Little Boy from Manly

The Little Boy from Manly was a national personification of New South Wales and later Australia[citation needed] created by the cartoonist Livingston Hopkins of The Bulletin in April 1885.

In March 1885, as the New South Wales Contingent was about to depart for the Sudan, a letter was addressed to Premier William Bede Dalley containing a cheque for £25 for the Patriotic Fund 'with my best wishes from a little boy at Manly'.

It was Australia's first overseas military adventure, and the little boy became a symbol either of Australian patriotism or, among opponents of the adventure, of mindless chauvinism.

Hopkins put the boy in a cartoon, dressed in the pantaloons and frilled shirt associated with English storybook schoolboys of the namby-pamby kind.

Over the following decades, he became The Bulletin's stock symbol of Young Australia.