(15) trove.nla.gov.au

http://trove.nla.gov.au
National Library of Australia: Australian Newspapers (1803 – 1954)
http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/home

Trove is the online search engine of the National Library of Australia. It not only provides access to the vast online resources of the library, it also combines other, high-quality resources that are freely available on the web – including books, journals, videos, music, pictures, photographs, diaries, letters, maps, archived websites and newspapers.

Looking for information about national identity (conveniently, one can search only in “Australian content”) will probably be successful in any of the above categories, but I would like to direct my focus on the extensive digital archive of Australian newspapers, currently ranging from 1803 to 1954, including a full-text search.

This could be a starting point for a research paper on Australian identity, for example, a diachronic analysis of the discourse about national identity, Gallipoli and ANZAC Day, and how it changed over time. The digitalized newspaper archive is an excellent first-hand resource, which can make visible how national identity was represented in the media and at the same time constituted through the process of representation.

Trove further allows searching only in ads or news, a certain decade or date, a minimum word count or a certain newspaper, which might prove very useful in any research article that involves first-hand newspaper resources; or to check and verify second-hand resources in other academic essays.

(07) cultureandrecreation.gov.au (The Bush)

http://www.cultureandrecreation.gov.au
Australia’s Culture Portal: The Australian Bush
http://www.cultureandrecreation.gov.au/articles/bush/index.htm

The Culture Portal is a government website designed to provide access to all kinds of information about Australian culture. It features recent news and events, more than 200 Australian stories with annotated links (for example, about Australian national identity), and it is a database for resources and more detailed information, as its search engine is linked to thousands of evaluated websites.

One of the Australian stories on the Culture Portal is about the Bush as an icon of Australian identity. As the invention of a national identity in the first place is closely tied to national myths, symbols and icons, being familiar with the history of the Australian bush is a sine qua non for analyzing movies, TV or radio shows as well as newspaper articles that draw on that national myth of the Bush.

The article features the early, formative years of the invention of the Bush (1790s to 1890s), the legends that surround it (like the story of the Ned Kelly gang), and the romantic idealism emerging after the 1890s. It then goes into more detail, depicting the development of the Bush in paintings, writing (poetry and newspapers) and, more recently, in TV shows and movies.