AustLit

'This article examines Australian nationalism as disseminated to Victorian primary school children in the 1950s. Drawing on school readers it argues that by that decade Australian identity was told as focused around 'the home'. Following the structure of Robert Menzies' 'Forgotten People' speech the concept of home is divided into three: homes material, homes human and homes spiritual. Under 'homes material' cluster the primacy of home ownership in the 1950s, the firming of the nation-state's boundaries and the acceptance into the Australian home of migrants who had crossed the sea. 'Homes human' refers to the economic relationships that would hold Australians together. By membership in the networks of production and consumption and by comfortable residence in the Australian rural landscape, 1950s Australians were to belong to the Australian family. With 'homes spiritual' the article turns to Britain and its royal family, arguing that by the 1950s the Queen was located as belonging in Australia instead of, as previously, Australia belonging to the Empire. This enabled links to Britain to be retained even as nationalism grew. This home-centered nationalism meant, however, the contraction of identity into an exclusionary political space.' (p. 49)