Being Aussie

80s music..... everyone likes it in secret, but not as many would admit it out loud, in public. At least not unless it is deemed cool to do so. A bit like the Steve Irwin phenomenom.

An article from The Age online.

Hunt continues for the elusive dinkum Aussie or is the notion just a crock?

NOT for the first time, the essence of the dinkum Aussie — even its existence — is being examined.

With this week's death of buoyant adventurer Steve Irwin, the nation is again reviewing its character.

The question we are asking is: when we looked at Irwin, what did we think we were seeing?

Did his version of knockabout blond Aussie sit easily with most, or did we sometimes wince and hope that the rest of the world did not think Irwin represented us?

Some of the people interviewed for this article said that 10 years ago, they were vaguely uncomfortable with Irwin's self-promotion, but they felt energised by his irrepressibility.

They also noted that, even if he was overtly "ocker", he spoke lovingly of his wife and children, and always maintained that his showmanship was designed to attract attention to wildlife conservation issues.

Now, with overwhelming anecdotal evidence that Irwin was the same "bloke" off-screen as on, some who were sceptical about his public persona are relieved, because they didn't want to find out he was not authentic.

There is a loose consensus about Irwin: he was not typical of us all. In some cases, he was the antithesis, perpetuating a mythology built around the resolute outdoor type.

But he did seem to personify much of the spirit that is usually thought to have its antecedents in the travails of the early explorers, the men and women on the goldfields, the testing of mettle at Gallipoli, the Country Women's Association — perhaps even Bodyline.

Historian Geoffrey Blainey says modern Australia has not entirely dismissed its outback heritage as no longer relevant, even though a character like Steve Irwin seems increasingly remote from the cosmopolitan nature of city life.

"When we talk about the quintessential Australian, we still largely think outside the cities, to our history on the land — we retain that memory of adventure," he says.

"I think we like to believe that as a nation we have certain characteristics that other nations do not."

Singer John Williamson agrees. He says the reason koalas, kangaroos and emus are popular motifs in our creative culture is because no one else has them.

To Williamson, Irwin was a living celebration of who we are.

"Off-camera, I found him a humble person, with a disarming innocence," he says.

Williamson says Irwin understood that indigenous Australians had a special relationship with the land long before settlement.

Barry Humphries, who, in his creations Barry McKenzie, Sir Les Patterson and Dame Edna Everage, has arguably spent more time than anyone exposing the kernel of the Australian character, told The Age he was "devastated by this tragic loss".

Federal Opposition Finance spokesman Lindsay Tanner, who grew up in the bush but lives in Melbourne, says Irwin was a kind of "modern Clancy of the Overflow".

That sort of figure, he says, exemplifies the difficulty of pinning down the nature of the Aussie character.

We like to identify with the robust bushman, the same way we find the Anzac spirit commendable.

"But there is also something mysterious and inaccessible about characters like Steve Irwin," Tanner says.

"That's why his death is so confronting," Tanner says.

"It's because the ultimate negative thing happened to a highly positive person."

Writer and broadcaster John Doyle says Irwin represented something of an Aussie continuum.

"It's a lineage you can trace back to Chips Rafferty, and he also inherited it from previous generations," Doyle says.

Doyle lives in Sydney but has long enjoyed immersing himself in the bush, when he can leave alter-ego Rampaging Roy Slaven at home.

A five-part documentary series he made with author and scientist Tim Flannery begins on the ABC on September 19.

In it, Doyle and Flannery travel along the Darling-Murray river system in the archetypal Australian tinnie.

Doyle says Irwin projected qualities that appealed to Australians.

"What people look for in characters like (Paul Hogan's Crocodile) Dundee and Steve Irwin is honesty," he says.

"They find it refreshing when all the bullshit is cut through."

Doyle thinks we want to retain whatever sense remains that Australians are straight-ahead, capable and no-nonsense.

"We're not as innocent as a nation as we once were, so we look back to the qualities that we understand to be representative of the Australian spirit.

"We like to think that, put on the spot, we could be straight as an arrow.

"That we could hold up an end and take a few bouncers to the body and the helmet so that the bloke at the other end could get his maiden Test century."

I think most Aussies are more "Aussie" than we'd like to admit we are. Maybe now it'll start to become more cool to be "Aussie" and we'll appreciate it more.