Born in 2014

If you were born in 2014, Australia was quietly arguing with itself about what it was for, while Tony Abbott's government made decisions that generated passionate opposition. The first budget in May — with cuts to health, education, the ABC, and the introduction of GP co-payments — produced protests on the steps of Parliament House and a Senate crossbench that simply refused to pass much of it. The politics were messy and Abbott's personal unpopularity was building.

MH370, the Malaysian Airlines flight that disappeared over the Indian Ocean in March, was tracked by Australian authorities and became one of the strangest and most prolonged aviation mysteries in history — search vessels crisscrossed the southern Indian Ocean for months. Australian troops were deployed again, this time to Iraq as part of the coalition against Islamic State. The Lindt Café siege in Sydney in December — Man Haron Monis taking seventeen people hostage in Martin Place, two hostages and the gunman killed when police moved in — was a shock at the end of a hard year.

Cricket's summer had its pleasures. The AFL was superb. The flat white was now $4.

50 to $5. Sydney and Melbourne house prices were now the conversation at every barbecue. The beach was still there.

But the country felt unsettled.