What are the peculiarities of Australian modernity? How can we make sense of Australia? This programmatic article opens up questions of how to think about Australia through thinking about thinking about Australia. National and imperial fallacies abound - that Australia is derivative of origin or environment, and is allegedly obsessed with identity crises. Much analysis of Australia is either celebratory or dismissive. Too often the question is `who are we?' rather than `what has been the nature of our collective and (...) split experience?' The argument presented here is that the idea of Australian civilization can be used to hold these two dimensions together within the framework of an accelerating globalization process which divides rather than unites. Three negative and three positive theses are advanced to this end, anticipating a further article which follows Tocqueville into the antipodes. (shrink)