Bruce Dawe

The Second World War changed many things: the face of Europe, the balance of world power, and, perhaps less notably, the perception of the common Australian. From Federation day to the 1940s, most poets wrote about the ideal 'aussie'; the strong, silent outback-dweller; the Man from Snowy River or the Man who went to Ironbark. The 1950s were a time of change, and Australian Literature changed too, from aggrandizing the increasingly rare 'Dundee's, to noting the average Australian living in suburbia with the other four-fifths of the population. This essay will cite specific examples of poem…