In the world of magazines, there is nothing quite like The Australian Women’s Weekly and this month, we celebrate our 75th birthday.
Since The Weekly’s first ever issue in 1933, The Weekly has grown to become a publishing icon with an emotional connection to generations of Australian families.
We’re proud to bring you our special 75th birthday tribute site which celebrates our journey in iconic covers and images of fashion, food, beauty, royals, events and extraordinary people over 75 years of The Weekly. Join us in celebrating our magazine’s history and the events and interests that have shaped the nation and our identity as Australians.
Your Say: What has The Australian Women’s Weekly meant to you? Send us your own special birthday wish below…
Australian women are renowned for breaking down barriers. Here, Sue Williams talks to trailblazing women in myriad fields of endeavour about their setbacks and successes.
First aboriginal film star — Rose Kunoth-Monks
“It was life-changing,” says Rose, now 70. “It never changed me from being an Aboriginal person and it never changed me at the time, as I just went back to school afterwards, playing rounders and hitting other kids around the legs with hockey sticks.
“But it made me aware of a world outside of the Alice Springs region and it made a lot of others aware of us.”
Jedda, which was also released in the US, told the story of an Aboriginal girl raised by whites who was kidnapped by a traditional Aboriginal man, played by Robert Tudawali. Although many people assumed Rose had also been part of a white family, she simply went to an Anglican church school.
She was actually born of the Anmatjere tribe at the Utopia community, 200km north-east of Alice Springs, and was brought up by her parents to be aware of the fight for the rights of indigenous people. Her father was a survivor of the 1928 Coniston Massacre in the Northern Territory, the last known mass murder of indigenous Australians, which is believed to have left up to 110 Aboriginal people dead, in retribution for the death of a white dingo hunter.
“That was the greatest influence on me personally,” she says. “I don’t think any of us at the time realised the magnitude of being in a feature length film. But in hindsight, it was the story of our lives and it was the story of the Stolen Generations that is still with so many of us now.”
While her grandchildren are still dazzled by the image of their grandmother as a beautiful film star, Rose says her role didn’t make her life any easier afterwards. At that time, Aboriginal people weren’t allowed to be in town after sundown without a pass and their every movement was severely restricted. Her co-star, Robert, died a violent death 12 years later, after skirmishes with the authorities and turning to alcohol.
“We weren’t free agents,” says Rose who is now a respected indigenous leader. “What has driven me ever since have been social justice issues in Australia and racist policies that have hurt my people.”
At the end of August, Rose retired from her position as chair of the Batchelor Institute of Indigenous Tertiary Education, although she still serves as the director of the management board of the Desert Peoples Centre and works as an official visitor to the Alice Springs prison, is chair of the Atikirra Aboriginal Corporation and as an interpreter.
“I’m lucky to have been a part of an ancient culture that has survived,” she says. “I treasure it. Australia has to learn to value its ancient race of people and give them back a bit of dignity.”
First Miss Universe, Jennifer Hawkins
“I think whenever you get an opportunity, such as Miss Universe, you then have to back it up with a lot of hard work and the right work ethic to keep it going,” says Jennifer, 24. “I certainly didn’t expect the contest to have such an impact on my life. But I’ve had such a great time since and am really enjoying it.”
Jennifer made a huge splash from the first moment she was declared the surprise winner of the title, being christened “The Thunder from Down Under” by the show’s host and then being described by an obviously bewitched pageant co-owner Donald Trump as “the most beautiful Miss Universe I have seen in many, many years”.
Yet no one could possibly have foreseen the success Jennifer has had since. She became a regular presenter on the Seven Network’s travel show, [itals]Getaway, and the host of its newest program, Make Me A Supermodel, and is said to be continually fending off offers for overseas acting roles, having reportedly turned down a role in the movie Pink Panther 2 because of a schedule clash. As the $4million face of Myer department stores, she’s also constantly on our TV screens and is now hoping her new beach collection will enable her to triumph in yet another area. “I only really entered the [Miss Universe] contest in the first place because I wanted to travel,” admits the former rugby league cheerleader and model who hails from Newcastle, NSW. “It was being held in Ecuador, where I wanted to go, and I thought that would be a great three weeks. I even had to get a passport to go, as I’d never had one before.”
Since then, life has been a veritable whirlwind and Jennifer says she considers herself simply lucky in how things have turned out. While her blonde, blue-eyed good looks have obviously helped, it’s her personality that has proved so irresistible for the public and corporates alike.
When she managed to laugh off a wardrobe malfunction during a modelling gig at a Westfield shopping centre, that left her walking up the catwalk in a red thong, she instantly won a crowd of new fans. “It has been difficult at times,” says Jennifer, who’s been dating model Jake Wall, 25, since before she entered the Miss Universe contest. “The first year and then the six months when I came back to Australia after the spell in the US, I found it very different. I was a bit overwhelmed by it all. But when I finally got used to it, I learned how to separate my public life from my private life. I talked to Mum and Dad a lot about it, and worked out how to make my family and private life my own. I also learnt how not to sweat the small stuff. I found it wasn’t worth worrying about some things. That was the best advice I ever received — and pass on to others.”
First female head of the National Library— Jan Fullerton
As Australia’s first female director of the National Library, Jan Fullerton’s life is full of extraordinary surprises. The biggest came last year, when she took possession of the oldest item ever printed in Australia: a tiny playbill dating back to 1792.
“It was discovered last year by the National Library of Canada,” says Jan, who’s been director-general of our National Library, with its more than nine million items, since 1999. “It’s so exciting to have found this. There’s such a diversity of collections here and every single item has a story.”
Jan, who’s been at the library for 41 years, was never in any doubt what she wanted to do with her life. She decided she wanted to work in a library even before she had ever been in one. She was simply entranced by the little shelf of books in her primary school in the then tiny town of Beerwah on the Sunshine Coast hinterland of Queensland.
“But these days, running libraries isn’t so much about books,” she says. “That’s just part of it. Libraries have millions and millions of individual items and we have to manage them, so that people can find something they’re looking for and access it easily. It’s a big exercise in logistics.” In that area, Jan, 62, has been recognised internationally as a true pioneer. She has led the world in the development of a wide range of digital services and initiatives, including the establishment of the PANDORA archive. “Very early, we recognised the fact that the world is turning digital and we had to convert the huge number of things existing in print into a digital form,” she says.
“That means converting old print collections into digital and also making sure that every issue of every newspaper in every state and capital is now also captured digitally. They’re sent to India to be OCRed [a process using Optical Character Recognition] and the headlines keyed in.”
The rate of information being published on the internet is also growing exponentially and, far from being daunted by its volume, Jan has been similarly determined to preserve as much as she can. As a result, she managed to take what’s effectively a snapshot of the entire web of Australia, to keep it for both posterity and as a source of information for future generations.
In addition, she has been at the forefront of creating links between different nations’ libraries, helping to raise ones in the Pacific to international standards and protect the collections of those in war and disaster zones. “It’s important that this information is safeguarded and that people have access to it in the coming years,” says Jan. “A lot of people don’t want to be librarians, they just want to be able to find out what they want, quickly.”
And, of course, there are a few perks to the job. As well as the old playbill, securing previously unknown Patrick White papers and discovering the exquisite watercolours of a midshipman who travelled to Australia in the First Fleet, she was also a member of the library’s champion trivia team. “We were quite successful,” she says, laughing.
OTHER FEMALE FIRSTS
Jennie George was the first female president of the ACTU, serving for four years from 1996. Now 61, she has been a Labor MP since 2001, representing the seat of Throsby in NSW.
Betty Churcher was the first female director of the National Gallery of Australia, where she earned the moniker “Betty Blockbuster” for her love of big exhibitions. Now 77, she is also an artist in her own right and has written several books about art.
Mary Gaudron was the first female judge of the High Court of Australia, best known for the Mabo case, in which she declared that the treatment of Aboriginal Australians was “the darkest aspect of the history of this nation”. Previously, Mary, now 65, had been the first female solicitor-general in the country, presiding over NSW.
Cathy Freeman became the first ever Aboriginal Commonwealth Games gold medallist, by helping win the 4 x 100m relay in Auckland, New Zealand, in 1990, and was the second indigenous Olympic champion after winning the 400m at the Sydney Olympics in 2000, carrying the Aboriginal flag around in her victory lap. Now 35, she retired in 2006.
Evonne Goolagong Cawley was the first Australian Aboriginal woman to achieve international fame in sport after winning 14 Grand Slam tennis titles, seven of them in singles, with four Australian Open wins, two Wimbledon and one French Open. Now 57, she was the world’s number one female tennis player in the 1970s.
The Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has a family tree that leads all the way back to the convicts transported on the Second Fleet in 1790 and the very foundations of Australia. Yet he isn’t the only Australian with a rich family history.
More than 160,000 convicts came to these shores between 1787 and 1857, and today many Australians can trace their family back to those who were brought here as punishment for crimes that appear trivial by modern day standards. Of course, not everyone came here as a convict. Many arrived as free settlers, or as soldiers or businessmen hoping to start anew — no boundaries, no barriers. Some of the most ambitious came from successful and often well-connected English families wanting to create dynasties of their own, while others wanted to escape the poverty they were born to. Either way, it was to Australia that they turned for a fresh start.
Kevin Rudd’s family background is woven into the fabric of this country’s history. Yet all Australians contribute to the variety and richness of that tapestry. All families have stories, ordinary and extraordinary people caught up in adventures, mysteries, famous names, places and deeds that resonate through the centuries.
EXCLUSIVE OFFER: Readers of The Weekly who sign up to www.ancestry.com.au through the link below can save 50 per cent. For full details, plus terms and conditions, go to www.ancestry.com.au/aww.
The first-name-only supermodels of the 1990s are making a comeback, despite being the other side of 40. Lee Tulloch talks to Elle Macpherson, who has taken her “super” status and turned it into an empire.
Until recently, you might have been forgiven for thinking that the supermodels who dominated the fashion headlines in the 1990s had been consigned to history, a group of glamazons who had their moment in the sun in the same way the dinosaurs had theirs millions of years before. Now pushing — and passing — 40, the “supers”, who were once so famous they were universally recognised by their first names, should have gone off to the model’s graveyard, having been replaced by a conga line of interchangeable teens, most of whom are still doing high school by correspondence.
Yet something happened in our culture. The pretty teenagers began to seem bland and uninteresting to a generation of women who were pushing 40 and beyond, and who were becoming impatient with images of skinny waifs who bore no relationship to their lives.
The fashion business took note. Suddenly, this year, the “supers” are big news again. Linda Evangelista, at 43, is the new face of Prada’s autumn/winter collection. Christy Turlington, 39, is the face of Escada. Naomi Campbell, 38, fronts the latest Yves Saint Laurent campaign. Claudia Schiffer, 38, looks as luminous as ever modelling Salvatore Ferragamo. And Elle Macpherson, 44, has signed a three-year deal as Revlon’s brand ambassador.
If that’s not enough, this month sees the Australian release of Elle Macpherson The Body, a range of bath and body products based on her personal beauty routine.
While Elle was never the catwalk queen her contemporaries were, her name arguably has had the furthest reach. From record six-time Sports Illustrated swimwear cover girl to recipient of last year’s Everywoman Outstanding Designer Award in the UK, she has actively sought to redefine herself beyond the limiting model-slash-actress moniker.
She still models, but it is her business acumen that has given her career longevity beyond the photo shoot. Her brand is fast approaching empire status with the continued success of her lingerie collection, Elle Macpherson Intimates. In another new role, Elle will be the face of Invisible Zinc in markets outside Australia.
In the glow of new motherhood, Nicole Kidman speaks to Jenny Cooney Carrillo about her joy at being a mother and the pride she feels in her role in the much-anticipated epic Australia..
“I never thought that I would get pregnant and give birth to a child, but it happened on this movie,” an emotional Nicole says. The 41-year-old actress is talking to us exclusively from London, where she is rehearsing the musical film Nine, inspired by the 1963 Fellini movie 8½ and starring Daniel Day-Lewis.
During our chat and previous interviews on the set of Australia in Kununurra, WA, and Sydney, Nicole touches on everything from her great Australian movie role opposite Hugh Jackman and the challenges that came with this labour of love, to the occasional revelation about her other new role as Sunday’s mum.
The fiercely protective and surprisingly shy actress can’t help but let us in on how she’s feeling at this blessed time in her life. “It’s exhausting,” she acknowledges, “but I think at this age it’s more like” — she lets out a huge, satisfied sigh — “spellbinding for me. To be given this again is a beautiful thing. To have raised Bella and Connor since I was 25 and now to be able to do it again at 41…wow!”
But I’m ready and I love children, and love the connection and to be needed. Who doesn’t want to be needed?” she muses. “And that’s the thing for my character, Lady Sarah Ashley, in the film, because she also finds there is a place in the world where she is really needed by these two males.”
The two males Nicole is referring to are her ruggedly handsome Aussie co-star Hugh Jackman, who plays the drover that sweeps her character off her feet, and 11-year-old Aboriginal actor Brandon Walters, who plays her surrogate son, Nullah, and became like a son to her during filming.
Set in northern Australia just before World War II, Australia follows the journey of Lady Ashley, an English aristocrat who inherits a sprawling cattle station in the outback and reluctantly makes a pact with a cattle drover (Hugh) to protect her new property from a takeover plot by cattle baron King Carney (played by Bryan Brown). The pair band together with an unlikely group, including her alcoholic accountant (Jack Thompson) and young Nullah, to drive 2000 head of cattle over unforgiving terrain to Darwin, where they experience the bombing of the city by the Japanese.
“As a kid, I grew up watching Australian films that were accepted around the world, like Gallipoli, The Man from Snowy River and My Brilliant Career — all those films and actors moulded and inspired me,” Nicole reflects. “I really wanted to make a film like that as a kid, so when we were filming this one, I’d look at Baz and Hugh sometimes and go, ‘Look, we’re doing it!’
“Hopefully, the next generation will watch our movie and feel the same way because it is very much a celebration of our country and our landscape, and the pain and love and survivor aspect of what we are as Australians.”
Nicole has certainly had more than her fair share of pain, love and survival, and much of it she’s experienced in the glare of the public eye as the world watched the roller-coaster of her life unfold — her marriage to superstar Tom Cruise in 1990, the adoption of their two children Bella, now 15, and Connor, 13, her split with Tom in 2001, her Oscar for The Hours, her love story with singer Keith Urban, their fairytale Sydney wedding in 2006 and the arrival of Sunday Rose on July 7.
It is this self-deprecating charm which ensures the 35-year-old mother of nine-month-old Sage Florence will not only remain one of the most respected actresses working today, but also one of the most liked.
Your Say: Who is your favourite Australian export? Tell us below…
When Crown Princess Mary of Denmark recently returned home to Australia with her husband, Frederik, and their two children, she discovered there is no such thing as a holiday when charity calls, reports Wendy Squires.
The grey Audi four-wheel drive emerged from the driveway flanked by a line of cars carrying Tasmanian police officers, royal bodyguards, assorted local and international media, and the ever-present paparazzi. Slowly the convoy trailed the car for several blocks, where it pulled up outside a cluster of shops in West Hobart. There, the driver, Crown Princess Mary of Denmark, disembarked and raced into a chemist, emerging minutes later carrying two packets of nappies — one pink, one blue — before returning to the car and driving back to her sister’s, the parade of cars once again in close pursuit.
This simple task would be an everyday activity for most women with two young children, but Mary is no ordinary mum, something her recent trip home to Australia made more apparent than ever. It was supposed to be an unofficial visit, but it appears there is no such thing these days for Mary, whose every move — no matter how pedestrian — makes headlines both here and in her adopted home of Denmark. It is a dichotomy of sorts for the laid-back royal who, only eight years ago, was a newly graduated Tasmanian law student working in Sydney real estate, used to a life of independence and spontaneity.
While part of her still craves the ordinary life, Mary is also aware that constant attention has a positive side, in that it allows her to deflect the spotlight onto the causes she passionately champions. So, on this visit, she again strove to balance both desires, spending private time catching up with her sisters, Jane Stephens and Patricia Bailey, as well as using her celebrity to attract attention to the charities close to her heart.
The world is shrinking thanks to new technology, but as it gets smaller, more and more couples are living further apart. Can electronic gadgetry help long-distance relationships last?**
Mobile phones, email, instant messaging, Facebook, Skype, SMS — the list of ways to stay in touch keeps on growing, and so does the number of people in long-distance relationships as more of us travel for work and pleasure.
But gone are the days when long-distance meant coping with irregular phone calls filled with static and time delays. Now you can get in touch with almost anyone, anywhere, at any time. And with online video conferencing programs like Skype, you can see the other person as well as hear them. That’s very important, says Anne Hollonds, Vice President of Relationships Australia.
“Humans are wired for face-to-face connections,” says Anne. “It’s how we work. Communication is multi-layered — it’s much more than just words.”
Studies confirm this, with some suggesting that the words we speak account for a mere seven per cent of what we are trying to say. Tone plays a part, but body language has the largest role when we communicate. So technology like Skype can only help improve long-distance relationships… right?
**Sometimes you need something quick to munch on between meals. But snacks don’t have to be high-fat, processed or sugary. Nor must they be tasteless and dry.
Food Coach Judy Davie makes the following suggestions to keep your snacking on the straight and narrow — and the alternatives are delicious.**
