Born in 2008

If you were born in 2008, Kevin Rudd's formal apology to the Stolen Generations in February was one of the most emotionally significant parliamentary moments in Australian history. Indigenous Australians and non-Indigenous Australians sat in Parliament House and watched on screens across the country and wept, and something that had been a running wound in the national life was acknowledged, formally and finally, by a Prime Minister. It wasn't a solution — decades of work remained — but it was a necessary thing, and most of the country understood that.

Then the Global Financial Crisis hit in September and October, and Rudd and Treasurer Swan moved with impressive speed — the stimulus package, the cash payments to households, the school halls and pink batts — and Australia came through the GFC more cleanly than any comparable economy. Economists debated how much of that was good government and how much was good fortune in the form of Chinese demand for Australian resources, but the result was the result. The mining boom was in full roar, making fortunes in Queensland and Western Australia.

The footy was on, the cricket was on, the coffee was good. Lily Allen and Gotye and Bernard Fanning were on the radio. The housing market had barely blinked.

The country was doing well and slightly astonished at its own doing-well.