Australians must decide for themselves whether this was the land of the dreaming, the land of the Holy Spirit, the New , the Millennial , or the new … - Manning Clark

The proposals for the use of a southern continent had a history almost as long though by no means so distinguished as the history of its discovery. Some saw it as land dedicated to the Holy Spirit; some saw it as a land fit only for the refuse of society, on the principle that the political body, like the human body, is often troubled with vicious humours, which one must often evacuate.

The inhospitable environment and the past had predisposed the minds of its European inhabitants to hand over the government of their country to men who were wary of visionaries and all those who held out a promise of better things for mankind. Australians seemed chained for decades to come to the role of being a New Britannia in another world. The young Henry Lawson and all the other prophets of Utopia were doomed to a bitter disenchantment.

A turbulent emptiness seized the people as they moved into a post-Christian, post-Enlightenment era. No one any longer knew the direction of the river of life. No one had anything to say.