title: Culture of Australia

text: Contemporary Australia is also a culture that is profoundly influenced by global movements of meaning and communication, including advertising culture. In turn, globalising corporations from Holden to Exxon have attempted to associate their brand with Australian cultural identity. This process intensified from the 1970s onwards. According to Paul James,


title: Culture of Australia

text: When the Australian colonies federated on 1 January 1901, an official competition for a design for an Australian flag was held. The design that was adopted contains the Union Flag in the left corner, symbolising Australia's historical links to the United Kingdom, the stars of the Southern Cross on the right half of the flag indicating Australia's geographical location, and the seven-pointed Federation Star in the bottom left representing the six states and the territories of Australia. Other official flags include the Australian Aboriginal Flag, the Torres Strait Islander Flag and the flags of the individual states and territories.


title: Culture of Australia

text: The Australian Coat of Arms was granted by King George V in 1912 and consists of a shield containing the badges of the six states, within an ermine border. The crest above the shield and helmet is a seven-pointed gold star on a blue and gold wreath, representing the 6 states and the territories. The shield is supported by a red kangaroo and an emu.


title: Culture of Australia

text: Green and gold were confirmed as Australia's national colours in 1984, though the colors had been adopted by many national sporting teams long before this. The Golden Wattle ("Acacia pycnantha") was officially proclaimed as the national floral emblem in 1988.


title: Culture of Australia

text: Reflecting the country's status as a constitutional monarchy, a number of royal symbols exist in Australia. These include symbols of the monarch of Australia, as well as the monarch's vice-regal representatives.


title: Culture of Australia

text: Despite the fact that the King of Australia is not resident in Australia, the Crown and royal institutions remain part of Australian life. Australian currency, including all coins and the five-dollar note, bears an image of the late monarch, Queen Elizabeth II. Around 12% of public lands in Australia are referred to as Crown land, including reserves set aside for environmental conservation as well as vacant land. There are many geographic places that have been named in honor of a reigning monarch, including the states of Queensland and Victoria, named after Queen Victoria, with numerous rivers, streets, squares, parks and buildings carrying the names of past or present members of the Royal Family. Through royal patronage there are many organisations in Australia that have been granted a "Royal" prefix. These organisations, including branches of the Australian Defence Force, often incorporate royal symbols into their imagery.


title: Culture of Australia

text: Although Australia has no official language, it is largely monolingual with English being the de facto national language. Australian English is a major variety of the language which is immediately distinguishable from British, American, and other national dialects by virtue of its unique accents, pronunciations, idioms and vocabulary, although its spelling more closely reflects British versions rather than American. According to the 2011 census, English is the only language spoken in the home for around 80% of the population. The next most common languages spoken at home are Mandarin (1.7%), Italian (1.5%), and Arabic (1.4%); almost all migrants speak some English. Australia has a sign language known as Auslan, which in 2004 was the main language of about 6,500 deaf people.


title: Culture of Australia

text: It is believed that there were between 200 and 300 Australian Aboriginal languages at the time of first European contact, but only about 70 of these have survived and all but 20 are now endangered. An Indigenous language is the main language for 0.25% of the population.


title: Culture of Australia

text: Comedy is an important part of the Australian identity. The "Australian sense of humour" is often characterised as dry, irreverent, self-deprecating and ironic, exemplified by the works of performing artists like Barry Humphries and Paul Hogan.


title: Culture of Australia

text: The convicts of the early colonial period helped establish anti-authoritarianism as a hallmark of Australian comedy. Influential in the establishment of stoic, dry wit as a characteristic of Australian humour were the bush balladeers of the 19th century, including Henry Lawson, author of "The Loaded Dog". His contemporary, Banjo Paterson, contributed a number of classic comic poems including "The Man from Ironbark" and "The Geebung Polo Club". CJ Dennis wrote humor in the Australian vernacular – notably in "The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke". The "Dad and Dave" series about a farming family was an enduring hit of the early 20th century. The World War I ANZAC troops were said to often display irreverence in their relations with superior officers and dark humour in the face of battle.


title: Culture of Australia

text: Australian comedy has a strong tradition of self-mockery, from the outlandish Barry McKenzie "expat-in-Europe" ocker comedies of the 1970s, to the quirky outback characters of the ""Crocodile" Dundee" films of the 1980s, the suburban parody of Working Dog Productions' 1997 film "The Castle" and the dysfunctional suburban mother–daughter sitcom "Kath & Kim". In the 1970s, satirical talk-show host Norman Gunston (played by Garry McDonald), with his malapropisms, sweep-over hair and poorly shaven face, rose to great popularity by pioneering the satirical "ambush" interview technique and giving unique interpretations of pop songs. Roy and HG provide an affectionate but irreverent parody of Australia's obsession with sport.


title: Culture of Australia

text: The unique character and humour of Australian culture was defined in cartoons by immigrants, Emile Mercier and George Molnar, and in the novel "They're a Weird Mob" (1957) by John O'Grady, which looks at Sydney through the eyes of an Italian immigrant. Post-war immigration has seen migrant humour flourish through the works of Vietnamese refugee Anh Do, Egyptian-Australian stand-up comic Akmal Saleh and Greek-Australian actor Nick Giannopoulos.


title: Culture of Australia

text: Since the 1950s, the satirical character creations of Barry Humphries have included housewife "gigastar" Edna Everage and "Australian cultural attaché" Les Patterson, whose interests include boozing, chasing women and flatulence. For his delivery of dadaist and absurdist humor to millions, biographer Anne Pender described Humphries in 2010 as "the most significant comedian to emerge since Charlie Chaplin".


title: Culture of Australia

text: The vaudeville talents of Daryl Somers, Graham Kennedy, Don Lane and Bert Newton earned popular success during the early years of Australian television. The variety show "Hey Hey It's Saturday" screened for three decades. Among the best loved Australian sitcoms was "Mother and Son", about a divorcee who had moved back into the suburban home of his mother – but sketch comedy has been the stalwart of Australian television. "The Comedy Company", in the 1980s, featured the comic talents of Mary-Anne Fahey, Ian McFadyen, Mark Mitchell, Glenn Robbins, Kym Gyngell and others. Growing out of Melbourne University and "The D-Generation" came "The Late Show" (1991–1993), starring the influential talents Santo Cilauro, Tom Gleisner, Jane Kennedy, Tony Martin, Mick Molloy and Rob Sitch (who later formed Working Dog Productions); and during the 1980s and 1990s "Fast Forward" (Steve Vizard, Magda Szubanski, Marg Downey, Michael Veitch, Peter Moon and others) and its successor "Full Frontal", which launched the career of Eric Bana and featured Shaun Micallef.


title: Culture of Australia

text: The perceptive wit of Clive James and Andrew Denton has been popular in the talk-show interview style. Representatives of the "bawdy" strain of Australian comedy include Rodney Rude, Austen Tayshus and Chad Morgan. Rolf Harris helped defined a comic tradition in Australian music.


title: Culture of Australia

text: Cynical satire has had enduring popularity, with television series such as "Frontline", targeting the inner workings of "news and current affairs" TV journalism, "The Hollowmen" (2008), set in the office of the Prime Minister's political advisory (spin) department, and "The Chaser's War on Everything", which cynically examines domestic and international politics. Actor/writer Chris Lilley has produced a series of award-winning "mockumentary" style television series about Australian characters since 2005.


title: Culture of Australia

text: The annual Melbourne International Comedy Festival is one of the largest comedy festivals in the world, and a popular fixture on the city's cultural calendar.


title: Culture of Australia

text: The arts in Australia—film, music, painting, theatre, dance and crafts—have achieved international recognition. While much of Australia's cultural output has traditionally tended to fit with general trends and styles in Western arts, the arts as practised by Indigenous Australians represent a unique Australian cultural tradition, and Australia's landscape and history have contributed to some unique variations in the styles inherited by Australia's various migrant communities.


title: Culture of Australia

text: As the convict era passed—captured most famously in Marcus Clarke's "For the Term of His Natural Life" (1874), a seminal work of Tasmanian Gothic—the bush and Australian daily life assumed primacy as subjects. Charles Harpur, Henry Kendall and Adam Lindsay Gordon won fame in the mid-19th century for their lyric nature poems and patriotic verse. Gordon drew on Australian colloquy and idiom; Clarke assessed his work as "the beginnings of a national school of Australian poetry". First published in serial form in 1882, Rolf Boldrewood's "Robbery Under Arms" is regarded as the classic bushranging novel.


title: Culture of Australia

text: Founded in 1880, "The Bulletin" did much to create the idea of an Australian national character—one of anti-authoritarianism, egalitarianism, mateship and a concern for the "battler"—forged against the brutalities of the bush. This image was expressed within the works of its bush poets, the most famous of which are Henry Lawson, widely regarded as Australia's finest short-story writer, and Banjo Paterson, author of classics such as "Clancy of the Overflow" (1889) and "The Man From Snowy River" (1890). In a literary debate about the nature of life in the bush, Lawson said Paterson was a romantic while Paterson attacked Lawson's pessimistic outlook. C. J. Dennis wrote humor in the Australian vernacular, notably in the verse novel "The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke" (1915), while Dorothy Mackellar wrote the iconic patriotic poem "My Country" (1908) which rejected prevailing fondness for England's "green and shaded lanes" and declared: "I love a sunburned country". Early Australian children's literature was also embedded in the bush tradition; perennial favorites include Norman Lindsay's "The Magic Pudding" (1918), May Gibbs' "Snugglepot and Cuddlepie" (1918) and Dorothy Wall's "Blinky Bill" (1933).


title: Culture of Australia

text: Significant poets of the early 20th century include Kenneth Slessor, Mary Gilmore and Judith Wright. The nationalist Jindyworobak Movement arose in the 1930s and sought to develop a distinctive Australian poetry through the appropriation of Aboriginal languages and ideas. In contrast, the Angry Penguins, centered around Max Harris' journal of the same name, promoted international modernism. A backlash resulted in the Ern Malley affair of 1943, Australia's most famous literary hoax.


title: Culture of Australia

text: The legacy of Miles Franklin, renowned for her 1901 novel "My Brilliant Career", is the Miles Franklin Award, which is "presented each year to a novel which is of the highest literary merit and presents Australian life in any of its phases". Patrick White won the inaugural award for "Voss" in 1957; he went on to win the 1973 Nobel Prize in Literature. Peter Carey, Thomas Keneally and Richard Flanagan are recipients of the Booker Prize. Other acclaimed Australian authors include Colleen McCullough, Nevil Shute, Tim Winton, Ruth Park and Morris West. Helen Garner's 1977 novel "Monkey Grip" is widely considered one of Australia's first contemporary novels–she has since written both fiction and non-fiction work. Notable expatriate authors include the feminist Germaine Greer and humorist Clive James. Among the best known contemporary poets are Les Murray and Bruce Dawe.


title: Culture of Australia

text: David Unaipon is known as the first Indigenous Australian author. Oodgeroo Noonuccal was the first Aboriginal Australian to publish a book of verse. A significant contemporary account of the experiences of Indigenous Australia can be found in Sally Morgan's "My Place". Contemporary academics and activists including Marcia Langton and Noel Pearson are prominent essayists and authors on Aboriginal issues.


title: Culture of Australia

text: Charles Bean ("The Story of Anzac: From the Outbreak of War to the End of the First Phase of the Gallipoli Campaign 4 May 191"5, 1921) Geoffrey Blainey ("The Tyranny of Distance", 1966), Robert Hughes ("The Fatal Shore", 1987), Manning Clark "(A History of Australia", 1962–87), and Marcia Langton ("First Australians", 2008) are authors of important Australian histories.


title: Culture of Australia

text: European traditions came to Australia with the First Fleet in 1788, with the first production being performed in 1789 by convicts. In 1988, the year of Australia's bicentenary, the circumstances of the foundations of Australian theatre were recounted in Timberlake Wertenbaker's play "Our Country's Good".


title: Culture of Australia

text: Hobart's Theatre Royal opened in 1837 and is Australia's oldest continuously operating theatre. Inaugurated in 1839, the Melbourne Athenaeum is one of Melbourne's oldest cultural institutions, and Adelaide's Queen's Theatre, established in 1841, is today the oldest purpose-built theatre on the mainland. The mid-19th-century gold rushes provided funds for the construction of grand theatres in the Victorian style, such as the Princess Theatre in Melbourne, established in 1854.


title: Culture of Australia

text: After Federation in 1901, theatre productions evidenced the new sense of national identity. "On Our Selection" (1912), based on the stories of Steele Rudd, portrays a pioneer farming family and became immensely popular. Sydney's grand Capitol Theatre opened in 1928 and after restoration remains one of the nation's finest auditoriums.


title: Culture of Australia

text: In 1955, "Summer of the Seventeenth Doll" by Ray Lawler portrayed resolutely Australian characters and went on to international acclaim. That same year, young Melbourne artist Barry Humphries performed as Edna Everage for the first time at Melbourne University's Union Theatre. His satirical stage creations, notably Dame Edna and Les Patterson, became Australian cultural icons. Humphries also achieved success in the US with tours on Broadway and has been honored in Australia and Britain.


title: Culture of Australia

text: Founded in Sydney 1958, the National Institute of Dramatic Art boasts famous alumni including Cate Blanchett, Mel Gibson and Hugo Weaving. Construction of the Adelaide Festival Center began in 1970 and South Australia's Sir Robert Helpmann became director of the Adelaide Festival of Arts. The new wave of Australian theatre debuted in the 1970s. The Belvoir St Theatre presented works by Nick Enright and David Williamson. The Sydney Opera House, inaugurated in 1973, is the home of Opera Australia and the Sydney Theatre Company.


title: Culture of Australia

text: The Bell Shakespeare Company was created in 1990. A period of success for Australian musical theatre came in the 1990s with the debut of musical biographies of Australian music singers Peter Allen ("The Boy From Oz" in 1998) and Johnny O'Keefe ("Shout! The Legend of The Wild One").


title: Culture of Australia

text: In "The One Day of the Year", Alan Seymour studied the paradoxical nature of the ANZAC Day commemoration by Australians of the defeat of the Battle of Gallipoli. "Ngapartji Ngapartji", by Scott Rankin and Trevor Jamieson, recounts the story of the effects on the Pitjantjatjara people of nuclear testing in the Western Desert during the Cold War. It is an example of the contemporary fusion of traditions of drama in Australia with Pitjantjatjara actors being supported by a multicultural cast of Greek, Afghan, Japanese and New Zealand heritage.


title: Culture of Australia

text: Australia has three architectural listings on UNESCO's World Heritage list: Australian Convict Sites (comprising a collection of separate sites around Australia, including Hyde Park Barracks in Sydney, Port Arthur in Tasmania, and Fremantle Prison in Western Australia); the Sydney Opera House; and the Royal Exhibition Building in Melbourne. Contemporary Australian architecture includes a number of other iconic structures, including the Harbor Bridge in Sydney and Parliament House, Canberra. Significant architects who have worked in Australia include Governor Lachlan Macquarie's colonial architect, Francis Greenway; the ecclesiastical architect William Wardell; the designer of Canberra's layout, Walter Burley Griffin; the modernist Harry Seidler; and Jørn Utzon, designer of the Sydney Opera House. The National Trust of Australia is a non-governmental organisation charged with protecting Australia's built heritage.


title: Culture of Australia

text: Evidence of permanent structures built by Indigenous Australians before European settlement of Australia in 1788 is limited. Much of what they built was temporary, and was used for housing and other needs. As a British colony, the first European buildings were derivative of the European fashions of the time. Tents and wattle and daub huts preceded more substantial structures. Georgian architecture is seen in early government buildings of Sydney and Tasmania and the homes of the wealthy. While the major Australian cities enjoyed the boom of the Victorian era, the Australian gold rushes of the mid-19th century brought major construction works and exuberant Victorian architecture to the major cities, particularly Melbourne, and regional cities such as Ballarat and Bendigo. Other significant architectural movements in Australian architecture include the Federation style at the turn of the 20th century, and the modern styles of the late 20th century which also saw many older buildings demolished. The Queenslander is the primarily residential style of warm climate architecture developed in Queensland and northern parts of New South Wales.


title: Culture of Australia

text: Religious architecture is also prominent throughout Australia, with large Anglican and Catholic cathedrals in every major city and Christian churches in most towns. Notable examples include St Patrick's Cathedral, Melbourne and St Mary's Cathedral, Sydney. Other houses of worship are also common, reflecting the cultural diversity existing in Australia; the oldest Islamic structure in the Southern Hemisphere is the Central Adelaide Mosque (built in the 1880s), and one of the Southern Hemisphere's largest Buddhist Temples is Wollongong's Nan Tien Temple. Sydney's Gothic-style Great Synagogue was consecrated in 1878.


title: Culture of Australia

text: Significant concern was raised during the 1960s, with developers threatening the destruction of historical buildings, especially in Sydney. Heritage concerns led to union-initiated "green bans", which saved significant examples of Australia's architectural past. Green bans helped to protect historic 18th-century buildings in The Rocks from being demolished to make way for office towers, and prevented the Royal Botanic Gardens from being turned into a car park for the Sydney Opera House.


title: Culture of Australia

text: Aboriginal rock art is the oldest continuous art tradition in the world, dating as far back as 60,000 years. From the Gwion Gwion and Wondjina imagery in the Kimberley to the Sydney rock engravings, it is spread across hundreds of thousands of sites, making Australia the richest continent in terms of prehistoric art. 19th-century Indigenous activist William Barak painted ceremonial scenes, such as corroborees. The Hermannsburg School, led by Albert Namatjira, received national fame in the 1950s for their desert watercolors. Leading critic Robert Hughes saw contemporary Indigenous art as "the last great art movement of the 20th century". Key exponents such as Emily Kame Kngwarreye, Rover Thomas and the Papunya Tula group use acrylic paints on canvas to depict dreamings set in a symbolic topography. Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri's "Warlugulong" (1977) typifies this style, popularly known as "dot painting". Art is important both culturally and economically to Indigenous society; central Australian Indigenous communities have "the highest per capita concentrations of artists anywhere in the world". Issues of race and identity are raised in the works of many 'urban' Indigenous artists, including Gordon Bennett and Tracey Moffatt.


title: Culture of Australia

text: John Glover and Eugene von Guerard were among the foremost landscape painters during the colonial era. The origins of a distinctly Australian school of painting is often associated with the Heidelberg School of the late 1800s. Major figures of the movement include Tom Roberts, Arthur Streeton and Frederick McCubbin. They painted "en plein air", like the French Impressionists, and sought to capture the intense light and unique colours of the Australian bush. Popular works such as McCubbin's "Down on His Luck" (1889) and Roberts' "Shearing the Rams" (1890) defined an emerging sense of national identity in the lead-up to Federation. Civic monuments to national heroes were erected; an early example is Charles Summers' 1865 statue of the ill-fated explorers Burke and Wills, located in Melbourne.


title: Culture of Australia

text: Among the first Australian artists to gain a reputation overseas was the impressionist John Peter Russell in the 1880s. He and Charles Conder of the Heidelberg School were the only Australian painters known to have close links with the European avant-garde at the time. Other notable expatriates include Rupert Bunny, a salon painter of sensual portraits, and sculptor Bertram Mackennal, known for his commissioned works in Australia and abroad.


title: Culture of Australia

text: The Heidelberg tradition lived on in Hans Heysen's imagery of gum trees. Roy de Maistre and Grace Cossington Smith were pioneers of modernism in Australia. Jessie Traill and Margaret Preston excelled at printmaking; the latter artist advocated for a modern national art based on Aboriginal designs. The conservative art establishment largely opposed modern art, as did the Lindsays and Australian Tonalists. Controversy over modern art in Australia reached a climax when William Dobell won the 1943 Archibald Prize for portraiture. Despite such opposition, new artistic trends grew in popularity. Photographer Max Dupain created bold modernist compositions of Sydney beach culture. Sidney Nolan, Arthur Boyd, Joy Hester and Albert Tucker were members of the Angry Penguins, a group of expressionists who revived Australian landscape painting through the use of myth, folklore and personal symbolism. The use of surrealism allowed artists to evoke the strange disquiet of the outback, exemplified in Nolan's iconic Ned Kelly series and Russell Drysdale's "The Cricketers" (1948). The post-war landscapes of Fred Williams, Ian Fairweather and John Olsen border on abstraction, while the Antipodeans and Brett Whiteley further explored the possibilities of figurative painting.


title: Culture of Australia

text: Photographer Bill Henson, sculptor Ron Mueck, and "living art exhibit" Leigh Bowery are among Australia's best-known contemporary artists. Pro Hart's output of Australiana, Michael Leunig's poetic cartoons, and Ken Done's Sydney Harbor views are widely known through reproductions. Public artworks have sprung up in unlikely places, from the annual Sculpture by the Sea exhibitions to the rural folk art of "Australia's big things". Australian street art flourished at the turn of the 21st century, particularly in Melbourne.


title: Culture of Australia

text: Major arts institutions in Australia include the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, the National Gallery of Australia, National Museum of Australia and National Portrait Gallery in Canberra, and the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney. The Museum of Old and New Art in Hobart is the Southern Hemisphere's largest private museum.


title: Culture of Australia

text: Australia's first dedicated film studio, the Limelight Department, was created by The Salvation Army in Melbourne in 1898, and is believed to be the world's first. The world's first feature-length film was the 1906 Australian production "The Story of the Kelly Gang". Tales of bushranging, gold mining, convict life and the colonial frontier dominated the silent film era of Australian cinema. Filmmakers such as Raymond Longford and W. J. Lincoln based many of their productions on Australian novels, plays, and even paintings. An enduring classic is Longford and Lottie Lyell's 1919 film "The Sentimental Bloke", adapted from the 1915 poems by C. J. Dennis. After such early successes, Australian cinema suffered from the rise of Hollywood.


title: Culture of Australia

text: In 1933, "In the Wake of the Bounty" was directed by Charles Chauvel, who cast Errol Flynn as the leading actor. Flynn went on to a celebrated career in Hollywood. Chauvel directed a number of successful Australian films, the last being 1955's "Jedda", which was notable for being the first Australian film to be shot in color, and the first to feature Aboriginal actors in lead roles and to be entered at the Cannes Film Festival. It was not until 2006 and Rolf de Heer's "Ten Canoes" that a major feature-length drama was shot in an Indigenous language (Yolngu).


title: Culture of Australia

text: Ken G. Hall's 1942 documentary feature "Kokoda Front Line!" was the first Australian film to win an Academy Award. In 1976, Peter Finch posthumously became the first Australian actor to win an Oscar for his role in "Network".


title: Culture of Australia

text: During the late 1960s and 1970s an influx of government funding saw the development of a new generation of filmmakers telling distinctively Australian stories, including directors Peter Weir, George Miller and Bruce Beresford. This era became known as the Australian New Wave. Films such as "Wake in Fright", "Walkabout" and "Picnic at Hanging Rock" had an immediate international impact. These successes were followed in the 1980s with the historical epic "Gallipoli", the romantic drama "The Man From Snowy River", the comedy ""Crocodile" Dundee", and the post-apocalyptic Mad Max series.


title: Culture of Australia

text: The 1990s saw a run of successful comedies including "Muriel's Wedding" and "Strictly Ballroom", which helped launch the careers of Toni Collette and Baz Luhrmann respectively. Australian humor features prominently in Australian film, with a strong tradition of self-mockery, from the "Ozploitation" style of the Barry McKenzie "expat-in-Europe" movies of the 1970s, to the Working Dog Productions' 1997 homage to suburbia "The Castle", starring Eric Bana in his debut film role. Comedies like the barn yard animation "Babe" (1995), directed by Chris Noonan; Rob Sitch's "The Dish" (2000); and Stephan Elliott's "The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert" (1994) all feature in the top ten box-office list. During the 1990s, a new crop of Australian stars were successful in Hollywood, including Russell Crowe, Cate Blanchett and Heath Ledger. Between 1996 and 2013, Catherine Martin won four Academy Awards for her costume and production designs, the most for any Australian. "Saw" (2004) and "Wolf Creek" (2005) are credited with the revival of Australian horror. The comedic, exploitative nature and "gimmicky" style of 1970s Ozploitation films waned in the mid to late 1980s, as social realist dramas such as "Romper Stomper" (1992), "Lantana" (2001) and "Samson and Delilah" (2009) became more reflective of the Australian experience in the 1980s, 90s and 2000s.


title: Culture of Australia

text: The domestic film industry is also supported by US producers who produce in Australia following the decision by Fox head Rupert Murdoch to utilise new studios in Melbourne and Sydney where filming could be completed well below US costs. Notable productions include "The Matrix", "Star Wars" episodes and , and "Australia" starring Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman.


title: Culture of Australia

text: Music is an integral part of Aboriginal culture. The most famous feature of their music is the didgeridoo. This wooden instrument, used among the Aboriginal tribes of northern Australia, makes a distinctive droning sound and it has been adopted by a wide variety of non-Aboriginal performers.


title: Culture of Australia

text: Aboriginal musicians have turned their hand to Western popular musical forms, often to considerable commercial success. Pioneers include Lionel Rose and Jimmy Little, while notable contemporary examples include Archie Roach, Kev Carmody, the Warumpi Band, Troy Cassar-Daley and Yothu Yindi. Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu (formerly of Yothu Yindi) has attained international success singing contemporary music in English and in the language of the Yolngu. Christine Anu is a successful Torres Strait Islander singer. Among young Australian aborigines, African-American and Aboriginal hip hop music and clothing is popular.


title: Culture of Australia

text: The Deadly Awards are an annual celebration of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander achievement in music, sport, entertainment and community.


title: Culture of Australia

text: The early Anglo-Celtic immigrants of the 18th and 19th centuries introduced folk ballad traditions which were adapted to Australian themes: "Bound for Botany Bay" tells of the voyage of British convicts to Sydney, "The Wild Colonial Boy" evokes the spirit of the bushrangers, and "Click Go the Shears" speaks of the life of Australian shearers. The lyrics of Australia's best-known folk song, "Waltzing Matilda", were written by the bush poet Banjo Paterson in 1895. This song remains popular and is regarded as "the nation's unofficial national anthem".


title: Culture of Australia

text: Well-known singers of Australian folk music include Rolf Harris (who wrote "Tie Me Kangaroo Down Sport"), John Williamson, and Eric Bogle whose 1972 song "And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda" is a sorrowful lament to the Gallipoli Campaign.


title: Culture of Australia

text: The earliest Western musical influences in Australia can be traced back to two distinct sources: the first free settlers who brought with them the European classical music tradition, and the large body of convicts and sailors, who brought the traditional folk music of England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales. The practicalities of building a colony mean that there is very little music extant from this early period, although some samples of music originating from Hobart and Sydney date back to the early-19th century.


title: Culture of Australia

text: Nellie Melba traveled to Europe in 1886 to commence her international career as an opera singer. She became among the best-known Australians of the period and participated in early gramophone-recording and radio-broadcasting. The establishment of choral societies ( 1850) and of symphony orchestras ( 1890) led to increased compositional activity, although many Australian classical composers worked entirely within European models. Popular works such as Percy Grainger's "Country Gardens" (1918) were heavily influenced by the folk music of other countries and by a conservative British orchestral tradition.


title: Culture of Australia

text: In the mid 20th century, as pressure built to express a uniquely Australian identity in music, composers such as John Antill


title: Culture of Australia

text: and Peter Sculthorpe drew influences from nature and Aboriginal culture, and Richard Meale turned to south-east Asian music. Nigel Butterley combined his penchant for international modernism with his own individual voice.


title: Culture of Australia

text: At the beginning of the 1960s Australian classical music erupted with influences, with composers incorporating disparate elements into their work, ranging from Aboriginal and Southeast Asian music and instruments, to American jazz and blues, and belatedly discovering European atonality and the avant-garde. Composers like Don Banks (1923–1980), Don Kay, Malcolm Williamson and Colin Brumby (1933–2018) epitomise this period. In recent times composers including Liza Lim, Nigel Westlake, Ross Edwards, Graeme Koehne, Julian Cochran, Georges Lentz, Elena Kats-Chernin, Richard Mills, Brett Dean and Carl Vine have embodied the pinnacle of established Australian composers.


title: Culture of Australia

text: Well-known Australian classical performers include: sopranos Dame Joan Sutherland, Dame Joan Hammond, Joan Carden, Yvonne Kenny, and Emma Matthews; pianists Roger Woodward, Eileen Joyce, Geoffrey Tozer, Leslie Howard and Ian Munro; guitarists John Williams and Slava Grigoryan; horn player Barry Tuckwell; oboist Diana Doherty; violinists Richard Tognetti and Elizabeth Wallfisch; cellist David Pereira; orchestras including the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, the Australian Chamber Orchestra and the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra; and conductors Sir Charles Mackerras, and Simone Young. Indigenous performers like didgeridoo-player William Barton and immigrant musicians like Egyptian-born oud virtuoso Joseph Tawadros have stimulated interest in their own music traditions and have also collaborated with other musicians and ensembles, both in Australia and internationally.


title: Culture of Australia

text: Johnny O'Keefe became the first Australian rock and roll artist to reach the national charts with his 1958 hit "Wild One". While American and British content dominated airwaves and record sales into the 1960s, local successes began to emerge, notably The Easybeats and The Seekers. The Bee Gees and AC/DC rose to prominence in Australia before going on to international success. Australian performers continued to do well at a local and international level into the 1980s, for example Cold Chisel, INXS, Nick Cave, Crowded House, Midnight Oil and Little River Band. Held since 1987, the ARIAs are Australia's premier music awards. Silverchair, Powderfinger, AC/DC, John Farnham, Jimmy Barnes, the Bee Gees, Savage Garden, Tina Arena, Vanessa Amorosi and Kylie Minogue are among the most successful artists in the awards' history. Singer-songwriter Paul Kelly, whose music style straddles folk, rock, and country, has been described as the "poet laureate" of Australian music. Spurred in part by the national expansion of ABC youth radio station Triple J, a string of successful alternative Australian acts have emerged since the 1990s, including You Am I, Gotye, Sia and Tame Impala.


title: Culture of Australia

text: Australian country music has developed a style quite distinct from its American counterpart, drawing more on Celtic folk and the Australian bush ballad tradition. Pioneers of popular Australian country music include Tex Morton in the 1930s and Smoky Dawson from the 1940s onward. Known as the "King of Australian Country Music", Slim Dusty released over 100 albums in a career spanning almost six decades; his 1957 hit "A Pub With No Beer" was the first Australian single to go gold. Dusty's wife Joy McKean penned several of his most popular songs. Other notable Australian country music performers include John Williamson who wrote the iconic song "True Blue", Lee Kernaghan, Adam Brand and Kasey Chambers. Olivia Newton-John and Keith Urban have attained success in the United States. The Tamworth Country Music Festival is held annually in Tamworth, the "Country Music Capital of Australia". During the festival the Country Music Association of Australia holds the Country Music Awards of Australia ceremony awarding the Golden Guitar trophies.


title: Culture of Australia

text: The ceremonial dances of Indigenous Australians recount stories of the Dreamtime and have been performed for thousands of years.


title: Culture of Australia

text: Bush dance is a traditional style of Australian dance with strong Celtic roots influenced by country music. It is generally accompanied by such instruments as the fiddle, accordion, concertina and percussion instruments.


title: Culture of Australia

text: Experiments with television began in Australia in the 1930s and television was officially launched on 16 September 1956 in Sydney. Colour TV arrived in 1975. The Logie Awards are the major annual awards for Australian TV.


title: Culture of Australia

text: While US and British television is popular in Australia, locally produced content has had many successes. Successful local product has included "Homicide" and "Division 4" in the late 1960s and early 1970s, "Play School" and "Skippy the Bush Kangaroo" in the late 1960s, "Matlock Police", "The Sullivans", "The Young Doctors", "Number 96" and "The Box" in the 1970s, "The Flying Doctors", "Round the Twist", "Prisoner" and "A Country Practice" (1981–1993) in the 1980s, "Blue Heelers", "Neighbours" and "Home and Away" in the 1980s and 1990s and "Summer Heights High" and "" in the 2000s. Since then shows like "Packed to the Rafters", "SeaChange" and "Wentworth" have continued to help redefine Australian television. Many of the shows from the mid-1980s onwards have been exported and have sometimes been even more successful abroad, such as Steve Irwin's "The Crocodile Hunter". Popular stars of Australian TV have included: the pioneer variety show hosts Graham Kennedy, Bert Newton, Don Lane and Daryl Somers, and contemporary talk show hosts Mike Willesee, Steve Vizard, Ray Martin, Mike Munro, Andrew Denton and Rove McManus. Popular international exports include the Bee Gees, Dame Edna Everage, Sir Les Patterson, AC/DC, The Fairies, Clive James, Geoffrey Robertson and The Wiggles.


title: Culture of Australia

text: While Australia has ubiquitous media coverage, the longest established part of that media is the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), the Federal Government owned and funded organisation offering national TV and radio coverage. The ABC, like the BBC in Britain, CBC in Canada, and PBS in the United States, is a non-commercial public service broadcaster, showing many BBC or ITV productions from Britain. The publicly funded Special Broadcasting Service (SBS) has a multicultural focus, broadcasting TV and radio programs in a variety of languages, as well as world news and documentary programming in English. SBS commenced as a commercial-free enterprise, but this changed in 2006 with the broadcasting of commercials between programs. In 2005, ABC and SBS accounted for 15.7% and 6.1% of the national ratings, respectively.


title: Culture of Australia

text: Commercial broadcasters include the Seven Network, the Nine Network and Network Ten on free-to-air broadcasting to the larger cities with affiliated regional networks like Prime Television and Win Television broadcasting to regional areas. Foxtel, Austar and Optus Television have been the main providers of pay TV. Fox 8 and Sky News Australia are among the popular Pay TV channels. The Australia Network, established in 2001, is Australia's international television service, beaming to more than 44 countries across Asia, the Pacific and the Indian subcontinent.


title: Culture of Australia

text: The ABC has made a significant contribution to television drama with popular series like "SeaChange" and "Brides of Christ", and to comedy with the 1970s hits "Aunty Jack" and "The Norman Gunston Show" and more recently Roy & HG, "Kath & Kim" and "The Chaser's War on Everything". Debate about the role of the ABC continues; many assign it a marginal role, as commercial TV and radio stations are far more popular choices. Critics claim that Australian children view television programs imported largely from the US, however, the Australian Content Standard requires all free-to-air commercial networks to broadcast an annual minimum of 55% Australian content between 6 a.m. and midnight. American dramas and comedies rate well on Australian TV.


title: Culture of Australia

text: Australia has no official state religion and the Australian Constitution prohibits the Commonwealth government from establishing a church or interfering with the freedom of religion. According to the 2011 Australian Census, 61.1% of Australians were listed as Christian. Historically, this proportion has been higher and a growing proportion of the population define themselves as irreligious, with 22.3% of Australians declaring "no religion" on the census. There are also growing communities of various other religions. From the early decades after federation, people from diverse religious backgrounds have held public office. The first Jewish Governor General, Isaac Isaacs, was selected by the first Catholic prime minister, James Scullin, in the 1930s. In recent times, some prime ministers have identified as religious, others as non-religious.


title: Culture of Australia

text: Christianity has had an enduring impact on Australia. At the time of Federation in 1901, 97% of Australians professed to be Christians. The Anglican Church (formerly Church of England) remained the largest denomination until 1986, when it was surpassed by the Roman Catholic Church. Australian Catholics were predominantly of Irish origin until post-World War II immigration brought more than a million Catholics from elsewhere in Europe. The Christian festivals of Christmas and Easter are national public holidays in Australia. Christian charitable organisations, hospitals and schools have played a prominent role in welfare and education since colonial times. In 2008, 20% of total students attended Catholic schools. Christian organisations such as the St. Vincent de Paul Society, the Salvation Army and Anglicare provide social services throughout Australia. Historically significant Christians include preachers David Unaipon, the first Aboriginal author, and the Reverend John Flynn, who founded the Royal Flying Doctor Service. Suffragette Catherine Helen Spence was not only Australia's first female political candidate, but also one of its first female preachers. Mary MacKillop, who co-founded an order of nuns in the 19th century, called the Sisters of St. Joseph, became the first Australian to be canonised as a Catholic Saint in 2010, and Sir Douglas Nicholls, a preacher and Aboriginal rights activist was the first Indigenous Australian to be appointed Governor of an Australian State.


title: Culture of Australia

text: The proportion of the total population who are Christian fell from 71% in 1996 to around 61.1% in 2011, while people affiliated with non-Christian religions increased from around 3.5% to 7.2% over the same period. Buddhism increased most rapidly from 1.1% to 2.5%. Increased immigration from South-East Asia has been a major factor in this growth, but Australians of Anglo-Celtic origin have also shown increasing interest in Buddhism. Islam increased during the period from 1.1% to 2.2% with diverse communities concentrated mainly in Sydney and Melbourne. The history of the Jews in Australia dates back to the First Fleet, which brought Jewish convicts to Sydney in 1788. Today, many Jews in Australia originated as refugees and Holocaust survivors who arrived during and after World War II. Hindus came to Australia as laborers and merchants during the 19th century and numbers increased dramatically from the 1960s, more than doubling between 1996 and 2006.


title: Culture of Australia

text: The tradition and spirituality of Aboriginal Australians places great emphasis on the role of tribal Elders in passing down stories of the Dreaming, and skills and lessons for survival (such as hunting and tracking). The creation story and belief system of the Aboriginal tradition, known in English as the "Dreamtime", reverences the land and the animals and spirits that inhabit the land and animals. European settlement introduced Indigenous Australians to Christianity, especially through "missions". There was a wide range of experiences of the missions by Aboriginal people.


title: Culture of Australia

text: Australia's calendar of public holiday festivals begins with New Year's Day. This is also the day upon which the Australian Federation officially came into being, however the national day, Australia Day, is celebrated on 26 January, the anniversary of British colonisation. Anzac Day, 25 April is another day strongly associated with Australian nationhood, however it more particularly commemorates Australians who fought in wars and is named to honour the soldiers of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps who landed at Gallipoli, on that same day in 1915, during World War I.


title: Culture of Australia

text: The Christian festivals of Easter and Christmas are public holidays in Australia. Christmas Day, 25 December, falls during the Southern Hemisphere summer.


title: Culture of Australia

text: Labor Day is also a public holiday, but on different days throughout the nation. The Queen's Birthday is generally observed on the second Monday in June, except in Western Australia, where it usually is observed in September or October to move it away from Western Australia Day. On the Queen's Birthday holiday, as on Australia Day, national awards are distributed to distinguished citizens for services to the community.


title: Culture of Australia

text: Contemporary Australian cuisine combines British and Indigenous origins with Mediterranean and Asian influences. Australia's abundant natural resources allow access to a large variety of quality meats, and to barbecue beef or lamb in the open air is considered a cherished national tradition. The great majority of Australians live close to the sea and Australian seafood restaurants have been listed among the world's best.


title: Culture of Australia

text: Bush tucker refers to a wide variety of plant and animal foods native to the Australian bush: bush fruits such as kakadu plums, finger limes and desert quandongs; fish and shellfish of Australia's saltwater river systems; and bush meats including emu, crocodile and kangaroo. Many of these are still seasonally hunted and gathered by Indigenous Australians, and are undergoing a renaissance of interest on contemporary Australian menus. The macadamia nut is the most famous bushfood plant harvested and sold in large quantities.


title: Culture of Australia

text: Early British settlers brought familiar meats and crops with them from Europe and these remain important in the Australian diet. The British settlers found some familiar game – such as swan, goose, pigeon, and fish – but the new settlers often had difficulty adjusting to the prospect of native fauna as a staple diet. They established agricultural industries producing more familiar Western style produce. Queensland and New South Wales became Australia's main beef cattle producers, while dairy cattle farming is found in the southern states, predominantly in Victoria. Wheat and other grain crops are spread fairly evenly throughout the mainland states. Sugar cane is also a major crop in Queensland and New South Wales. Fruit and vegetables are grown throughout Australia. "Meat and three veg", fish and chips, and the Australian meat pie continue to represent traditional meals for many Australians. The post-World War II multicultural immigration program brought new flavors and influences, with waves of immigrants from Greece, Italy, Vietnam, China, and elsewhere bringing about diversification and of the typical diet consumed–leading to an increasingly gastronomical culinary scene.


title: Culture of Australia

text: Australia's fishing zone is the third largest in the world and allows for easy access to seafood which significantly influences Australian cuisine. Clean ocean environments produce high quality seafoods. Lobster, prawns, tuna, salmon and abalone are the main ocean species harvested commercially, while aquaculture produces more than 60 species for consumption, including oysters, salmonoids, southern bluefin tuna, mussels, prawns, barramundi, yellowtail kingfish, and freshwater finifish. While inland river and lake systems are relatively sparse, they nevertheless provide some unique fresh water game fish and crustacea suitable for dining. Fishing and aquaculture constitute Australia's fifth most valuable agricultural industry after wool, beef, wheat and dairy.


title: Culture of Australia

text: Vegemite is a well-known spread originating from Australia. Iconic Australian desserts include pavlova and lamingtons. ANZAC biscuits recall the diet of Australia's World War I soldiers at the Battle of Gallipoli.


title: Culture of Australia

text: Australia's reputation as a nation of heavy drinkers goes back to the earliest days of colonial Sydney, when rum was used as currency and grain shortages followed the installation of the first stills. James Squires is considered to have founded Australia's first commercial brewery in 1798 and the Cascade Brewery in Hobart has been operating since 1832. Since the 1970s, Australian beers have become increasingly popular globally, with Foster's Lager being an iconic export. Foster's is not however the biggest seller on the local market, with alternatives including Carlton Draught and Victoria Bitter outselling it.


title: Culture of Australia

text: Billy tea was a staple drink of the Australian colonial period. It is typically boiled over a camp fire with a gum leaf added for flavoring.


title: Culture of Australia

text: The Australian wine industry is the world's fourth largest exporter of wine and contributes $5.5 billion per annum to the nation's economy. Wine is produced in every state, however, wine regions are mainly in the southern, cooler regions. Among the most famous wine districts are the Hunter Region and Barossa Valley and among the best known wine producers are Penfolds, Rosemount Estate, Wynns Coonawarra Estate and Lindemans. The Australian Penfolds Grange was the first wine from outside France or California to win the "Wine Spectator" award for Wine of the Year in 1995.


title: Culture of Australia

text: Australia has no official designated national dress, but iconic local styles include "bushwear" and "surfwear". The country's best-known fashion event is Australian Fashion Week, a twice yearly industry gathering showcasing seasonal collections from Australian and Asia Pacific Designers. Top Australian models include Elle Macpherson, Miranda Kerr and Jennifer Hawkins (Miss Universe 2004).


title: Culture of Australia

text: Major clothing brands associated with bushwear are the broad brimmed Akubra hats, Driza-Bone coats and RM Williams bushmen's outfitters (featuring in particular: moleskin trousers, riding boots and merino woolwear). Blundstone Footwear and Country Road are also linked to this tradition. Made from the leaves of "Livistona australis", the cabbage tree hat was the first uniquely Australian headwear, dating back to the early 1800s, and was the hat of choice for colonial-born Australians. Traditionally worn by jackaroos and swagmen in the blow-fly infested Australian outback, the cork hat is a type of headgear strongly associated with Australia, and comprises cork strung from the brim, to ward off insects.


title: Culture of Australia

text: World-famous Australian surfwear labels include Billabong, Rip Curl, Mambo and Quiksilver. Australian surfers popularised the ugg boot, a unisex sheepskin boot with fleece on the inside, a tanned outer surface and a synthetic sole. Worn by the working classes in Australia, the boot style emerged as a global fashion trend in the 2000s. Underwear and sleepwear brands include Bonds, Berlei, Bras N Things and Peter Alexander.


title: Culture of Australia

text: The slouch hat was first worn by military forces in Australia in 1885, looped up on one side so that rifles could be held at the slope without damaging the brim. After federation, the slouch hat became standard Australian Army headgear in 1903 and since then it has developed into an important national symbol and is worn on ceremonial occasions by the Australian army.


title: Culture of Australia

text: Australians generally have a relaxed attitude to what beachgoers wear, although this has not always been the case. At the start of the twentieth century a proposed ordinance in Sydney would have forced men to wear skirts over their "bathing costume" to be decent. This led to the 1907 Sydney bathing costume protests which resulted in the proposal being dropped. In 1961, Bondi inspector Aub Laidlaw, already known for kicking women off the beach for wearing bikinis, arrested several men wearing swim briefs charging them with indecency. The judge found the men not guilty because no pubic hair was exposed. As time went on Australians' attitudes to swimwear became much more relaxed. Over time swim briefs, better known locally as speedos or more recently as budgie smugglers, became an iconic swimwear for Australian males.


title: Culture of Australia

text: Many Australians are passionate about sport, and it forms a major part of the country's culture in terms of spectating and participation. Cricket is popular in the summer, and football codes are popular in the winter. Australian traditions such as grand finals and footy tipping are shared among the codes.


title: Culture of Australia

text: Australia's successes in events such as the Olympic Games, Commonwealth Games, World Cup competitions in cricket, rugby union, rugby league, field hockey, netball, and major tournaments in tennis, golf, surfing, and other sports are a source of pride for many Australians. Sports people such as Donald Bradman, Dawn Fraser, and Cathy Freeman remain in the nation's cultural memory and are accorded high civilian honours and public status.


title: Culture of Australia

text: Cricket is Australia's most popular summer sport and has been played since colonial times. It is followed in all states and territories, unlike the football codes which vary in popularity between regions.


title: Culture of Australia

text: The first recorded cricket match in Australia took place in Sydney in 1803. Intercolonial contests started in 1851 and Sheffield Shield inter-state cricket continues to this day. In 1866–67, prominent cricketer and Australian rules football pioneer Tom Wills coached an Aboriginal cricket team, which later toured England in 1868 under the captaincy of Charles Lawrence. The 1876–77 season is notable for a match between a combined XI from New South Wales and Victoria and a touring English team at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, which was later recognised as the first Test match. A famous victory on the 1882 tour of England resulted in the placement of a satirical obituary in an English newspaper saying that English cricket had "died", and the "body will be cremated and the ashes taken to Australia". The English media then dubbed the next English tour to Australia (1882–83) as the quest to "regain the ashes". The tradition continues with the Ashes series, an icon of the sporting rivalry between the two countries.


title: Culture of Australia

text: Successful cricketers often become lasting celebrities in Australia. Sir Donald Bradman, who made his Test debut in the 1928–29 series against England, is regarded as the game's greatest batsman and a byword for sporting excellence. Other Australian cricketers who remain household names include Richie Benaud, Dennis Lillee and Shane Warne and others who pursued media careers after they retired from the game. Internationally, Australia has for most of the last century sat at or near the top of the cricketing world. In the 1970s, Australian media tycoon Kerry Packer founded World Series Cricket from which many international forms of the game have evolved.


title: Culture of Australia

text: Events on the cricket pitch have occasionally been elevated to diplomatic incidents in Australian history, such as the infamous Bodyline controversy of the 1930s, in which the English team bowled in a physically intimidating way leading to accusations of "unsportsmanlike" conduct.


title: Culture of Australia

text: Australian rules football is the most highly attended spectator sport in Australia. Its core support lies in four of the six states: Victoria, South Australia, Western Australia and Tasmania. Originating in Melbourne in the late 1850s and codified in 1859, the sport is the world's oldest major football code. The national competition, the Australian Football League (AFL), evolved from the Victorian Football League in 1990, and has expanded to all states except Tasmania. The AFL Grand Final is traditionally played on the last Saturday of September at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, the sport's "spiritual home". Australian rules football culture has a strong set of rituals and traditions, such as kick-to-kick and barracking. International rules football is a hybrid sport of Australian football and Gaelic football devised to facilitate matches between Australia and Ireland.


title: Culture of Australia

text: Rugby union was first played in Australia in the 1860s and is followed predominately in Queensland, New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory. The national team is known as the Wallabies. Despite having a relatively small player base, Australia has twice won the Rugby World Cup, in 1991 and 1999, and hosted the 2003 Rugby World Cup. Other notable competitions include the annual Bledisloe Cup, played against Australia's main rivals, the New Zealand All Blacks, and the Rugby Championship, involving South Africa, New Zealand, and Argentina. Provincial teams from Australia, South Africa and New Zealand compete in the annual Super Rugby competition. Rugby test matches are also popular and have at times become highly politicised, such as when many Australians, including the Wallabies, demonstrated against the racially selected South African teams of the 1970s. Notable Australian rugby union players include Sir Edward Dunlop, Mark Ella and David Campese.


title: Culture of Australia

text: In 1908, rugby league was established in Australia, by former rugby union players and supporters as a breakaway professional code. The new code gained and has maintained a wider following in Australia than rugby union, which remained amateur until the 1990s. The sport has roots in the working class communities of Lancashire and Yorkshire in Northern England, translating to similar areas in Sydney and Brisbane. The elite club competition is the National Rugby League (NRL), which features ten teams from New South Wales, three teams from Queensland, and one team each from Victoria, Australian Capital Territory and New Zealand. The season culminates in the NRL Grand Final. The New South Wales Blues and Queensland Maroons compete in the annual State of Origin series. Australia's national team, the Kangaroos, has contested all 15 Rugby League World Cup titles, winning 11 of them.


title: Culture of Australia

text: Despite attracting less media attention, spectators and sponsorship than Australian rules football and rugby league, soccer is Australia's highest participation football code, although in South Australia, Australian rules football is still the most-participated football code. During the second half of the 20th century many Australian soccer clubs were based around ethnic groups, mostly European. However, the national league was completely reformed in 2004. Australia's national team, the Socceroos, has competed in the finals of five FIFA World Cup championships. In 2006 the Socceroos moved from the Oceania Football Confederation to the Asian Football Confederation, a much stronger confederation which has allowed the Australian team to avoid repetition of a history of missed World Cup qualifications in forced sudden-death playoffs. Australia won the 2015 AFC Asian Cup. Major international stars from Australia include Tim Cahill, Mark Viduka, Mark Schwarzer and Harry Kewell.


title: Culture of Australia

text: Australia's warm climate and long coastline of sandy beaches and rolling waves provide ideal conditions for water sports such as swimming and surfing. The majority of Australians live in cities or towns on or near the coast, and so beaches are a place that millions of Australians visit regularly.


title: Culture of Australia

text: Swimming is a popular pastime for Australians. In the early 1900s, members of the Australian Cavill family pioneered the crawl stroke ("Australian crawl") and butterfly stroke. Australia is a world power in Olympic swimming, second only to the United States in total gold medals in the sport. Swimmers like Dawn Fraser, Kieren Perkins and Ian Thorpe have taken multiple gold medals. Most states have a compulsory school swimming program, so it is common for Australians to be competent in swimming and water safety.


title: Culture of Australia

text: Australians have a particular affinity for surf lifesaving, and surf lifesavers have a revered status in Australian culture. The world's first surf lifesaving club, Bondi Surf Bathers' Life Saving Club, was founded at Bondi Beach, Sydney, in 1906. Surf Life Saving Australia has conducted hundreds of thousands of rescues around Australia. Tens of thousands of Australians compete in surf lifesaving training and competitions, such as Ironman events.


title: Culture of Australia

text: In the summer of 1915, Duke Kahanamoku of Hawaii introduced surf board riding to Sydney's Freshwater Beach, amazing locals and starting a long-term love affair with the sport in Australia. Over 1 in 10 Australians surf recreationally, and more Australians have been declared world surfing champions than any other nation.


title: Culture of Australia

text: The Sydney to Hobart yacht race is a much anticipated fixture on the Australian sporting calendar. Australia won the America's Cup under skipper John Bertrand in 1983, becoming the first country other than the United States to win the race.


title: Culture of Australia

text: Horse racing has had a prominent place in Australian culture since the colonial era, with the first spectator sports event in Australia being Lachlan Macquarie's race meeting at Hyde Park, Sydney, in 1810. First run in 1861, the Melbourne Cup is known as "the race that stops a nation" for the enthusiasm with which Australians tune in for the annual race, and is said to encapsulate the country's twin obsessions of sport and gambling.


title: Culture of Australia

text: Basketball is popular in Australia in terms of participation, especially among children. The National Basketball League (NBL) began in 1979 and is contested by eight teams—seven from Australia and one from New Zealand. The Women's National Basketball League (WNBL) is the top women's basketball league, having begun in 1981, and the national women's team (the Opals) has won medals at the Olympics since 1994. Netball has the highest participation rate of any women's sport in Australia. Established in 2008, the ANZ Championship is the premier netball league in Australia and New Zealand, featuring five teams from each country. The Australian national netball team (the Diamonds) is considered the best in the world, having won 10 of 13 World Netball Championships.


title: Culture of Australia

text: The Australian V8 Supercars series is steadily growing in popularity across the world, where television coverage allows.


title: Culture of Australia

text: Australia regularly raises world champion field hockey teams. Australian cyclists have won international cycling competitions, most notably Cadel Evans' win in the 2011 Tour de France. In 2008, the Tour Down Under, centered around Adelaide, became the first UCI ProTour cycling race to be held outside of Europe. Among young people and within schools nationwide, various forms of handball or downball games have been among the most prevalent sports games for some decades.


title: Culture of Australia

text: Snow sports are enjoyed in the Australian Alps and in Tasmania. Skiing in Australia was first introduced by Norwegian miners in the gold mining town of Kiandra in the Snowy Mountains of New South Wales around 1859. The sport remains a popular winter activity in the south-eastern states and territories. Major alpine skiing resorts include Thredbo, Perisher and Charlotte Pass in New South Wales; Mount Hotham, Falls Creek and Mount Buller in Victoria and Mount Ben Lomond in Tasmania. Extensive areas are available for cross country skiing within national parks including Kosciuszko National Park (NSW), Alpine National Park (VIC); Namadgi National Park (ACT) and in the Tasmanian Wilderness. Australia has long participated in the Winter Olympics and has won medals at the Games since the 1990s.


title: Culture of Australia

text: Increased interest and participation in American sports has led to opportunities for Australians to play at the top level in sports such as baseball, ice hockey and American football. Grant Balfour is a relief pitcher for the Tampa Bay Rays, and played in the 2008 World Series. The skill set of Australian rules footballers fits the mould of US National Football League (NFL) punters, and they stand out from their American peers with their ability to tackle returners. Two former AFL footballers competed in the 2009 NFC Championship game as punters, Saverio Rocca for the Philadelphia Eagles and Ben Graham for the Arizona Cardinals. Graham's appearance in Super Bowl XLIII made him the first Australian to play in the NFL's championship game. The first College Bowl game to feature two Australians was the 2012 BCS National Championship Game with punter Brad Wing from LSU and defensive end Jesse Williams for Alabama. In 2018, Nathan Walker, the first Australian drafted by an NHL team, also became the first to play on a Stanley Cup winning team, the 2018 Washington Capitals.


title: Culture of Australia

text: Australian stories and legends have a cultural significance independent of their empirical truth or falsehood. This can be seen in the portrayal of bushranger Ned Kelly as a mixture of the underdog and Robin Hood.


title: Culture of Australia

text: Militarily, Australians have served in numerous overseas wars, ranging from World War I through to recent regional security missions, such as East Timor, Iraq and Afghanistan. Australian war culture generally consists of somber reflection and commemoration, focusing on noble sacrifice rather than glory. An annual national holiday, Anzac Day, exists for this purpose. The Australian experience of defeat in the Gallipoli Campaign, the first iconic moment in modern Australia's involvement in war, is viewed by Australians with both pride for the fighting of the soldiers, and bitterness for the perceived negligence on the part of British commanders. The incidences of bravery and determination displayed during the campaign for Gallipoli, as well as the mutual respect for their Turkish adversaries led by Kemal Atatürk, are seen as part of the ANZAC spirit. During the First World War, Australian soldiers were considered to be remarkably determined, united and hard-working. Many Australians knew how to ride and shoot prior to enlistment, making them talented recruits, but they were also infamous for their lax attitude towards formal parade ground discipline, a notoriety that the Australian soldiers reveled in. From this the notion of the larrikin Digger emerged, an important part of contemporary Australian identity.


title: Culture of Australia

text: Critics and scholars have sometimes scrutinised the Australian culture, with aspects of it loosely criticised for being kitsch, low-brow or rooted in poor taste. The term "cultural cringe" was coined to describe this entrenched national inferiority complex which assumes ideas and cultures of other places are automatically superior. Some links have been made between the cultural cringe and a perceived anti-intellectualism that has underpinned public life in Australia. Some commentators have noted a decline in the cultural cringe in the 21st century, with a "social change" and wider reverence for Australian culture.


title: Culture of Australia

text: The phrase "the lucky country", coined by Donald Horne, is a reference to Australia's weather, lifestyle, and history. Ironically, Horne was using the term to denigrate the political philistinism, a lack of innovation and criticise the complacency of Australian society in the early 1960s. Since he coined the phrase it has commonly been misapplied by both the media and general public to denote Australia's perceived fortunes.


title: Culture of Australia

text: "Mateship", or loyal fraternity is the code of conduct, particularly between men, although more recently also between men and women, stressing equality and friendship. The value of mateship is sourced in the difficulty of subduing the land. Unlike other cultures based on a nurturing landscape that they seek to protect from others, Australian settlers experienced great hardship and had to support each other in order to survive. The battle against the elements led to the nickname of a member of Australia's working class being the "Aussie battler".


title: Culture of Australia

text: An aspect of the mateship culture on language is that Australians have a propensity for the diminutive forms of names e.g. Hargrave → Hargie; Wilkinson → Wilko; John → Johnno; David → Davo; Hogan → Hoges; James → Jimmy → Jim → Jimbo. This is a display of affection and acceptance rather than belittlement.


title: Culture of Australia

text: The mateship culture combined with the original convict and then colonial culture has created an irreverence for established authority, particularly if it is pompous or out of touch with reality. Politicians, or "pollies", are generally disliked and distrusted. Politicians who seek to lead must comply to the views of the egalitarian electorate, who will punish any hint of arrogance or glory-seeking behavior. Voter turnout at elections had in fact been so low that compulsory voting was introduced for the 1925 federal election.


title: Culture of Australia

text: Mirroring the tall poppy syndrome which brings back to Earth the high fliers, the egalitarian Australian society has a traditional Australian support for the underdog. Australians will show support for those who appear to be at a disadvantage even when the underdog is competing against fellow Australians, such as in sporting events. Related to the underdog is the belief in a "fair go", which is said to be a key part of Australian culture and Australian society. One accepted definition of a "fair go" in this Australian sense is "a chance, an adequate opportunity. Often used to describe a fair and reasonable course of action".


title: Culture of Australia

text: The right to "a fair go" has been found to be the most highly rated value on a recent published survey of the opinion of Australian citizens. This belief sustains bipartisan political support for strong public health and education systems in Australia, as well as equal opportunity legislation to ensure people are not excluded from jobs or positions by their race, gender or sexual orientation.


title: Culture of Australia

text: This value is frequently cited by politicians who wish to associate themselves or their party with the positive connotations of this notion. There has been ongoing public and political discussion of the place and future of "the fair go" in Australian society. This is especially frequent with reference to economics issues and policies. The call for "a fair go" is also regularly used by advocates wanting to point out groups who have been overlooked or treated unfairly according to the expectations of treatment by the wider community. Recent examples of this include media presentation of the treatment of illegal immigrants asylum seekers, and refugees, as well as the community campaign in support of "a fair go" for the large group of Australian doctors who have been classified as "non-vocationally registered general practitioners" (non-VR GPs), and are subject to discriminatory pay and conditions compared to their colleagues, for identical work.


title: Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake

text: Naval Air Weapons Station (NAWS) China Lake is a large military installation in California that supports the research, testing and evaluation programs of the United States Navy. It is part of Navy Region Southwest under Commander, Navy Installations Command, and was originally known as Naval Ordnance Test Station (NOTS).


title: Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake

text: The installation is located in the Western Mojave Desert region of California, approximately north of Los Angeles. Occupying land in three counties – Kern, San Bernardino, and Inyo – the installation's closest neighbors are the city of Ridgecrest and the communities of Inyokern, Trona, and Darwin.


title: Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake

text: China Lake is the United States Navy's largest single landholding, representing 85% of the Navy's land for weapons and armaments research, development, acquisition, testing and evaluation (RDAT&E) use and 38% of the Navy's land holdings worldwide. In total, its two ranges and main site cover more than , an area larger than the state of Rhode Island. As of 2010, at least 95% of that land has been left undeveloped. The roughly $3 billion infrastructure of the installation consists of 2,132 buildings and facilities, of paved roads, and of unpaved roads.


title: Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake

text: The of restricted and controlled airspace at China Lake makes up 12% of California's total airspace. Jointly controlled by NAWS China Lake, Edwards Air Force Base and Fort Irwin, this airspace is known as the R-2508 Special Use Airspace Complex.


title: Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake

text: A 7.1 magnitude earthquake on July 5, 2019, whose epicenter was within the boundaries of NAWS China Lake, resulted in the facility being temporarily evaluated as "not mission capable” due to damage.


title: Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake

text: All aircraft operations at NAWS China Lake are conducted at Armitage Field, which has three runways with more than of taxiway. More than 20,000 crewed and uncrewed military sorties are conducted out of Armitage by U.S. Armed Forces each year.


title: Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake

text: Foreign military personnel also use the airfield and range to conduct more than 1,000 test and evaluation operations each year.


title: Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake

text: The 620 active duty military, 4,166 civilian employees and 1,734 contractors that make up China Lake's workforce are employed across multiple tenant commands, including:


title: Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake

text: China Lake is a dry lake. Its name comes from Chinese prospectors harvesting borax from the lake bed, approximately south of Paxton Ranch. The operation was known locally as "The Little Chinese Borax Works".


title: Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake

text: In the midst of World War II, adequate facilities were needed by the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) for test and evaluation of rockets. At the same time, the Navy needed a new proving ground for aviation ordnance. Caltech's Charles C. Lauritsen and then U.S. Navy Commander Sherman E. Burroughs worked together to find a site that would meet both their needs.


title: Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake

text: In the early 1930s, an emergency landing field had been built by the Works Progress Administration in the Mojave Desert near the small town of Inyokern, California. Opened in 1935, the field was acquired by the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) in 1942. In November 1943 it was transferred to the Navy, which established China Lake as the Naval Ordnance Test Station (NOTS).


title: Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake

text: The NOTS mission was defined in a letter by the Secretary of the Navy as "... a station having for its primary function the research, development and testing of weapons, and having additional function of furnishing primary training in the use of such weapons." Testing began within a month of the Station's formal establishment. The vast and sparsely populated desert with near perfect flying weather and practically unlimited visibility, proved an ideal location not only for test and evaluation activities, but also for a complete research and development establishment.


title: Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake

text: During 1944, NOTS worked on the development and testing of the 3.5-inch, 5-inch, HVAR and 11.75-inch (Tiny Tim) rockets.


title: Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake

text: Manhattan Project funding was used to construct a new airfield at NOTS, with three runways, , and long, each wide to accommodate the Boeing B-29 Superfortress bomber. Fuel storage was provided with a capacity of of gasoline and of oil. The airfield was opened on 1 June 1945, and named Armitage Field after Navy Lieutenant John Armitage, who was killed while testing a Tiny Tim rocket at NOTS in August 1944.


title: Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake

text: Work done by Caltech at NOTS for the Manhattan Project - particularly the testing of bomb shapes dropped from B-29s - was included as part of codename Project Camel.


title: Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake

text: In 1950, NOTS scientists and engineers developed the air-intercept missile (AIM) 9 Sidewinder, which became the world's most used and most copied air-to-air missile. Other rockets and missiles developed or tested at China Lake include the Mighty Mouse, Zuni, Shrike, HARM, Joint Stand-Off Weapon (JSOW) and Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM). In June 1963, President John F. Kennedy visited NAWS China Lake for an air show and to see Michelson Lab.


title: Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake

text: In July 1967, NOTS China Lake and the Naval Ordnance Laboratory in Corona, California, became the Naval Weapons Center. The Corona facilities were closed and their functions transferred to the desert in 1971. In July 1979, the mission and functions of the National Parachute Test Range at Naval Air Facility El Centro were transferred to China Lake.


title: Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake

text: In January 1992, the Naval Weapons Center and the Pacific Missile Test Center Point Mugu were disestablished and joined with naval units at Kirtland AFB in Albuquerque and at the White Sands Missile Range at White Sands, NM as a single command - the Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division (NAWCWD) of the Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR). At the same time, the physical plant at China Lake was designated as a Naval Air Weapons Station and became host of the NAVAIR Weapons Division, performing the base-keeping functions.


title: Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake

text: In 1982 the community area of China Lake, including most of base housing, was annexed by the City of Ridgecrest. In 2013, Congress reserved China Lake's acreage for military use for an additional 25 years.


title: Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake

text: In 2014, U.S. Representative Kevin McCarthy of California introduced a bill to permanently designate Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake property for military use, arguing it would save taxpayer money and enhance the base's mission. The bill would add , including about that were part of a bombing range in San Bernardino County, as well as along the station's southwest boundary. The Bureau of Land Management said that DoD needs could change in future decades and that it is a popular recreation area with trail riding, camp sites and hunting, and an important wildlife corridor, especially for the threatened desert tortoise.


title: Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake

text: In July 2019, two large earthquakes struck Southern California; both had epicenters within the NAWS boundaries. The first, on July 4, a 6.4 magnitude quake, caused no injuries at NAWS, and the initial reports showed that all buildings were intact. The second, a 7.1 magnitude earthquake on July 5, resulted in the facility being evaluated as "not mission capable”. The report shows that officials assessed all buildings, utilities and facilities — 3,598 structures in all — for 13 days after the earthquakes and found damage totaled $5.2 billion. Replacing buildings alone would cost $2.2 billion, but officials also must replace or repair specialized equipment, furniture, machine tools, telecommunication assets and other facilities.


title: Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake

text: The majority of the land at NAWS China Lake is undeveloped and provides habitat for more than 340 species of wildlife, including feral horses, feral burros (donkeys), bighorn sheep and endangered animals, such as the desert tortoise, Mojave ground squirrel and Mojave tui chub. The Mojave tui chub was introduced to China Lake's Lark Seep in 1971. Lark Seep is fed by the water outflow from a waste water treatment plant located at China Lake. The tui chub population has since grown and expanded to a population of around 6,000 in 2003. The desert on which the installation is built is home to 650 plant types.


title: Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake

text: The area was once home to the Native American Coso People, whose presence is marked by thousands of archaeological sites; the Coso traded with other tribes as far away as San Luis Obispo County, California. This locale was also a site used by European miners and settlers whose cabins and mining structures are extant throughout the Station.


title: Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake

text: The Coso Range Canyons are home to the Coso Rock Art District, an area of some which contains more than 50,000 documented petroglyphs, the highest concentration of rock art in the Northern Hemisphere.


title: Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake

text: The precise age of the petroglyphs is unknown. A broad range of dates can be inferred from archaeological sites in the area and some artifact forms depicted on the rocks. Archaeologists do not agree on their age, but in general it is believed that most petroglyphs are between one and three thousand years old. Designs range from animals to abstract to anthropomorphic figures. Opinions vary widely whether the petroglyphs were made for ceremonial purposes, whether they are telling stories to pass along the mythology of their makers, or whether they are records of hunting hopes or successes, clan symbols or maps.


title: Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake

text: Declared a National Historic Landmark in 1964, the rock art in Little Petroglyph Canyon provides insights into the cultural heritage and knowledge of the desert's past. Everything in the canyon area is protected, including the obsidian chips and any artifacts or tools, as well as the petroglyphs and native vegetation and wildlife.


title: Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake

text: Remains of the Epsom Salts Monorail are signposted and visible within the site. The central rail, on which mining tractors pulled minerals from a mine to the nearest railway siding, was supported on wooden A frames of a low trestle.


title: Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake

text: The Coso Geothermal Field is located within China Lake boundaries. The geothermal power plants located there began generating electricity in 1987 and were the Navy's first foray into producing clean power from the earth's thermal energy (heat). The plant's nameplate capacity is 270 megawatts with a total annual electricity production from the field of 1,175 gigawatt-hours.


title: Shakuni

text: Shakuni (, , ) plays a key role in the Hindu epic "Mahabharata". He is one of the main antagonists of the Hindu epic "Mahabharata". He was the prince of the kingdom of Gandhara when introduced, later becoming its king after the death of his father, Subala. He was the brother of Gandhari and the maternal uncle of the Kauravas.


title: Shakuni

text: Portrayed as intelligent, crafty and devious, Shakuni supported his nephews, particularly the eldest, Duryodhana, in plotting against their cousinsthe Pandavas. It was Shakuni who played the game of dice against Yudhishthira, one of the seminal events in the epic. He was a master of manipulating the game using loaded dice, which caused the exile of the Pandavas and the consolidation of the power of the Kauravas. During the Kurukshetra War, Shakuni was killed by the youngest Pandava, Sahadeva.


title: Shakuni

text: The Sanskrit word "Shakuni" means 'a large bird'. In the epic, Shakuni has been referred to by many names. Shakuni shares his name with some other figures, including a divine-serpent, a rishi, a son of King Ikshvaku, and an asura son of Hiranyaksha who was the father of Vrikasura.


title: Shakuni

text: "Saubala" is a prominent name of Shakuni, derived from Subala, the name of Shakuni's father. Other patryomics include Subalaputra, Subalraja, and Saubaleya. As Shakuni belonged to the royal family of Gandhara, he was also referred to as Gāndara, Gandharnaresh, Gandhararaja and Gandharapati. Parvatiya ('he who is from the mountains') and Kitava ('gambler') are also epithets of Shakuni.


title: Shakuni

text: According to the "Mahabharata", Shakuni was an incarnation of "Dvapara Yuga", the personified third epoch in Hindu cosmology. He was the son of Subala, the king of Gandhara (in the northwest of the Indian subcontinent, its capital Takshashila being in the vicinity of the modern city of Islamabad). Shakuni had a sister named Gandhari, and many brothers among whom Achala and Vrishaka were the most prominent. Shakuni's wife is unnamed, but some modern retelling name her Arshi. Uluka was his son and he served as a messenger during the Kurukshetra War. The epic's "Ashvamedhika Parva" mentions a descendant of Shakuni who ruled Gandhara after the battle of Kurukshetra.


title: Shakuni

text: The "Adi Parva" of the "Mahabharata" says that Bhishma, then the guardian of the Kuru kingdom, went to Gandhara to arrange the marriage of its princess, Gandhari, to Dhritarashtra, the elder son of Vichitravirya, who was blind by birth. Subala was initially reluctant due to Dhritarashtra's blindness, but later agreed after considering the high reputation of the Kuru royal family. Shakuni accompanied his sister to Hastinapura, the capital of the Kurus. After the marriage, Shakuni returned to Gandhara.


title: Shakuni

text: Much later, in some post-Mahabharata literature and in retelling stories and novels, Shakuni was portrayed as a victim, who sought revenge on the Kurus. Mythologist Devdutt Pattanaik speculated that these narratives were created to remind us all not to judge people without learning of their story. According to him,


title: Shakuni

text: A legend in the eighth century Jain text the Harivamsa Purana says that at Gandhari's birth astrologers predicted that her husband would have a short life. Fearing this, Subala and his sons get Gandhari "married" to a goat prior to her marriage to Dhritarashtra, and sacrificed the goat in order to nullify the defect. After Gandhari's marriage, Bhishma discovers this and becomes enraged at Subala for letting a "widow" become a bride of his family and decides to punish Subala and his family. Subala and his sons are captured and put in prison. Only one grain of rice is given to each captive. Knowing that Shakuni is the wisest among them and most able to take revenge, the prisoners give all their food to Shakuni so that he can survive. Eventually, Subala and his other sons die, while Shakuni survives and is released. This story is not found in the original "Mahabharata" and is strongly reminiscent of a similar tale told about the fall of the Nanda dynasty in the "Kathāsaritsāgara".


title: Shakuni

text: Yet another tale says that Bhishma imprisoned Shakuni's family as they refused to give Gandhari in marriage to the blind Dhritarashtra. Some other narratives replace Bhishma with Duryodhana as the one who captured and killed Subala and his other sons. In another story, Shakuni plotted against the Kurus because he was unhappy with the marriage of his beloved sister to a blind person, which he thought an insult to his family.


title: Shakuni

text: In all of these stories, Shakuni swears to avenge this by slowly destroying Hastinapura. He achieves this by poisoning the mind of his volatile nephew Duryodhana into instigating the war with the Pandavas, which destroyed the Kuru line. Some versions of the story describe Shakuni using the bones of his dead family members to create dice that will never lose in a game, as Shakuni's father's soul enters the dice to make it roll to whatever number Shakuni wanted.


title: Shakuni

text: None of these tales are mentioned in the Mahabharata. In the "Mahabharata", Subala and his sons attended the Rajasuya yajna of Yudhishthira, Shakuni's brothers fought in the great war at Kurukshetra, and they were killed during the conflict.


title: Shakuni

text: The Mahabharata states that Shakuni lived in Hastinapura and looked after his blindfolded sister and her children, the Kauravas. Similarly, Krishna (the maternal cousin of the Pandavas) helps the Pandava brothers throughout the epic. The family of Draupadi (the common wife of the Pandavas) also plays a major role in raising her children. Based on such examples, many scholars theorise that during the "Mahabharata era", the maternal families might have played major roles in the family policies.


title: Shakuni

text: Shakuni had a close alliance with his eldest nephew, Duryodhana and wanted him to become the next Emperor of the Kuru Clan. Throughout the epic, he helps Duryodhana in his plans to take the throne from the Pandavas.


title: Shakuni

text: In the epic, Shakuni's most integral episode is during the gambling match between Duryodhana (represented by Shakuni) and Yudhishthira (the eldest Pandava brother). The event is one of the turning points in the epic, which leads to the humiliation of Draupadi and the exile of the Pandavas.


title: Shakuni

text: The "Sabha Parva" of the "Mahabharata" narrates the event. When a succession dispute between Duryodhana and Yudhishthira arises, Dhritarashtra divides the Kuru realm into two regions. The Pandavas found the city of Indraprastha, which serves as the capital of their half of the ancestral domains. To achieve imperial status, Yudhishthira decides to perform the Rajasuya yajna and the royal families of different kingdoms are invited to the sacrifice. Shakuni also attends the event. After the yajna is completed, all the guests return to their kingdoms, but Shakuni and Duryodhana stay on and witness the wealth and prosperity of the Pandavas.


title: Shakuni

text: Duryodhana becomes jealous of the Pandavas, and he turns weak and pale due to sadness and anxiety. Shakuni consoles him and suggests that Dhritarashtra organise a game of dice, and invite Yudhishthira. He tells him that Yudhishthira is fond of gambling and wouldn't decline the invitation. Shakuni also insists that they could snatch the wealth and prosperity of the Pandavas, since he is extremely talented in rolling the dice and although Yudhishthira loves playing it, he is not skilled in it. Upon the repeated urging of Duryodhana and Shakuni, Dhritarashtra agrees. Yudhishthira agrees, and arrives in Hastinapura accompanied by his brothers and their wife. Duryodhana declares that Shakuni would represent him. As the stakes rise with each round, Shakuni wins Yudhishthira's treasures, then his kingdom, and goads Yudhishthira into gambling away the freedom his brothers, Bhima, Arjuna, Nakula, Sahadeva and finally Yudhishthira himself. In a final throw, the freedom of Draupadi is also lost. Dushasana, on Duryodhana's orders, tries to disrobe Draupadi, while her husbands look on helplessly, but Krishna saves her.


title: Shakuni

text: On the 18th day before the war, Duryodhana tried to convince Shakuni to be the Commander-in-Chief of his army but he refused and preferred Shalya instead. Shakuni participated in the Kurukshetra War and defeated many warriors.


title: Shakuni

text: On the very first day of the war, Shakuni, Duryodhana and Dushasana attacked Yudhishthira to try and kill him but they failed. During the war, Shakuni defeated the Upapandava Shrutasena (Nakula’s son). He also killed king Sahadev who was a close friend of the pandavas and the king of Maghada. Shakuni also killed his cousin Jayadev on the same day. On the tenth day, he tries to stop Arjuna and Shikandi from reaching Bhishma and manages to stab Shikandi in a sword fight. However, he is stopped by Virata who attacks him.


title: Shakuni

text: On the 13th day, Shakuni and other Maharathis attacked and killed Abhimanyu. Many of them staged a sneak attack on Abhimanyu. On 14th day, he fought with Nakula to save Jayadratha but was defeated. After Jayadratha's death, Shakuni planned a battle at midnight. During that terrible fight at night, he was vanquished by Nakula.


title: Shakuni

text: An unknown fact from the Mahabaharata, is that Shakuni was also a great expert in making illusions. The Drona parva of the Mahabharata, narrates an incident where Shakuni made 100 different types of illusions against Arjuna, the greatest archer. Various types of weapons, wild animals, deadly creatures and birds were made as an illusion as if they are marching faster towards Arjuna and Krishna. However, Arjuna used a counter weapon named " Adityam" to encounter these illusions. He then removed all the illusions created by Shakuni.


title: Shakuni

text: After the Game of Dice episode in the Mahabharata, the youngest of the Pandava brothers Sahadeva had taken an oath to avenge Draupadi's insult and had sworn to kill Shakuni, the mastermind of the episode.


title: Shakuni

text: On the 18th day of the Mahabharata war, the Pandavas attacked Shakuni, Uluka and their army. As Duryodhana and his other brothers rushed to protect their uncle, Bhima stepped in, fought the remaining Kauravas and killed many of them (except Duryodhana). Meanwhile, Nakula killed many prominent Gandharan warriors and the bodyguards of Uluka. Sahadeva fought Shakuni and Uluka and not long afterwards, killed Uluka. Shakuni became furious and attacked Sahadeva. He broke his chariot and bow, but Sahadeva ascended another chariot and fought Shakuni ferociously. After many attacks and tackles, both of them descended from their chariots to settle things in a duel. Sahadeva then pierced his axe in chest of Shakuni and killed him, fulfilling his oath.


title: Shakuni

text: The one and only temple in the world dedicated to Shakuni, called Malanada Maladeva (Shakuni) Temple, is situated in a small village called Pavithreswaram of Kottarakkara Taluk in Kollam district of Kerala, India. Here, a granite stone under a huge "Kanjira" (Strychnos nux vomica) tree is worshipped as the seat of Shakuni where he is seen in a posture meditating Lord Shiva, one of the Trimurtis of Hinduism.


title: Albert Lee

text: Albert William Lee (born 21 December 1943) is an English guitarist known for his fingerstyle and hybrid picking technique. Lee has worked, both in the studio and on tour, with many famous musicians from a wide range of genres. He has also maintained a solo career and is a noted composer and musical director.


title: Albert Lee

text: Lee was born in Lingen, Herefordshire, but grew up in Blackheath, London, a member of a Romani family. His father was a musician, and Lee studied piano, taking up the instrument at age seven.


title: Albert Lee

text: During this time, Lee became a fan of Buddy Holly and Jerry Lee Lewis. He took up guitar in 1958 when his parents bought him a second-hand Höfner "President" which he later traded in for a Czechoslovakian Jolana "Grazioso", the forerunner of the "Futurama". Lee left school at the age of 16 to play full-time.


title: Albert Lee

text: Lee was with a variety of bands from 1959 onwards, playing mostly R&B, country music and rock and roll. He was accompanying Richard Keller, (Dickie Pride), in the Castle Pub, Tooting, the night Russ Conway saw him perform there, two weeks before taking Larry Parnes to see Pride.


title: Albert Lee

text: In addition to Buddy Holly, his early guitar influences included Cliff Gallup, Grady Martin, the Everly Brothers, Scotty Moore, James Burton and Jerry Reed. Lee first experienced commercial success as the lead guitarist with Chris Farlowe and the Thunderbirds. Lee says that he enjoyed playing the Stax-type material, but he really wanted to play country music. Consequently, he left Farlowe and the Thunderbirds in 1968.


title: Albert Lee

text: During his time playing with Heads Hands & Feet, Lee became a "guitar hero", playing his Fender Telecaster at breakneck speed. Heads Hands & Feet became a popular live band in the UK, making appearances on "The Old Grey Whistle Test" and also in Europe, where they appeared on the German music programme "Beat-Club". In October 1969 Country Fever, an RCA package toured six countries in eleven days, starting at the Nashville Room with the London band the Kingpins.


title: Albert Lee

text: In 1971, Lee performed with Deep Purple's keyboard player Jon Lord on the studio recording of Lord's "Gemini Suite". That opus was a follow-up to Deep Purple's "Concerto for Group and Orchestra". Ritchie Blackmore had played guitar at the first live performance of the "Gemini Suite" in September 1970, but declined the invitation to appear on the studio version, which led to the involvement of Lee. Other performers were Yvonne Elliman, Ian Paice, Roger Glover, Tony Ashton and the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sir Malcolm Arnold.


title: Albert Lee

text: Lee left for Los Angeles in 1974 and, through his friend bassist Ric Grech (of Blind Faith), did some session work on three albums with the Crickets who also at the time included Sonny Curtis and Jerry Allison. One of these releases is titled "A Long Way From Lubbock". Lee also received many other offers of session work. In 1976, he was asked to join Emmylou Harris's Hot Band, replacing one of his heroes, James Burton, who was returning to perform with Elvis Presley. The Hot Band featured other musicians including Ricky Skaggs and Rodney Crowell. Starting in 1978, Lee worked for five years with Eric Clapton, which included playing and singing for a live concert recording at the Budokan in Japan.


title: Albert Lee

text: Lee was responsible for the Everly Brothers' 1983 reunion concert and was its musical director. He played regularly with the Everlys for over twenty years.