'To be Australian': what can that mean? Inventing Australia sets out to find the answers by tracing the images we have used to describe our land and our people - the convict hell, the workingman's paradise, the Bush legend, the 'typical' Australian from the shearer to the Bondi lifesaver, the land of opportunity, the small rich industrial country, the multicultural society.

The book argues that these images, rather than describing an especially Australian reality, grow out of assumptions about nature, race, class, democracy, sex and empire, and are 'invented' to serve the interests of particular groups.

There have been many books about Australia's national identity; this is the first to place the discussion within an historical context to explain how Australians' views of themselves change and why these views change in the way they do.