Culture

Since 1788, the basis of Australian culture has been strongly influenced by Anglo-Celtic Western culture. Distinctive cultural features have also arisen from Australia's natural environment and Indigenous cultures. Since the mid-20th century, American popular culture has strongly influenced Australia, particularly through television and cinema. Other cultural influences come from neighbouring Asian countries, and through large-scale immigration from non-English-speaking nations.

Arts

The rock art of Australia's Indigenous peoples is the oldest and richest in the world, dating as far back as 60, 000 years and spread across hundreds of thousands of sites. Traditional designs, patterns and stories infuse contemporary Indigenous Australian art, " the last great art movement of the 20th century"; its exponents include Emily Kame Kngwarreye. During the first century of European settlement, colonial artists, trained in Europe, showed a fascination with the unfamiliar land. The naturalistic, sun-filled works of Arthur Streeton, Tom Roberts and others associated with the 19th-century Heidelberg School—the first " distinctively Australian" movement in Western art—gave expression to a burgeoning Australian nationalism in the lead-up to Federation. While the school remained influential into the new century, modernists such as Margaret Preston, and, later, Sidney Nolan and Arthur Boyd, explored new artistic trends.^[300] The landscape remained a central subject matter for Fred Williams, Brett Whiteley and other post-World War II artists whose works, eclectic in style yet uniquely Australian, moved between the figurative and the abstract. The National Gallery of Australia and state galleries maintain collections of Australian and international art. Australia has one of the world's highest attendances of art galleries and museums per head of population.

Sidney Nolan's Snake mural (1970), held at the Museum of Old and New Art in Hobart, Tasmania, is inspired by the Aboriginal creation myth of the Rainbow Serpent, as well as desert flowers in bloom after a drought.

Australian literature grew slowly in the decades following European settlement though Indigenous oral traditions, many of which have since been recorded in writing, are much older. Writers of the 19th-century Bulletin School, such as Henry Lawson and Banjo Paterson, captured the experience of the bush using a distinctive Australian vocabulary. Their works are still very popular; Paterson's bush poem " Waltzing Matilda" (1895) is regarded as Australia's unofficial national anthem. Miles Franklin is the namesake of Australia's most prestigious literary prize, awarded to the best novel about Australian life. Its first recipient, Patrick White, went on to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1973. Australian winners of the Man Booker Prize include Peter Carey, Thomas Keneally and Richard Flanagan. David Malouf and David Williamson are also renowned writers and Les Murray is regarded as " one of the leading poets of his generation".

Many of Australia's performing arts companies receive funding through the federal government's Australia Council. There is a symphony orchestra in each state, and a national opera company, Opera Australia, well known for its famous soprano Joan Sutherland. At the beginning of the 20th century, Nellie Melba was one of the world's leading opera singers. Ballet and dance are represented by The Australian Ballet and various state companies. Each state has a publicly funded theatre company.

Media

Actor playing the bushranger Ned Kelly in The Story of the Kelly Gang (1906), the world's first feature film

The Story of the Kelly Gang (1906), the world's first feature length film, spurred a boom in Australian cinema during the silent film era. After World War I, Hollywood monopolised the industry and by the 1960s Australian film production had effectively ceased. With the benefit of government support, the Australian New Wave of the 1970s brought provocative and successful films, many exploring the nation's colonial past, such as Picnic at Hanging Rock and Breaker Morant, while the so-called Ozploitation genre produced international blockbusters, including the Mad Max series. More recent successes included Shine and Rabbit-Proof Fence. Notable Australian actors include Errol Flynn, Judith Anderson, Geoffrey Rush, Nicole Kidman, Heath Ledger and Cate Blanchett.

Australia has two public broadcasters (the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and the multicultural Special Broadcasting Service), three commercial television networks, several pay-TV services, and numerous public, non-profit television and radio stations. Each major city has at least one daily newspaper and there are two national daily newspapers, The Australian and The Australian Financial Review. In 2010, Reporters Without Borders placed Australia 18th on a list of 178 countries ranked by press freedom, behind New Zealand (8th) but ahead of the United Kingdom (19th) and United States (20th). This relatively low ranking is primarily because of the limited diversity of commercial media ownership in Australia; most print media are under the control of News Corporation and Fairfax Media.