Page 16 : ... This date, 26 January, is rather half-heartedly observed now as "Australia Day."

Page 269 : The crisis of this contemporary Australian is that he may be unwittingly the slave to an obsolete image. He can be a timid fellow and see himself a swashbuckler; the taciturnity of the old bushman he converts into a studied inarticulateness; long-ago heroisms provide him with a continuing spiritual comfort in the conviction of his own heroic qualities if put to the test; carried to the extreme of image-assertiveness he can be a city man born and bred who will travel to Europe wearing a "Digger" slouch hat turned up at the brim and with a kangaroo and the Southern Cross boldly painted on his baggage. The saddest thing about him is his inability to see that he does not have to flaunt or prove his unmistakable Aussie-ness, that the record of his people no longer calls for self-advertisement. He is big enough now to be taken on his merits.
Yet his is the type that strengthens the forces of reaction in a time of enormous and critical change. Unconsciously he epitomises all the Australias that have formed him: he stands, a firm and strong man, with one foot in a hard past and the other in a comfortable but baffling present.