the one room boffy attached to his boasted almost every school holiday, and I have such vivid memories of jumping off his jetty and boiling crabs for dinner and fishing with a line wrapped around a piece of cork and playing in the rock pools and parking about in his tin runabout.”
― Nikki Gemmell, Why You Are Australian: A Letter to My Children

“An English friend says Australia seems so messy to her: 'Because of all the overhead wires - we don't have them like you do. Your country towns seem so untidy. The barbed wire for fences, all of that'.”
― Nikki Gemmell, Why You Are Australian: A Letter to My Children

“A lemon tree was nearly universal; other trees varied with climate - almond trees in Adelaide and Perth, plums and apples in Melbourne, choke vines and bananas in Sydney and Brisbane, a mango in Cairns, figs and loquats everywhere. For a few weeks, there was a gross overabundance of fruit and much trading ('I'll take some of your plums if you take some of my apples next month').”
― George Seddon