Australia is a nation of 25 million people, living in relative affluence in a mainly ‘European’ society, thousands of miles from Europe. Its area is the same as the continental United States. Hardly anyone lives in most of Australia because of desert conditions. Only a minority can trace their own local origins as far back as two hundred years. Its allegiance is nominally to Queen Elizabeth (the Queen of the United Kingdom and the Queen of Australia). Its political system is a federation with parliamentary democracy. At least a million Australians enjoy dual citizenship from somewhere else. Its closest neighbours are New Zealand, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Malaysia, Singapore and Timor, to which few Australians travel more than once or twice. Its favourite overseas holiday resort is Bali. Long-distance friends are often in London or Los Angeles. All of this makes Australia distinctive.

Australia has a wide range of interesting writing about itself. Some of this repeats old stories from the past, like the Gallipoli landing, Ned Kelly and Captain Cook raising the British flag. Unlike other countries its history contains no local set battles, no military invasions, no great inventions, very few great leaders, no dictators, no revolutions and not much out of the ordinary except its unique flora and fauna. As the Chinese allegedly say, ‘Happy is the country with no heroes’. Struggles against distance and climate mark the early days, but science and technology are conquering much of this. The economy is classified as fourteenth in the world. Its population is spread over an area as large as the continental United States, but mainly located in a dozen cities.

The world is changing fast in Australia's neighbourhood. In this book I have tried to examine problems in sustaining a comfortable, stable democracy by using often rigorous means, retaining the friendship of its neighbours while often misunderstanding their peoples, leaders, beliefs and religions. These problems go back to the British imperial inheritance, relationships with the Indigenous peoples and with the neighbouring Asians, insensitivity about immigration and refugee policies, White Australia and beyond, reliance on Britain or the United States, and fear of Islam and China. Some of these issues go as far back as Cook's mission from Georgian England and right up to current instability and worrying changes in the United States and Asia.