O'Carroll considers the dominant cultural image of the Antipodes - the 'arse-end of the world', 'down-under', or a 'European history of imagining' involving a 'New World' - and charts 'the hidden conceptual lineage of classical geography and cosmology' responsible for this cultural analysis. He argues that these views of history and Australian myths such as 'the bush' or 'the pub' paradoxically amount to cultural, colonial and utopian amnesias.