Born in 2010

If you were born in 2010, Australian politics produced something it had never seen before: a female Prime Minister. Julia Gillard — born in Wales, raised in South Australia, deputy prime minister under Rudd — moved against Kevin Rudd in June in a leadership challenge that was swift and brutal, and by the time most Australians had finished their breakfast, the Prime Minister had changed. The reasons were multiple: Rudd's abandonment of the ETS, his chaotic management style, his poor polling.

The hung parliament election in August produced a result that required weeks of negotiation — both Gillard and Abbott courting the independents — and eventually Gillard formed a minority government. The country was divided, and the period of hung parliament would prove febrile and productive in legislation and deeply draining in political terms. The Queensland floods were building towards their summer catastrophe.

The mining boom was making Australia conspicuously wealthy. The first Apple iPad was being coveted and discussed. The flat white was $4.

Netflix was American and not yet here. The AFL season was keenly contested. The Ashes summer had begun, England's tourists about to be overwhelmed by a Mitchell Johnson who was, briefly, the most terrifying fast bowler on earth.

The country was complicated and interesting and divided, and all of it was happening very fast.