After the Crisis?

In the summer of 1950, Melbourne schoolteacher and critic AA Phillips penned a short essay that eventually entered the Australian lexicon. He called it The Cultural Cringe.

Phillips had been listening to an ABC radio program on Sundays, which had as its format two incognito pieces of music – one Australian, and one from an international performer. “The listener is supposed to guess which is the Australian and which the alien performer,” Phillips wrote. “The idea is that quite often he guesses wrong or gives it up because, strange to say, the local lad proves to be no worse than the...