Extract: Nation, Memory, Myth by Steve Vizard
Posted on 11 Jun 2025
How does myth generate meaning for a nation and its citizens? How does a national myth transform into symbolic performances of cultural memory and kinship?
After a long sojourn in China, Brian Johnston arrived in Cairns to join his sister on a campervan trip across the 'top end'. Into the Never-Never is a beautifully written and often hilarious account of their adventures in the remote outback and on to the coast and the cities, in search of the Australia they knew only from tourist brochures and soap operas.
The book is suffused with Johnston's growing affection for the country and its people. It is also shadowed by an acute awareness of Australia’s underlying cultural tensions. From warts-and-all accounts of casual racism in the outback to unabashed delight in Sydney’s Mardi Gras, Into the Never-Never presents Australia’s burgeoning cultural diversity in microcosm.
In his second traveller's tale, Brian Johnston's dry wit and wonderful descriptive powers are once again in evidence. Whether bogged on a beach in Broome, sightseeing in Canberra with a Laotian friend, or speaking with the traditional owners on a cliff-top in Kakadu, he never loses his keen sense of the absurd and his sensitivity to the nuances of everyday encounters.
Posted on 11 Jun 2025
How does myth generate meaning for a nation and its citizens? How does a national myth transform into symbolic performances of cultural memory and kinship?
Posted on 11 Jun 2025
Why has Antarctica long loomed large in Australian psyche? How did Australia come to see Antarctica as a natural extension of our territory and why…
Posted on 11 Jun 2025
Culture, society and human behaviour have forever been linked to nature. In her thought-provoking book, Lesley Head, geographer and Redmond Barry Distinguished Professor Emeritus at…
Posted on 25 Jun 2025
A short guide to how Print-on-Demand works at MUP.
Fri 27 June at 12:00PM
Four Seasons Hotel, 199 George Street, Sydney NSW 2000
Join Chris Hammer in conversation with ABC's Fran Kelly to discuss the updated edition of The River.
Thu 26 June at 6:00PM
Readings Carlton, 309 Lygon St, Carlton VIC 3053
Join us to hear Steve Vizard in conversation about Nation, Memory, Myth.
Tue 08 July at 6:00PM
Readings Hawthorn, 687 Glenferrie Rd, Hawthorn VIC 3122
Join us to hear Chris Hammer in conversation about his bestselling classic book, The River.
Thu 10 July at 6:30PM
Burnside Library, 401 Greenhill Road Tusmore, SA 5065
Learn more about author Chris Hammer's prize-winning non-fiction book about the Murray Darling Basin.