Searching for Australian culture

It has a brave title, John Rickard’s Australia: A cultural history, for that adjective ‘cultural’ raises expectations difficult to meet. ‘Culture’, as Raymond Williams has explained, ‘is one of the two or three most complicated words in the English language.’ After reading the book I cannot help wondering whether the substitution of the word ‘social’ would have made for a more accurate subtitle. For what Rickard has given us is an impressive synopsis of recent research and inherited wisdom about the nature of Australian society. It will be a welcome addition to university and college reading lists on Australian history, but it is not, I believe, at the most fundamental level, ‘a cultural history’.