This year being the centenary of some of the bigger battles of WW1, Anzac Day got an unusual amount of attention in the British press. Poms are puzzled by the pride which Gallipoli continues to instill in Australians. How, they wonder, do we take pride in what was, by any military measure, an epic fail? It would be like the French being proud of Waterloo (which they’re not, as their refusal to participate in next month’s bicentenary has made clear).

But Gallipoli has a value for Australians which older nations can’t be expected to understand. In 1914 the country’s recently gained independence was still a rather notional thing for most of its citizens and what happened on a scrap of Turkish coastline 13 years after Federation gave it meaning. And the men who died there bequeathed something as enduring as any cenotaph – something another generation of young men revived in other foreign hell-holes in the next war. After that Australians looked for and commended those digger qualities in everyday life. But in the absence of mortal danger – and out of respect for the men who’d faced it – they weren’t comfortable calling it The Anzac Spirit. So they coined a term which had fewer tickets on itself: mateship. Mateship thrived in the workplace, especially if there was the equivalent of an officer class. Mateship was a union anyone could join but which exacted no dues. In the 1950s, as communism threatened to spoil the post-war party, the word became synonymous with socialism. But its Anzac antecedence deflected the opprobrium attracted by European and American labour movements. Mateship transcended political divides, and outside the workplace it chimed with Australians’ love of team sports; where not letting your teammates down mattered as much as winning and nobody liked a skiter.

But as the country’s post-war economic and social landscape evolved so did mateship, and sometimes for the better. By the 1960s the fair-go franchise – very much a white male thing – was being extended to other demographics, notably those pushing for aboriginal suffrage and sexual equality. But not all the beneficiaries of this more inclusive mateship were so deserving. The mechanisation of farming and industry produced far more indoor, sedentary jobs where the line between blue and white collar was blurred. The way people talked reflected this. Specifically, those in authority started talking in a way which implied a commonality with those on whose compliance they depended. Politicians had always done this. But as employers found themselves having to explain their actions to workers and unions, rather than just investors, they too discovered the value of words which evoked working class values.

According to author Paul Barry, the collapse of some of Australia’s biggest corporations in the 1990s was largely the result of them being run by people whose main qualification was that they’d attended the same school. What they rationalised as mateship would be called cronyism anywhere else. Australian governance is especially susceptible to cronyism because, unlike in the rest of the English speaking world, when Australian kids go on to university they tend not to move to another city to do it, so they don’t upgrade their relationships. The ‘mateship’ which brought down One-Tel and HIH were nurtured not in the dusty, working class heartland of ‘Struggle Street’, but the cool and leafy enclaves of Bellevue Hill and Vaucluse. In an Orwellian twist these rich and irresponsible young men epitomised the establishment that real mateship had once been a bulwark against.

Even in sport the goalposts have shifted dramatically on mateship. In 1989, when David Campese was vilified in the press for a series-losing pass against the British Lions, his captain Nick Farr-Jones said that if he picked another team tomorrow Campo would be in it. Fast forward to the announcement last week that Matt Giteau will be in the Wallaby squad at the 2015 Rugby World Cup. According to ARU policy, Giteau became ineligible for Wallaby selection when he moved to France four years ago. His recall denies a place to players who’ve turned down similar offshore contracts. Faced with the identical dilemma England did not select Steffon Armitage, one of Giteau’s Toulon teammates and the best No 8 in Europe, because, in the words of the England manager, it wouldn’t have been good for the team. What sounded like madness to English rugby fans might have sounded like mateship to Australians.

Or maybe not. The fact is, even Australians who don’t want to exploit mateship now often misappropriate it. Talking about the 2010 Queensland flood clean-up Julia Gillard called it a great example of Aussie mateship. It was certainly impressive, but there was nothing uniquely Australian about it, just as there was nothing uniquely Japanese about Japan’s response to an earthquake and tsunami the following year. Like most politicians who talk about mateship (and they all do at some point) Julia Gillard clearly doesn’t understand its provenance. It had little to do with community, and nothing to do with patriotism, but was simply the bond which formed between small groups of men as they came to the terrible realisation that the hole they were in was one which their country and its government were not going to get them out of, and that if they survived at all it would be thanks to the ordinary men either side of them. Gallipoli may be where mateship first bloomed, but the seeds were planted a hundred years earlier by even smaller groups of men – and women – fighting even longer battles against things like drought and disease. In places too many days ride from any politician, policeman or doctor for them to be of any use.

Perhaps that kind of mateship is now history in all senses of the word. It’s certainly doubtful whether thousands of Australians will ever again be made to face the kind of adversity which the Anzacs faced. But as recent events have shown, young Australians do still make bad decisions which result in them being separated from their homes and families for many months, and even very occasionally facing death. And as it becomes clear that neither their god nor their country can do a damn thing about it, we might well ask ourselves where those young Australians find the courage to stand up together to meet it? To refuse the blindfolds offered, and to keep singing right up until the shots ring out.