Hiding Banjo Paterson in Cartoonish Australia

A few others asked why the scene didn’t look more like an Australian city and why it wasn’t more multicultural, questions that I took back to Ilya.

He said the overall scene was inspired by Dutch Renaissance paintings like Pieter Bruegel’s Netherlandish Proverbs, and he noted that while it might be subtle, there are in fact characters of various backgrounds throughout the piece.

He marked up the image with some notes and emailed it to me.

His handwriting is hard to read but it shows that there are Australians of Arab, Japanese, Sri Lankan, Indonesian and Indian descent.

Their features blend in because “figurative cogency is not a priority of my work,” said Ilya, who is 28 and moved to New York 18 months ago. “I rather prefer depicting faces quite similarly, hopefully making a point that we’re not as different as some people would like us to believe.”

Here are a few other hidden visual references that all you Australians might appreciate:

What’s the deal with the helmet and weapon? It belongs of course to Ned Kelly, the famous 19th Century bushranger.

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It’s not a dingo. That striped quadruped is a thylacine, commonly known as the Tasmanian tiger, “a now extinct marsupial, which still occupies the Australian popular imagination,” Ilya said.

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Norman Gunston? Yes! “This one’s a bit of a deep cut, but Gunston was a satirical TV character played by the Australian comedian Garry McDonald who was a sort of proto Sacha Baron Cohen,” Ilya told me. “I think that the culture of Australian humor deserved a nod.”

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Now take a close look at that statue. It’s Banjo Paterson, the Australian bush poet, whose song “Waltzing Matilda” is known by every Australian. “Fun fact,” Ilya said. “Paterson appears on the $10 note, and behind his portrait is his poem ‘Clancy of the Overflow’ printed in the smallest type I’ve ever seen. See here.”

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Overprotective Australia? Ilya also included a reference to the Australia’s reputation as a Nanny State. “There are mandatory bike helmet laws (which I’ve exaggerated here) that are widely loathed by young Australians,” he said.

Hope you all enjoyed that walk through the artwork. The best way to see it up close is through this tap-story tool we built for full illustrative immersion.

If you have other ideas for how to deploy illustration as journalism, let us know at nytaustralia@nytimes.com.

Now for our weekly curated selection of New York Times stories, from Australia and beyond, along with a recommendation.

As always, share this newsletter if you like and tell your friends to sign-up too!

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Speaking of artwork, much of the world looked askance at Australia this week when a cartoon from the Sun Herald went viral for its exaggerated depiction of Serena Williams after her loss at the United States Open.

I wrote a piece that aimed to put the image into perspective, interviewing experts with sharp insights on the history of Australia, and cartooning. Then the Sun Herald doubled down. Here’s my Facebook Live chat about all of it.

A few other things we have for you this week:

• Kong on Broadway: Australia’s Global Creatures, a production company audaciously attempting to develop four stage musicals at the same time, has brought a 20 foot tall, 2,000 pound monster to Broadway. Will he be a hit?

• Maureen and Jacinda: Maureen Dowd hung out with Jacinda Ardern and her newborn for last weekend’s column, and she came away impressed by the prime minister’s emotional intelligence and choice of mate, Clarke Gayford.

• Nevertheless, They Persisted: Julia Baird examines Canberra’s culture of “slut-shaming.” We also wrote a feature about female lawmakers trying to push back on decades of sexism and bullying.

• Not in My Backyard: The animals aren’t all in Parliament; for our Australia Diary feature, a reader in Canberra wrote about what happened when a kangaroo colonized his yard.

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I’m a “Mr. Robot” fan and am not at all surprised that its star Rami Malek is as intense and jittery in real life as he is in the show. But how will he manage playing the awkwardly smooth Freddie Mercury of Queen in the biopic “Bohemian Rhapsody?”

Cara Buckley gives us a close look, at the film and its star. Sounds like he’s ready.

… And We Recommend

Starting in October, a month before the midterm elections for Congress in the United States, Sarah Lyall will start writing a twice-weekly newsletter about American politics — for non-Americans.

It’s called “Abroad in America.” You can sign-up here.

She’s a wonderful writer with lots of experience skewering and admiring the United Kingdom and I suspect many of you will enjoy her take on all things America.