O'Brien painted a picture of rustic simplicity: the kindly mother who added "trimmins" to the nightly rosary, the benevolent priest and his bossy housekeeper, people whose social life centred around Sunday Mass. Australia seemed to be Ireland on a bigger screen. Surnames were familiar: Casey, Hanrahan, the Careys, McEvoy, Norah O'Neill, "the Regans and the Ryans and the whole mob of O'Briens". He even wrote about the Sugarloaf, leaving me confused as to whether he might really be writing about somewhere in Wicklow.

In later youth I bought for five shillings a book of Banjo Paterson's verse. It was like the Boree Log without the pious bits. The picture was similar, if secular, and many of the poems were a glorification of the horse. Where John O'Brien's horses were used for mercy missions over vast distances or for pulling shandrydans, Paterson's were for racing and droving or performing deeds of daring in pursuit of other horses which could be used for racing or droving.

I regret never having read Lawson. Was it his socialist message, I wonder, or his personal failings that kept his books out of Irish bookshops. If I had read him, those "faces in the street" might have given a different picture of Australia and there was nothing romantic about the strong, snake-frightened woman whose husband was long gone and whose oldest son would soon follow. For our school Leaving Certificate we "did Australia" as part of our geography course; it was accepted that Australia and Africa "came up" in the exam in alternate years. So I learned about Geelong and Ballarat and the Murray Darling and Kalgoorlie, Coolgardie and Boulder. I have no idea what I learned about those places, but I never forgot the musical names. "Chimborazo, Cotopaxi had stolen my soul away."

In those days, there were few well-known Australians. We weren't told that Errol Flynn and Peter Finch and Frank Ifield were Australians. We had heard of Dawn Fraser and John Landy, and Don Bradman's fame penetrated even our non-cricket culture. We knew of Slim Dusty's unfortunate pub and Rolf Harris' funny creatures. Menzies seemed to be always the Prime Minister and there was a friend of De Valera who was Archbishop of Melbourne. A favourite trick question from visiting uncles trying to show their own erudition was "What is the capital of Australia?"

In later times there was Herb Elliott and his training methods under the eccentric Percy Cerutty; there were great tennis players like Laver and Rosewall, Margaret Court and Evonne Goolagong, golfers like Nagle and Thomson. And when Ron Barassi brought a team to Dublin, we were amused at their funny jerseys, we marvelled at their athleticism and we laughed at their inability to kick a round ball better than our sisters. (In those days you could be sexist without having to tell it in confession.)

Some years ago, I complied with the request of the charismatic Prime Minister of the day and took out Australian citizenship at a ceremony where the officiating person was Bill Hayden. I felt uncomfortable taking the oath to "her heirs and successors forever", but I thought if the oath or whatever it was could be administered by a person I thought - mistakenly, as it turned out - was a long-time advocate of a republic, why should I complain?

So, officially, I am now an Australian. I belong to a country whose modern history began 200 years ago in a series of concentration camps. I belong to a conquering people who almost annihilated the quiet and gentle native tribes. Even today, Ian Botham's famous remark hurts: "I'm very proud of my country and my heritage. Unlike you, we have a heritage."

And yet that is not the whole story. There is an answer to Botham's taunt. It is to stick your chest out and say that your forebears survived the worst that a corrupt political and social system and a savage penal strategy could impose, and came through it to breed a race that has shown a commitment to social justice and a flamboyant disregard for pomposity and authority. It is no mean boast.

Still, I wonder about that "heirs and successors" bit.

Frank O'Shea is a Melbourne writer.