Tim Ross

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And the refugees after that.

Yeah.

All those big migratory artistic and cultural movements of the 20th century kind of, you know, this is where people ended up because these were lands of opportunity.

Yes, yes.

So do you feel that in a way that the eastern end of Australia is a little less open to the world because it's facing the vast Pacific, whereas you've got this cultural diversity across the sea here?

This is a subject that I find really fascinating.

I find it fascinating because my encounters with your country are effectively on a European platform with a European descended population.

So Australia, what does Australia mean?

There's a duality.

There's an idea of this country which is exciting and it's about the future and it's embodied in 20th century architecture and design and painting.

And then there's this other great story.

The interesting thing about going to New Zealand is that there's a different balance there of those narratives.

It's interesting, isn't it?

Because culturally, I think we're at a point in time now where, I mean, in my country, there's a new appreciation of the role of imported labor, slave labor, in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries into the 19th century.

And we're reassessing people who we thought of as heroes, who we discover were slave owners,

Benjamin Franklin was a slave owner, founder of the American Constitution.

Yes.

And a personal hero of mine because he invented so many interesting things like the water organ and the electricity experiments with kites.