Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens), the famous American writer and humourist, visited Australia in 1895 as part of a moneymaking lecture tour around the equator. He was broke. Of the many things about the continent with which he was taken, one was its "picturesque history — Australia's speciality", as he called it.² By this he meant in the then relatively recently established colonies the propensity of individuals and institutions to make convenient pasts that were usable in the present. History was everywhere to be found in public. Civic promoters gave a "capital of humble sheds' the trappings of "the aristocratic quarters of the metropolis of the world". Didactic monuments and memorials were scattered across the landscape. Tall tales but true were built around self-made men .3