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.