Miss Australia

The first Miss Australia contest was held in 1908 as a one-off event sponsored through the Lone Hand, with entrants from New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland.

[3] The primary purpose of the contest was "to attract customers: whether they were newspaper readers, patrons at an amusement venue or visitors to a country fair" (Saunders and Ustinoff, 2005:4) The Miss Australia contests of 1926 and 1927 were sponsored by Smith's Weekly magazine and Union Theatres, with heats from each State, and were straightforward beauty contests, judged by an anonymous panel from the staff of the magazine and associated publications.

[4] The prizes for the first two centred around screen tests and an escorted trip to the movie capitals of America.

The 1937 prize was a chaperoned first-class travel world tour which included London for the Coronation season.

In 1953, the contest was revised by Bernard J. Dowd to promote the American Hickory lingerie that he marketed in Australia.

"Miss Australia", Beryl Mills in Sydney, by Sam Hood
Alice Buckridge, Miss Australia 1908, in The Lone Hand magazine
Beryl Mills, Miss Australia 1926
Phyllis Von Alwyn, Miss Australia 1927
Rhonda Kelly in 1945
Judy Gainford, Miss Australia 1947
Margaret Hughes, Miss Australia 1949, in 1950
Maxine Morgan, Miss Australia 1953
Shirley Bliss, Miss Australia 1954
Jan Taylor , Miss Australia 1964 in Egypt
Suzanne McClelland , Miss Australia 1969 in the Netherlands
Miss Australia 1994 Jayne Bargwanna