What a dramatic week for Australia's long-ignored, suddenly centre-stage, technology sector.
It started with a high-profile and largely cheered policy announcement from the federal government on innovation. It ended with the triumphant IPO on the Nasdaq for Atlassian, the most significant technology company this country has produced to date.
Sandwiched between was one of the more riveting (and bizarre) stories we've encountered in a long time, when a previously unknown Sydneysider by the name of Craig Steven Wright emerged as a possible founder of crypto-currency bitcoin. 
To add to the excitment, just a few hours after this revelation (looking less and less likely, but still not totally discredited) surfaced in the US technology press (led by the Conde Nast magazine Wired), a leased suburban residence in the North Shore of the city connected to Wright was raided by police and tax authorities. Keep watching.
At this point, it's safe to say that technology has crashed through into the economic consciousness of the nation. For a country where the corporate scene has long been dominated by gigantic miners and resources companies, big banks and domestic oligopolies, it's a big change in mindset, and it's only going to get bigger. 
Australians have long been world beaters when it comes to consuming technology. And not bad at creating it. The old mantra goes we're just not good at commercialising it. Only evidence has been mounting the old mantra is wrong, and this week (fiendish hoax or not) the evidence became overwhelming.
Paul X. McCarthy, author of Online Gravity and longtime observer of technology, argues Australia has not underperformed in the internet age. It's more a case that by comparison the US, already the world's biggest economy is outperforming, and dominating more than it did with legacy industries. The three biggest companies on the US stockmarket (Apple, Google and Microsoft) are all in tech; another one in the top ten (Facebook) is barely a decade old.
"The online technology world has been very US-centric. There is very little software success outside the US. In Europe there's been Skype and Spotify. SAP is really the only one of any scale," McCarthy says.
"And China has built a domestic [technology] industry by ring fencing their country. So Atlassian is really a quite significant achievement."
The Sydney-based software company is not the first global success story for Australia, either, McCarthy says. In 2000, at the height of the last tech bubble, a Sydney wireless chipmaker called Radiata, formed out of research done by the CSIRO and Macquarie University, was acquired by global chip giant Cisco for $500 million. The business was subsequently wound up.
"It didn't go on to become the next Cisco and there were a loft of complaints at the time that we [Australia] were selling out," McCarthy recounts.
The latest wave of promising Australian technology and software firms seems more inclined to follow Atlassian's path, by staying independent and eventually shooting for an IPO.

Venture capital funds
Many of them have secured financing from top-tier venture capital funds in the US. They include email marketing firm Campaign Monitor (which closed the biggest venture backed funding round for an Australian company yet, worth $250 million, last year) and custom footwear maker Shoes of Prey (which just this week signed off on a $15 million funding round from investors, including Silicon Valley's Khosla Ventures and US retailer Nordstrom).
The fact these firms had to go offshore reflects quite poorly on Australia's venture capital scene. But it's a huge vindication for the quality of the underlying business model that they work on the global stage. Let's face it, that's the new imperative.
"The presence of foreign capital is not a sign of failure, it's a sign of success," McCarthy argues, pointing out that throughout history great cities have been built on outside capital, eg, New York, financed with London money, and San Francisco and LA drawing on the deep pockets of east coast wealth.
The need to develop globally significant internet and technology companies in Australia is acute, because rapid advances in technology are rendering many of the advantages of local companies, such as proximity to customers, obsolete.
Netflix, for example, unnerved Australian media executives without employing a single person in the country.
Although it's got to be said Australian companies have much easier access to the world stage and all the riches that affords.
Unlike most industries, which typically consolidate around a few big players, internet markets tend to be winner takes all. Google is the dominant player in search advertising, by a long way. And Facebook has run away with social media, even though MySpace was there before it. It looks like Uber could do the same with smartphone enabled personal transport, likewise Netflix with streaming video.
And, McCarthy argues, the same could apply to the office software market that Atlassian operates in.
"The vibe is, they could own the enterprise [software industry] and they could be a $100 billon company," he says, and that's a big call since at the time of the IPO pricing Atlassian was worth $US4.4 billion ($6.1billion).
"Someone's going to own that space and they are one of the candidates. Can you imagine if we had one of the next generation software companies [in Australia]?"
Whether that plays out remains to be seen. But if Australia doesn't produce more Atlassians, it risks becoming a dreaded "branch office economy".
Thankfully there's enough promising work going on and, finally, more capital being thrown at it to suggest that won't be the case.