The Sound of Aus

What does the Australian accent really say about us? It was, somewhat unexpectedly, during a screening of Jane Campion’s Holy Smoke (1999), starring Kate Winslet as a young Sydney woman called Ruth, that I first became preoccupied with this question. As I watched Campion’s follow-up to The Piano (1993), it struck me that Winslet’s Australian accent was so damned perfect that an explanation was mandatory. I mean, Winslet could even sigh like an Aussie.