TIME 100 ISSUE: Final. Romancing Australia. Gallery of Photos!

The first edition of TIME AUSTRALIA magazine hit the streets in 1986, but the relationship with TIME started in 1927. 
 

Australia – one of “the great moments” 

Time began romancing Australia (“Down Under”) with a report on April 18, 1927, covering one of “the greatest moments” in our history – the opening of the new Federal Capital, Canberra.

The cover subject was none other than “the great one-time singer, the famed Australian”, Dame Nellie Melba. The “tame Tasmanian”, Prime Minister Joe Lyons, had a flattering cover on Time July 8,1935 edition, courtesy  of a photograph taken by Hollywood Studios, Melbourne. 

Prime Minister Lyons and his wife Enid (“plump but not fat”, says Time), who were travelling outside of Australia for the first time in America to convince President Roosevelt and his New Dealers to lower the US tariff in favour of Australia’s wool, wine and timber. They had a stopover in London to attend King George’s silver jubilee celebrations. 

Some other highlights: Both Time and Life were in demand throughout the world; In 1942, special ‘pony’ editions of Time were printed weekly in Australia. 

In the 1960s, in addition to the Pacific edition, a South Pacific edition was published. Dating from the start the of World War 11, TIME would share its Australian correspondents. 

Australian writer and painter Robert Hughes joined Time in the early 1970s. In July 1986, TIME produced the first issue of TIME Australia in “an unprecedented, publishing venture.” The march of TIME goes on … 

<< By Frank Morris. Except from Romancing Australia, Australian Book Collector, April 1998. 

NELLIE MELBA 

Dame Nellie Melba was the first Australian woman to appear on a front cover of TIME in 1927. 

LYONS 

Prime Minister, Joe Lyons – honest, naïve, likeable, tousle-haired – featured on a TIME cover in 1932. 

MENZIES 

Sir Robert Gordon Menzies, Prime Minister of Australia  from 1939-1941 and 1949-1966. “Take a pair of arching eyebrows, a pair of mobile lips and have Sir Robert Menzies as people like him best,” writes  journalist Ray Robinson. 

HUGHES 

Writer and artist, Robert Hughes, joined TIME in the eary-1970s. He became possibly one the most influential art critics in the English language. 

CANBERRA 

Canberra’s Federal Parliament was opened for the first time by George 1V, Duke of York, in 1927. Canberra, the Australian Capital Territory, has a special atmospheres to anyone visiting the country’s seat of power it will be a memorable one. Canberra a city for all seasons. The opening up of Australia’s capital was an “agonisingly” slow affair. In 1913, the ceremony of naming of the place got under way. The speeches were short and sharp. The were many variations until the name of Canberra mentioned. A lot of people sighed that day. It is aboriginal in origin and it means a “meeting place.”
 

All about Melba