Sophie Gee

gets across this total fascination, almost obsession with the contours and the experience of the Australian bush.

And both writers are really juxtaposing it with the kind of artificially domesticated, sort of absurdly decorous landscapes that have been created by white colonial settlers.

You remember in Picnic at Hanging Rock that the white families have these very highly manicured, overwatered gardens on the slopes of Mount Macedon.

Similarly, in Noyama, she's sort of using the theatre in these European settings and tableau to kind of juxtapose with the New Zealand landscape.

Gorgeous.

Really fantastic.

Yeah, we've promised to explain it.

Well, the first thing I think we need to say, Jonty, is we need to out ourselves.

We are both propagators and victims of cultural cringe.

Your family, you were, where were you born?

Yeah, that's what I thought.

You were born in Sydney.

You know, your parents romanced one another on one of Australia's most beautiful beaches, which is very dear to both of our hearts, Kilcare Beach.

And then your parents moved back to the heartland.

Well, your father's English, but they moved back to London and you were brought up in London.

And I was born in Sydney, raised in Sydney, but we very frequently took trips back to London.

And it really did have, I absolutely love London and I've spent a huge amount of time there.

And it really did have the feeling when I was a child of going back to the homeland, going back to the place, which finally made sense culturally, actually.

And Marsh coined this phrase that often actually still gets used, which is that London feeling, the feeling that colonials have when they return to the metropolis, to the city of London.

where it all began.