Australia stands very high as an unspoken contributor to world culture, and any visit here reveals there is more than ever met the eye. There is a spectacular history in art, music, literature that is deep in the soil. It has various roots that come together in a very fascinating and complex cultural experiment. The indigenous cultures here have been on the land for 40,000 years or more, and the various tribes and traditions play a very large part in the works of artists who are paying attention. Then there is a tremendous European influence, that has a great influence from the U.K., but is brought in from all over, and there is also a constant flow of information between neighboring cultures, and the Asian influence is also deep.

It’s difficult to tell where one thing ends and another begins, as the years add up and the roots become very much entwined with each other. Puzzling over the various strands, in the privacy of a perfect hotel , one wonders why visiting here took so long, when life is short, and there is so much to see and know.

For all the contributions, however, there are some that are more deeply ingrained than others, and for anyone who ever felt nostalgia about Woolworth’s , it might be surprising to discover that this, too, has an Australian counterpart. Or at least it was borrowed by a Kiama resident, one Harold Percival Christmas . He opened his first store in the early part of the 20th century, a couple decades after it was well underway in the U.S., and it’s success here parallels theirs. There were many ups and downs, and finally, there were some very big ups. The irony of his name was never lost to anyone in his lifetime, and his legacy survives. What doesn’t survive, though, was his practice of having a phrenologist measure the heads of prospective employees. Some elements of nostalgia are best left in the past.

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