AustLit

'The soldiers of the First AIF - who would eventually become known as "diggers" - constructed a self-consciously "Australian" folk culture. It was a culture that had significance for those who created it and which also projected a particular representation of Australian-ness to "others", particularly the British. Digger folk culture was created in the hothouse of the First AIF with elements derived from the bush and larrikin traditions together with the unprecedented experiences of the war itself. Initially an oral culture, it quickly moved into the more formal media of the trench newspaper and soldier journals [...]. Digger culture also formed the basis of the institutionalised Anzac tradition. Undergoing various transformations, the culture of the digger and the tradition of Anzac have remained a complex and powerful mythology at the heart of Australian identity, continuing to influence the ways Australians understand themselves as a nation and how they project that understanding to the rest of the world' (189-190). The paper examines the origins of digger culture from 1915 and traces its development and continuing impact.