You already speak the language. This is everything else. The films, books and music every Irish backpacker should have under their belt before the plane touches down in Perth.
You don't need to have read all of Cloudstreet before you land. But knowing what it is when someone mentions it — that's the difference between nodding along and actually belonging.
Two lists. Perth and WA bands you can actually go and see live — and Australian classics that will come up in every pub, every BBQ, and every playlist you encounter. Know them before you arrive and you'll fit in faster than you think.
If there's one Perth band you need to know before you arrive, it's Eskimo Joe. Black Fingernails, Red Wine is one of the most recognisable Australian songs of the 2000s and any Perth local of a certain age will have a story about seeing them at a small venue before they got big. They've been around long enough to be genuinely beloved rather than just popular. Find out when they're playing — if they're on while you're there, go.
Kevin Parker grew up in Perth and built one of the most distinctive sounds in contemporary music largely alone in a bedroom studio. Currents was one of the defining albums of the 2010s. If you've never heard Tame Impala you've still almost certainly heard Tame Impala — their music has been in films, ads, and playlists globally. They've outgrown Perth venues now but the connection to the city is deep and locals are genuinely proud of them.
John Butler is Fremantle royalty. His instrumental piece Ocean is one of the most technically impressive pieces of acoustic guitar work you'll ever hear — look it up on YouTube before you arrive and prepare to be genuinely stunned. The Trio has been one of Australia's most respected live acts for 25 years. Fremantle feels like home to them and they play there regularly. Worth going out of your way for.
Younger, lighter, and more radio-friendly than the others on this list — San Cisco are the band you'll hear at a Sunday afternoon session in Fremantle and immediately like without knowing why. Freddie is their most well-known song and it's an earworm from the first listen. Good live act, very Perth in their vibe.
More experimental and less immediately accessible than the others but worth knowing. Methyl Ethel represent the creative, art-school side of Perth's music scene — a side that doesn't always get attention outside of WA. If you like interesting, slightly odd pop music, start with Ubu.
Grungier and more direct than the others on this list — Tired Lion make the kind of music that sounds better live in a small venue than on a recording. Frontwoman Sophie Hopes has one of the most distinctive voices in Australian indie rock. If you like your music a bit rough around the edges, these are your people.
Cold Chisel are to Australia what The Pogues are to Ireland — the band that captured something essential and true about working-class life and put it in a song. Jimmy Barnes' voice is one of the most recognisable in Australian music history. Khe Sanh is the unofficial national anthem of a certain kind of Australian night out. If it comes on in a pub, everyone sings it. Know the words.
Midnight Oil were politically engaged before that was fashionable — fiercely Australian, deeply concerned with Indigenous land rights, and furiously loud. Beds Are Burning remains one of the great protest songs in any genre. Peter Garrett went on to become a federal politician, which tells you something about how seriously Australians took the band. Knowing Midnight Oil signals that you're interested in Australia rather than just passing through.
Global superstars who happened to be Australian — INXS are one of those bands where you know more of their songs than you realise. Need You Tonight, Never Tear Us Apart, Devil Inside. Michael Hutchence was one of the great frontmen. The story of the band and Hutchence's death in 1997 is one of the more tragic chapters in Australian music history. Worth knowing before someone brings it up at a BBQ.
You already know AC/DC. But you may not know that they're Australian, formed in Sydney by two Scottish brothers who emigrated as children, and are treated with genuine reverence here. Highway to Hell and Back in Black are not just songs — they're cultural touchstones. The fact that Bon Scott, their original vocalist, was born in Kirriemuir, Scotland and is buried in Fremantle, Perth gives Irish visitors a specific connection worth knowing.
Technically New Zealand-formed but claimed equally by both countries — and Irish people tend to know them well already. Don't Dream It's Over and Weather With You are two of the most played songs in the history of Australian radio. Neil Finn is one of the great pop songwriters of his generation. Mentioning Crowded House is a safe bridge between Irish and Australian musical sensibilities.
Paul Kelly is the Australian equivalent of Van Morrison — a songwriter's songwriter, deeply respected, whose music tells stories about ordinary Australian life with extraordinary precision. How to Make Gravy is played on Australian radio every Christmas without fail and is one of the great Australian songs. If you want to understand how Australians think about family, love, and loss — listen to Paul Kelly.
You don't need to watch all of these before you arrive. But work through the list and by the time you land you'll understand the humour, the landscape, the history, and the culture in a way that no guidebook can give you.
Non-negotiable. The Castle is the most quoted Australian film in history and if you don't know it you will spend your first month in Perth nodding politely while having absolutely no idea what people are laughing at. The story of the Kerrigans — a working-class family fighting to keep their home near Melbourne Airport — is funny, warm, and quietly profound. "Tell him he's dreaming." "How's the serenity?" "It's the vibe of the thing." You need these. Watch it before you get on the plane.
Three Aboriginal girls walk 1,500 kilometres across Western Australia to return home to their families after being forcibly removed by the Australian government. Based on a true story. Set in WA. One of the most important Australian films ever made and essential viewing for anyone arriving in this country — it gives context to the Traditional Custodians acknowledgements you'll encounter, the complexity of Australian history, and why reconciliation is still such an active conversation. It will stay with you.
The true story of a kelpie dog who became the unofficial mascot of the Hamersley Iron mining community in the Pilbara — one of the most remote regions of Western Australia. Red Dog wandered between mining camps, hitching rides and being adopted by the whole community. It's funny, charming, and will make you cry. It also gives you a vivid picture of FIFO life and remote WA mining culture before you encounter it. There's a statue of Red Dog in Dampier. Locals love him still.
Yes it's dated. Yes the accents are exaggerated. Yes Australians will groan if you bring it up in the wrong way. But Crocodile Dundee is a genuine cultural phenomenon — one of the highest-grossing Australian films of all time — and it contains something true about Australian character even underneath all the Hollywood gloss. "That's not a knife." Know it. Just don't quote it at Australians unless you're very sure of your audience.
Toni Collette in the role that launched her career, playing Muriel — an awkward, ABBA-obsessed young woman from a small Australian town trying to escape her life and reinvent herself. It's funnier than it sounds and sadder than you expect. Australian social dynamics — the cruelty of suburban cliques, the pressure of family expectation, the unlikely friendships — are on full display. The ABBA soundtrack is an added bonus.
Baz Luhrmann's debut feature and still arguably his best. A competitive ballroom dancer wants to dance his own steps — chaos ensues. It's camp, colourful, and completely Australian in its celebration of the underdog and its suspicion of authority and institutions. The film captures something genuine about Australian culture — the belief that rules are made to be questioned and that doing your own thing is the highest virtue.
The true story of Robyn Davidson, who walked 2,700 kilometres across the WA desert from Alice Springs to the Indian Ocean with four camels and a dog in 1977. Mia Wasikowska plays Davidson with quiet intensity. The landscape — red desert, endless sky, brutal heat — is the real character. Before you arrive in WA it's worth understanding the scale of the place. This film will recalibrate your sense of distance in a way nothing else will.
Shot on a shoestring budget in rural Victoria, Mad Max launched Mel Gibson's career and created one of the most influential film franchises in history. The Australian outback — or a reasonable approximation of it — as post-apocalyptic wasteland. It looks cheap because it was. It works because the landscape is genuinely terrifying and Miller understood something true about Australian ideas of freedom, law, and survival. Worth watching the original before the franchise gets confusing.
Two teenage girls trying to fit into the surf culture of Sydney's Cronulla beach in the 1970s. Dated in some ways, surprisingly sharp in others — the film captures the specific social cruelty of Australian beach culture and the rigid gender dynamics of that era with an honesty that still holds up. It was later adapted into an excellent TV series. Understanding Australian beach culture means understanding both its beauty and its darker edges, and Puberty Blues shows both.
One of the most disturbing Australian films ever made and one of the most honest. A schoolteacher stranded in a remote outback mining town is gradually consumed by the hypermasculine drinking culture around him. It's confronting, relentless, and brilliantly made. Not a comfortable watch. But it captures something true about isolation, masculinity, and the darker side of Australian outback culture that more cheerful films deliberately ignore. Watch it before FIFO — it's not a horror film, it's a warning.
Considered lost for decades, the film was rediscovered in a Pittsburgh warehouse in 2004. Now considered one of the great Australian films.
From the same team as The Castle — the true story of the Parkes Observatory radio telescope in rural New South Wales, which played a key role in relaying the Apollo 11 moon landing to the world in 1969. Funny, warm, and deeply Australian in its portrayal of quiet competence dressed up as cheerful incompetence. "We're Australians — we're used to adversity." The film captures something essential about Australian character: dignity without drama, competence without performance.
Eric Bana plays a federal agent returning to his drought-stricken hometown to investigate a murder. The Australian landscape — bleached, dry, relentless — is as much a character as any of the humans. Based on Jane Harper's novel (also on the reading list below). A genuinely gripping thriller that also tells you something true about small-town Australia, the weight of history, and the way communities carry secrets. Watch the film, then read the book — they're equally good.
Six books. Not a complete education in Australian literature — just the ones that will give you the most useful context for the place you're about to spend a year of your life. Start with Cloudstreet if you start anywhere.
The great Perth novel. Two working-class families — the Lambs and the Pickles — share a large house on Cloud Street in post-war Perth over twenty years. Funny, sad, strange, and deeply rooted in the specific landscape and culture of Western Australia. Winton writes Perth the way Joyce wrote Dublin — you can feel the river, smell the heat, hear the particular flatness of the vowels. If you want to understand what Perth is and where it came from, this is the book. It's long. It's worth every page.
Two teenage boys in a small WA coastal town become obsessed with surfing and the thrill of pushing physical limits under the influence of a charismatic older surfer. Shorter and more immediate than Cloudstreet, Breath captures the specific quality of the WA coast — the power of the ocean, the isolation of small communities, the particular recklessness of young men with nothing to prove yet. If you're heading to WA for the beaches as much as the work, read this first.
In 1977, Robyn Davidson walked 2,700 kilometres across the Australian desert from Alice Springs to the Indian Ocean with four camels and a dog. This is her account of that journey. Before it was a film it was this book, and the book is better — rawer, funnier, more honest about the fear and the failure and the extraordinary stubbornness required to finish. It will make you want to see the interior of Australia and simultaneously terrify you about it. The WA desert is not a backdrop — it's a character.
Peter Carey's Booker Prize-winning novel tells the story of Ned Kelly — Australia's most famous outlaw — in Kelly's own invented voice. Kelly is to Australia what Michael Collins is to Ireland: a rebel against British colonial authority, mythologised beyond recognition, whose actual story is more complicated and more interesting than the legend. Understanding Ned Kelly means understanding how Australians think about authority, rebellion, and national identity. The armour on the cover is one of the most recognisable images in Australian culture.
A federal agent returns to his drought-ravaged hometown to investigate what looks like a murder-suicide. The Australian landscape — bone dry, relentlessly hot, closing in — is the atmosphere the whole novel breathes. Harper has become one of the most important voices in Australian crime fiction and The Dry is the book that made her reputation. It's gripping as a thriller, but it also tells you something true about how Australia feels in summer, how small communities carry old wounds, and the specific way rural Australian men deal with things they'd rather not talk about.
A man is found dead in the remote Australian outback, miles from his car and any shelter. His brother investigates. Harper's third novel is arguably her best — the isolation of the Australian interior is even more central here than in The Dry, and the portrait of a family carrying generational secrets in a landscape that offers no escape is genuinely haunting. Read The Dry first, then this. By the time you've finished both you'll have a vivid sense of what makes Australia genuinely different from anywhere else.
All of these are available on Amazon, Spotify, Netflix, Stan, and streaming platforms. We haven't linked them because we'd rather you find your own version — but do yourself a favour and work through the list before you land. You'll arrive fluent.