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Advance Australia Fair

In honor of the great book I read this week and reviewed this morning, I decided to make today’s Sunday Painting something from Australia. I have a quite a few great art postcards from our trip to Australia back in 2007. Unfortunately none of them have anything to do with the subject matter of A.B. Facey’s A Fortunate Life (which I review immediately following this feature).

One thing about Australia is how familiar much of it seems to an American, but also how different it is. I have said before it is like a fabulous parallel universe where things feel comfortable and foreign all at the same time. The Internet and globalization have opened up whole new worlds to whole new audiences, in a way that I certainly appreciate. But it is also nice to know that Australia is just isolated enough geographically to nurture a culture and outlook that is decidedly different from its English speaking friends in the Northern Hemisphere.

And so, while Facey’s memoir details the settling of at least part of this great continent-country, this week’s painting connects us with at least one aspect of Australia’s close relationship with the ocean that surrounds it.