Corrupt Australia presents an alternative to the politically correct channels of debate to reveal and scrutinize the skewed structure/design of modern Australian society. We also seek to encourage autonomous Australian culture which is free from the standardizing and overly materialistic clutches of globalisation and which encourages citizens to go further than simply contributing to a quantity over quality mindset and the banal and unsustainable conditions under which we may increase our love for and attainment of material mass.

Frederick McCubbin {1855-1917}

Born a baker's son in West Melbourne, McCubbin would become a predominant figure in the 'Heidelberg School' of Australian art.

The Heidelberg school was foremost influenced by the European impressionism movement. It abandoned the laborious attention to detail, produced within the studio, emphasizing 'plein air' or open air landscape painting, the instantaneous effects of lighting, and also experimentation with visible brushstrokes. Works reflecting the style of the school were not 'finished' to the polished levels of those of Von Guerard or even Buvelot, but with all its quirks and the influences it took from Europe, the school, which was more like a club consisting of artists who took excursions to Heidelberg in the late 1880's/early 1890s, and in particular McCubbin, who maintained a slightly heightened sense of realism when compared with his colleagues, produced many works which captured the feel of the Australian landscape and general atmosphere to a degree surpassing all previous attempts.

After all, the artistic skills of those who came before and influenced McCubbin were imported, in some sense, as opposed his own which he developed at the same time as he grew around the subject matter he would come to depict.

He is remembered often for his portrayal and celebration of, what was, the Australian bush life. Perhaps his most famous work along these lines is 'The Pioneer' (above) from 1904, which expresses an affectionate portrayal of the lives those freemen who, in the time subsequent to the convict era, layed the foundations, in terms of managing to settle in isolated parts of the harsh bush and farm, for a civilization that would subsequently flourish.

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Think of it all - of the life that is! Study your friends and foes!
Study the past! And answer this: "Are these times better than those?" The life-long quarrel, the paltry spite, the sting of your poisoned pride! No matter who fell it were better to fight as they did when the world was wide.

Boast as you will of your mateship now - crippled and mean and sly - The lines of suspicion on friendship's brow were traced since the days gone by.
There was room in the long, free lines of the van to fight for it side by side -
There was beating-room for the heart of a man in the days when the world was wide.

With its dull, brown days of a-shilling-an-hour the dreary year drags round: Is this the result of Old England's power? - the bourne of the Outward Bound?
Is this the sequel of Westward Ho! - of the days of Whate'er Betide? The heart of the rebel makes answer "No! We'll fight till the world grows wide!"

The world shall yet be a wider world - for the tokens are manifest; East and North shall the wrongs be hurled that followed us South and West. The march of Freedom is North by the Dawn! Follow, whate'er betide! Sons of the Exiles, march! March on! March till the world grows wide!

- Henry Lawson

(c)2008 Corrupt AU