Cirrus@Austlit

Epigraph: The place, my lord, is much like Gideon's fleece The second time he laid it on the ground; For by the will of God it has remained Bone-dry itself, with water all around.

Yet, as a wheel that's driven in the ruts, It has a wet rim where the people clot Like mud; and though they praise the inner spaces, When asked to go themselves, they'd rather not.

The men are brave, contentious, ignorant; The women very much as one expects. For their religion, I must be excused, Having no stomach to observe their sects.

You must be wary in your conversation; For, seeing them thumb-high, you might suppose They recognised their stature, but beware! Their notion of themselves is grandiose.

Gulliver's report on Lilliput from James McAuley's The True Discovery of Australia

Author's Preface: This is not a travel book. There is nothing in it about the Dead Heart or the Outback, and little enough about the Bush, which Australians still love to praise as "the real Australia" though so few of them live there....It is a book about the sub-urban civilisation of the coastal fringe by a British migrant who lived there for five years and nearly settled there for ever. It is written in the belief that it is high time that Britain should take more seriously this young and vigorous nation to which she gave indifferent birth 170 years ago; and that Australians, who, like other people, dislike criticism intensely, are now mature enough to take it.