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There is a reason why the cultures of Indigenous Australia inspire such fascination. And that is that they represent a unique way of thinking about the world. A vision that over tens of thousands of years has risen out of the land, the power, the very being of our continent, Australia.

I'm not saying this in a condescending kind of way, but it's quite simple: The making of America was a heroic thing. Australia has a much murkier, much more complex view of its history. It's just full of all these open wounds we don't really know what to do with.

We moved, and there was a golden era in the '40s when we were so conscious of who we were as Australians.

For our immediate family and relatives, Canada was a land of opportunity.

Australians don't have a preconceived notion of what things have to be... we can go on a fantastic journey.

Thankfully, Australia has emerged from its inauspicious colonial beginnings to become a proud nation, a nation that overcame those primeval prejudices.

There are people all over Australia who use their homes as hubs that they travel from, and they encourage their indigenous people to continue to stay there.

For much of the latter part of the 20th century, Australia seemed to be opening up to something large and good. It believed itself a generous country, the land of the 'fair go.'

Australia lives with a strange contradiction - our national image of ourselves is one of the Outback, and yet nearly all us live in big cities. Move outside the coastal fringe, and Australia can feel like a foreign country.