I trust you will return from Australia in a position of affluence. I believe there is no society of any kind in the Colonies – nothing that I would call society.
– Oscar Wilde
The Picture of Dorian Gray, Chapter 5. Oscar Wilde has strong and often derogatory view on England and the English, America and the Americans and here it’s Australia’s turn. Mrs. Vane warns her son James, a sailor who is about to leave for Australia, about the lack of any society in the colonies.