Geoff, the US has an 'success culture' and an 'imagination culture' which is pretty much absent here.

You spend 600 Mil on a purely scientific mission to Pluto, with no immediate prestige spinoffs. It will be some 15 years before this pays off (including downloading and interpretation of data). Talk about exploring frontiers .. But Australia had a wonderful rocket base at Woomera which has been closed for some 40-50 years - no money or interest. Not even for pissy little LEO satellites.

Australia, as probably any other country, is full of inventive geniuses, and the 2nd digital computer ever invented now sits in a local museum. It was never developed as the government of the time (and by extension the country generally) regarded it as a waste of time and money.

Problem is unlike the US, Australia is basically populated by a few coastal cities, isolated from the rest of the country. Although there have always been explorers here, it's important to know that to mindset of the European settlers, this country was so alien, arid and bizarre that it shocked them into some sort of sense of retreat. Hence, the rest of the country is largely unpopulated.

I'd say the 'frontier culture' here would refer mainly to hard-working and long-suffering rural folk.