The short story has always enjoyed a special place in Australian literature, and many of our finest writers have excelled in the form. Strangely enough for such a young culture, and one heavily dependant on immigration, the theme of the immigrant experience has been largely overshadowed by the bush ethos that dominated the stories of the 1890s, and the resurgence of interest in the bush and bush values in the stories of the late thirties and early forties. Our writers have been more interested in what it means to be Australian than in what it’s like to be new-Australian. More recently writers have tended to concern themselves with experimentation in language and form, and with themes that they considered to be of international rather than merely national importance.