Australia's central folklore, the unofficial and informal practice of the society, consists of a persistent British-nurtured tradition that both functions and is well recognized throughout public and private life despite the fact that the country is now multi-cultural and urban dwelling and a technologically advanced nation. 

Australians understand indigenous and later cultural manifestations, but it is largely the modified British self-perception that is somehow their core identity, for an understood norm was present in the settler society from the beginning one of accepted language, social customs, behavior, and dress. 

Progressive modification has not changed the cultural dependence on the parent stock or the unconscious acceptance of its formulating force, heritage dimension, and source of essential explanation for so much. 

Once exiles from the class-ridden British Isles, Australians—despite their retaining some positive or sentimental feelings for their English or British background—are now an informal people, largely at home—materially and culturally—in their wide brown land, with a frame of reference that may be consulted but that is no longer perceived as being the shaping force for their historical context, present behavior, or future lifestyle. 

While pioneering white Australians led austere and exhausting lives in the harsh outback, their style—one much heightened and celebrated with imagination in story and song—and identity, at least in its material conditions, have long been in the past. 

Yet it is the simplicity and quiet heroism of the ordinary folk as well as of the explorers and frontiersmen of the first century of white settlement that gave Australia its heroic age, with its core concomitant ethic of friendship and mutual support—one repeated in two world wars 
and in many subsequent smaller ones. 

The materialism and increasing spiritual and political poverty of more recent generations as well as a soul-threatening and hedonistic lifestyle have aroused once again a proud remembrance of folk things and a desire to practice again in the outdoors and at the grassroots level some of the small pre-modern recreations, crafts, and practical achievements that built the nation. 

Important resources for the study of Australian folklore include the journal Australian Folklore An Annual Journal of Folklore Studies, first edited in 1987 by Graham Seal and D. Hultz and since 1993 by John S. Ryan.