Australian Identity

            
            
             The period of 1940-1960 for the Australian people was one of vast change. Australia was still a very young country and rapid development was beginning to take its toll on the way in which Australians would be viewed on a global scale. As a country with so much industrial, international trade and resource potential, the image which beginning to become the face of Australians was inconsiderate to the people, land and history upon which Australia was founded. The growth and transformation of various myths in Australian history were vital for the Australian population to share a connection with their fellow peoples. On an international scale the recognition of Australian identity was not as widely embraced, and various artists recognized this and challenged the international communities to become familiar with the artists interpretations of Australia; the independent' nation.
             George Russell Drysdale was born in Bognor Regis, England on the 7th of February 1912 and died on the 29th of June 1981 in Sydney's Westmead Hospital. Drysdale traveled to and from Australia numerous times over a fourteen year period finally settling as a border at Geelong Grammar school in 1923. The majority of children that attended this school were predominantly from country regions of Australia and shared common interests in the land with Drysdale himself. In 1929 Drysdale developed a detached retina in his left eye which plagued him for the rest of his life and left him virtually blind in that eye. He left school the following year and spent six months working on a Pioneer estate with his uncle Cluny Drysdale, and later moving on as the overseer at the family property, Boxwood Park in northern Victoria. .
             After recovering from eye treatment in a Melbourne hospital, Drysdale begun to draw in pen and ink and his doctor Julian Smith, an amateur photographer, handed his pieces to Daryl Lindsay, a known artist and later director of the National Gallery of Victoria.