"There has indeed been enough sincere appreciation of distinctive beauty in Australian nature to suggest that those who see little are prejudiced. The mental and emotional training of such people is invariably patterned on Old World cultural conventions."

"From [Adam Lindsay] Gordon, the Englishman writing about Australia in an English way, to [Henry] Kendall the Australian writing about Australia in an English way, thence to [Henry] Lawson and [AB] Patterson, the Australians writing about Australia in an Australian way... [or rather, we should say] writing about Australia in a larrikin Australian way. What we now want is Australians writing about Australia in a literary Australian way."

"The first chapter in Australia's story tells of courage, endurance and triumph; but it tells also of failure, of misery, degredation and bestiality, of situations and incidents innumerable."

"To ensure imaginative truth our writers and painters must become hard-working students of aboriginal culture, something initially far-removed from the engaging and controlling factors of modern European life." ( )