IMAGINING THE NATION
One of the tasks facing the new nation was to educate all Australians to see themselves as Australians as well as Britons. Australia was represented by symbolic images such as native fauna and flora. There were also attempts to define in very public ways what it meant to be an Australian. The government, the press, the education system, industry and others took on this task. This was a period in which pride in being Australian was manifested in a range of things from cartoons to reproductions of Tom Roberts' painting of the opening of Parliament, to school books, home ware, postcards, furniture, vernacular architecture and literature. Sometimes, the attempt to represent the Australian nation led to some rather chauvinistic imagery, as in the cartoon "Australia First: The Policy for the Commonwealth".

"Australia First: The Policy for the Commonwealth", Bulletin, 9 March 1901, p.5. Courtesy of the University of Western Australia Library.