how it started

how Being Australian began

An Australian 'New World Symphony'

In 1994, Being Australian's found, Doug Kirkpatrick, was living in New York City when he began to imagine what it would be like to hear a powerful and moving symphonic orchestration of the Cowan version of Waltzing Matilda.

Over subsequent weeks and months, Doug began making notes about a musical work that could become Australia's equivalent of Antonín Dvorák's Symphony of the New World became for Americans over 150 years ago.

But rather than settle for an Australian version of Dvorák's instrumental anthology, it seemed that the music should somehow reflect the contemporary character of a country and its population as it shows up in people's everyday experiences of both.

In this way, it seemed that music inspired by the reality of people's experiences would be more interesting and valuable than music preoccupied by interpretations of 'values' or 'national identity'.

Genesis of the film

Getting the music developed seemed to call for a film with a similar objective. Getting the film done meant deciding what kind of imagery it would need to complement the music.

At first, it seemed a combination of historic and contemporary footage was the answer. But this approach seemed potentially jingoistic and fraught with risk over decisions about what to show and what to exclude in order to do justice to the brief. Also, it seemed it would yield a result amounting to little more than another 'history lesson' of a type already done in different forms by others. So, the approach was abandoned.

Instead, it became clear that imagery about Australians today – a contemporary album of the time - would be far more interesting.

It also made sense that since the project would involve people's personal reflections, they should have the opportunity to directly influence the imagery chosen for final production of a documentary work that is ultimately about them.

Giving everyone a say in the outcome

With the decision made to allow people to 'play director' for the final production, a method had to be found to democratise their involvement in choosing the substance of the resulting film and music so that both might be received as the most authentic representation of their sentiments as possible.

Thankfully, the Internet had matured since concept first took shape in 1994 ~ it was clear that a website would be ideal for harvesting both stories (personal experiences of being Australian) and ideas as to which stories should influence production.

Additionally, it seemed a certain rule or guideline had to be applied to keep the ideas narrowed to a particular theme. So it was decided to invite people to simply share those random spontaneous moments when something they see or do happens to strike them as "very Australian".

After all, a film built around people’s recollections of moments occuring naturally in 'Australian' contexts would seem to be the best way to distil collective feelings people have about being Australian.

So we’ve built this website to gather impressions from Australians, visitors, and travellers alike and to engage their help as we set about producing the music once imagined in a New York apartment along with a signature documentary film capturing something visceral and palpable that people recognise in themselves and each other as individuals bound together in citizenship or having had contact with Australia in its myriad forms.