Trying to define national identity is like searching for the end of a rainbow.

It isn’t something that can be found or a place we can collectively reach; it’s something that unfolds over time and through generations. It’s also something that is contested and evokes a sense of belonging individually.

Australia is a nation in transition. In the span of a generation, Australia’s population has increased by more than half. Demographically we are ageing, with an average age 7 years older than it was 3 decades ago, but with a life expectancy 7 years greater than it was in 1984.

On 21 February 1956, 18-year-old Dawn Fraser broke Willy den Ouden's 20-year-old world record for the 100m freestyle.

Ian Thorpe won five Olympic gold medals, the greatest total of any Australian. Thorpe first grabbed world attention when he won the 1998 world 400m freestyle title in Perth, becoming, at 15, the youngest world champion in history. At the age of 12, he competed in 13 events at a state meet, and set under-age NSW records in all of them. Fully grown, he had a large frame, an arm span of 190cm and size 17 feet.

Solomon Islander swimmer Alick Wickham is a celebrated figure in Australian, Solomon Islander and international sport history. His iconic status is inextricably linked to the myth that he introduced the crawl stroke, commonly known as freestyle, to Australia and hence the wider world.

The allocation of Australian parents' time to paid and unpaid work remains very gendered, with fathers usually in full-time paid employment, and mothers often employed part-time or not in employment (Baxter, 2013). Mothers also spend more time than fathers doing household work, whether that is child care or other domestic work (Craig & Mullan, 2011).

This paper examines trends over time in attitudes to gender equality in Australia. We use data from repeated cross-sectional surveys in Australia to investigate trends in beliefs about men's and women's work and family roles between 1986 and 2005. We find that men are consistently more conservative than women, that younger cohorts tend to be less conservative than older cohorts, but those born between 1960 and 1980 are more egalitarian on some issues than those born after 1980. There is also evidence that the overall trend toward more egalitarian gender attitudes is most marked in Australia up until the mid-1990s with the trend flattening and in some cases, even reversing after this period. The paper concludes that there is currently a period of relative stability in gender attitudes in Australia, but with some tendency toward more conservative views. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When the 50/50 by 2030 Foundation was launched in 2017 we believed Australia had hit a nadir in gender equality policy and purpose. Years of effort to remove entrenched organisational, cultural and social barriers to women’s progress were not landing the results we all expected by now.

According to a recent research study conducted within the nation of Australia, swimming is identified as the continent’s most popular sport.

For many of us, it is impossible to separate our childhoods from the water. A thousand sensory memories flood back with every slop of sunscreen: windy days picking sand from our lunch, too proud to seek shelter; dragging boogie boards back and forth across a hot beach; the feeling of salt water drying on our skin, scratching us under our clothes.