In this review of J. M. Arthur's The Default Country: A Lexical Cartography of Twentieth-Century Australia, (UNSW Press, 2003) Andrew Johnson says that Arthur's key argument is that:

the English language carries within it the image and idea of a particular kind of environment and landscape. That vision was transported to Australia with the language and acts as a screen between the colonists' eyes and the country they view. What the non-indigenous Australian sees, or rather, projects across the actual landscape when they write or speak about it in English, is the country that they all thought or hoped would be there: almost anything but the country that is.

What then is the default country for white settler Australia? Johnson says that:

Australian English affects the settler's attitude to the place in which they live has implications for the relation between humans, language and environment beyond Australia.for non-indigenous Australians the default country, the one against which the actual country is measured and evaluated, is England: a land of plentiful water, green fields and defined, regular seasons. Even for England and for other countries, however, the argument could be made that a different "default country" influences attitudes and responses to the environment: that country is Eden, or arcadia, paradise undivided and unmediated. That is to say, whether one lives in Australia or elsewhere, to describe a place in terms of its absences, loss, defects or failures is to view it through the lens of an imagined exemplar, and to establish a dichotomy of fallen and redeemed with distinctly Judeo-Christian overtones. Ultimately, any further discussion of "default" countries would have to take account of this theological and cultural dimension of the human experience of environment.< /blockquote>