Nations are, by necessity, people united by common mythology. Sometimes that mythology arises from ethnic solidarity. Sometimes it is the product of a shared ideology. Others, as in the case of many post-colonial states, it derives from the mere legal fiction of internationally acknowledged boundaries. But nations do not exist without some kind of common purpose.

This is a problem that has particularly vexed the nations of the new world. Old world states define themselves in ethnic terms, and date the birth of their nation to the creation of their ethnic identity. This is the case with the French, the Russians, and the Japanese, and it is a conception of nationhood untroubled by sects who do not consider themselves bound by it, be they Basque, Chechan, or Ainu. The equivalence between nationhood and ethnicity is the reason why these societies have, in various ways, had such trouble adapting themselves to receiving immigrant inflows: if to be a French citizen is to be of Gallic heritage, what is one to make of French from North Africa or the near East? Should the nation continue to be ethnically defined, or can it find a new (excuse me) raison d’être?

The problem is both alleviated and compounded for states of the new world. The citizens of nations like the United States and Australia cannot with any awareness of history claim their nationhood derives from ethnic commonality. In such countries, settlers displaced, and now exist alongside, indigenous populations. Immigration has created culturally and racially pluralistic societies. There are not ethnic Australians the way there are ethnic Swedes or Thais or Greeks. Our nationhood cannot be defined by the forefathers of our citizens.

Being the first country to sever its ties with the British Empire, and having done so through armed rebellion, the United States was among the first modern societies to consider this conundrum. Its determination, haltingly applied — through the inconstant expansion of citizenship and personhood to blacks, to its indigenous peoples, to immigrants — was that theirs was a nation founded upon an idea. To be American, unlike to be Portuguese or Dutch, is to find nationhood in the state’s civic religion, and especially, in the documents that express it: the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, the Constitution, the Emancipation Proclamation, among others.

Australia, since its inception, has faced a similar problem to the United States, but we have not so readily found a solution to the conundrum of our nationhood. We are clearly not an ethnically united population: our continent’s original inhabitants are Aboriginal; our numbers have included Irish since the 18th century and Chinese since the early 19th century. And yet we feel ourselves to be more than a legally defined entity: we are a people with a common culture, common ideals, and common patriotic symbols.

The United States found its identity in rebellion and, later, in internal conflict. Australia, however, has experienced no great unifying upheaval. Its birth was legalistic, not military. Edmund Barton is no George Washington. Indeed, the story of our nation has been one of the slow process of creating a nation. When we ask who we are, we are answering the question even while we pose it.

We are not a country of ethnicity or mere legality; like the United States, we are a country that is an idea. But the shape of that idea is one we have never been able to settle upon. Indeed, in our struggle to create a nation, we have created two Australias, and, like Harry Potter and Voldemort, neither can live while the other survives. In saying this, I do not mean to suggest the Australian population is divided politically; these national traditions co-exist within the polity, with one at times exerting influence over the other before receding in the face of its opponent’s ascension. The Australian project is to settle the tension between the two traditions of Australia, to create one nation from dual irreconcilable ideas of what it is to be Australian.

This is the problem of the two Australias.

To understand a country, look to its birth. One conception of Australia dates the nation’s birth to 26 January 1788, when the British military-man Arthur Phillip landed in Port Jackson and declared himself Governor of New South Wales. It is this birth that we celebrate formally and nationally as the public holiday Australia Day. To determine what it is that defines the people of Australia, there are worse places to look than the anniversary that bears the name of the nation.

This is a definition of nationhood with a long and proud tradition in the Australian imagination. This is the one that gave us the settlements of Sydney Cove and the agricultural and resource-based societies that grew from them. It is the Australia of convicts and free settlers. It is the Australia that grew from a penal colony into one of the world’s freest, richest societies.

But what is the unifying force behind this Australia? What is the idea that turned eleven ships of naval men and transported prisoners into a modern prosperous society 23 million strong?

In whom it valorises and whom it disregards, this is clearly the story of an English Australia. Governor Phillip received his authority from the British crown, and the colony he founded was one under the British flag. His prisoners were convicted by British courts and his soldiers and free men were governed by British law.

The 1788 tradition endured throughout Australian history to the modern day. It is why our Commonwealth retains the British monarch as its head of state and a large part of why our parliament is governed according to Westminster traditions. It explains why Australians, even after we formed our own nation, fought in World Wars under the British flag and under British command. It explains why the British parliament only as recently as 1986 relinquished its legislative authority over the Australian people. It is why so many Australian suburbs and cities are named for British people and places: Kings Cross and Liverpool, Perth and Adelaide.

It is this Australia that saw its longest serving prime minister, Robert Menzies, accept a knighthood, campaign for the British prime ministership, and, on the eve of the Second World War, blandly inform the nation “Great Britain has declared war [and] as a result, Australia is also at war.” It is the Australia that continues to find cultural succour in the old country, asking its public broadcaster to replay endless BBC dramas and comedies and demanding its school curricula apply renewed attention to old English masters.

But this is not an Australia that specifically extols British ethnicity; it is one that defines itself as British ideologically. This is an Australia that finds its social purpose in its British roots. It celebrates the British origins of its political traditions, defends its residues of British culture against home-grown or American barbarisms, and celebrates Anglo-Saxon symbols as patriotic ones. This is the Australia of the Union Jack on the flag, of nostalgia for Bonfire Night, of memories of the spirited tones of God Save the Queen. Perhaps it is Britain better than the British have ever done it: pluckier, hardier, prouder.

Yet Australia is not, no matter how determinedly adherents of the First Fleet tradition insist otherwise, a British nation. Its history extends 40,000 years into the past and its present encompasses people from around the world.

If not British, what is this Australia?

There is another milestone in the history of Australia as a nation, after the arrival of Governor Phillip celebrated each year on Australia Day. The other birth of the Australian nation occurred on January 1, 1901.

This is the date upon which the six colonies of New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania, Victoria, and Western Australia formed one nation. It is the first time a nation voted itself into existence, and, accordingly, the country it birthed has valued dearly the democratic principle. According to this tradition, the Australian nation is not one of the British berth in Sydney Harbour, but the Federation of many self-governing people into a single state.

“For the first time in history, we have a nation for a continent and a continent for a nation,” declared the first prime minister, Edmund Barton, as he campaigned for Federation. And what better defines the nation formed by Federation than physical place? Governments from across the country united on the basis of their shared geography to form a single nation. If the Federation created a nation, it created one based on the ideology of place. The continent of Australia was the nation of Australia. A nation for a continent and a continent for a nation.

The beauty of this Australia is that it is endlessly adaptable. Grounding itself in physical place it can extend itself temporarily, incorporating its bounds beyond Britishness. The Australia of place, of Federation, of Henry Parkes and Edmund Barton, does not exclude its indigenous heritage; after all, Aboriginal Australians were on this continent first and this is a nation for a continent. And it is an Australia that does not demarcate its current inhabitants by birth and background. If this is to be a continent for a nation and a nation for a continent, it is for anyone here, whether they trace their heritage to Indonesia, to Sri Lanka, to Sudan, to Italy, or beyond.

This is an Australia that recognises that it is geographically, economically, and, yes, to a great extent, culturally, a part of Asia. It is an Australia that followed Great Britain into the First World War, followed it into the Second World War, and then was rebuffed when the war came to the Pacific and it sought reciprocal protection. It is the Australia who, under Prime Minister John Curtin, disregarded British commands to send its troops to the European theatre, but defended its own continent, in coordination with a new American ally.

It is the Australia of Ned Kelly, rallying against British authoritarianism. It is the Australia that extended the vote to women before almost anywhere else in the world. It is the Australia of one of the world’s first minimum wage laws, the Australia that chose for itself an elected bicameral legislature even before the United States had one. If the first Australia is the nation of cricket, this is the nation of the Ashes. This is the Australia of the republic.

This Australia was not unfaltering in its rise. One of the first pieces of legislation passed by Australia’s newly federated parliament was the Immigration Restriction Act of 1901. It is what we know as the White Australia policy and was designed specifically to preserve the British character of a new nation that had already created itself opposed to that Britishness.

The twin legacies of the two Australias endure today. The republic remains a going, if currently dormant, political concern. The place of immigrants in our society is under continual, often passionate, debate. Our trade, security, and economic deliberations depend on our willingness to incorporate ourselves with the greater Asian community. Where do our alliances fall? What investments should we permit? In which industries will we find our future?

But Australia cannot be both a nation defined by an imagined Britishness and by its geographic home. As we make our way into the 21st century, one tradition must give. We can be a nation of Britishness, upholding the legacy of a single people that settled and populated the land over more than two centuries and now invites people from all over the world to do their utmost to become a part of that Britishness.

Or we can be a nation for a continent, an Australia for all comers. We can pursue reconciliation with our original peoples and welcome new arrivals as equals. We can be a country that refuses to accede to the apparent cultural superiority of old world institutions. We can rule ourselves, as a self-governing and independent republic.

Is Australia to be British or is it to be Pacific? We cannot properly be a nation until we choose one. And if we are to be a free, self-governing nation of egalitarianism and equality, we cannot continue to define ourselves as a nation formed from British residue when we are so palpably not.