' Australia ' has, almost since the European invasion, been an essentially cosmopolitan project though a persistent nationalist discourse seeks to deny this. The populist anti-intellectualism expressed in newspapers &c is, I would claim, really an anti-cosmopolitanism where the arts (when they cannot serve either as 'exports' or as tourist attractions) are relegated to a marginal status and where any overt influence from 'elsewhere' is perceived as an evil. In this paper I will investigate the antagonisms between cosmopolitanism and parochialism in Australian culture with reference to my own experience as a writer.