'Australians who come over here are apt to consider themselves quite large people': The body and Australian identity in interwar London

During the 1920s and 1930s, it was believed that an Australian physical 'type' had developed under the bright antipodean skies, superior in size and appearance to its English counterpart. When Australians visited the metropole, therefore, locals and visitors alike claimed that they could be identified by sight alone. This article explores the notion of Australian physical distinctiveness, examining the body as a site for the construction and performance of Australian identities in interwar London. I argue that the imagined pre-eminence of Australian bodies became a vehicle of nationalist sentiment, yet could simultaneously connote mental vacancy, vulgarity or even racial otherness. In consequence, the metropole often became a site of physical transformation and re-definition, in which antipodeans sought to improve their chances of assimilation by disavowing the Australianness of their bodies.