When was the very first beauty contest held in Australia?

Hi, The title of Miss Australia has existed since 1908 and the winner was Alice Buckridge who was a shop assistant from Victoria.(here is a picture of her) http://www.nma.gov.au/shared/libraries/images/temp...

For more information go to:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miss_Australia

Good luck!

hope this has helped.

As Takeachance&&live has already posted, Alice Buckridge was considered the first 'Miss Australia' in 1908. Here is a rather long but good snippet from an excellent article that clarifies the circumstances surrounding the competition that Alice Buckridge won (nb: Eugen Sandow was a body builder):

"Later in 1907 ... women in Australasia entered a less controversial ‘world’s beauty challenge’ run by the Australian magazine, the Lone Hand. This was the Australasian section of an international quest, organised by the Chicago Tribune. Over five months, women sent in their photographs, along with their vital statistics (age, height, weight, waist measurement, glove size, bust measurement, shoe size, colouring and complexion). The competition was open to all women over sixteen years of age, except actresses and professional models ... Each month a selection of photographs were reproduced in the magazine ...

No prize was offered, save an all-expenses paid trip for the winner and her chaperone to the world final, to be held in either America or Europe ... State winners might be asked to travel to Sydney for the final decision, which would be based on a personal interview with the judging panel.

The decision to include a physical culture expert in the judging panels of the competition blurred the lines between women’s healthy interest in physical culture and the increasing desire by some for ordinary women to display their bodies in public. Most of the finalists enjoyed exercise and a healthy lifestyle. Although the Victorian winner, Alice Buckridge, protested that ‘you mustn’t call me a Sandow girl’, she had belonged to a gymnasium in Hawthorn, where she swung clubs and lifted dumbbells through the winter months. The New South Wales winner, Alice Hoppe, had taken a Sandow course in her youth. In Queensland the judge found it difficult to reach a final selection, but the ‘views and analyses of measurements’ by their physical culture expert proved to be most helpful." As we know, Alice Buckridge was the eventual overall winner.

Further, the article notes, "In the years before Miss Australia and Miss New Zealand quests — both competitions began in 1926, although they were not held every year thereafter — Australasian women entered more and more beauty competitions. Many were held in association with movie theatres and required women to submit a photograph of themselves, which was screened in the interval and voted on by the cinema’s audience each night for a week or so. Beauty shows were also run by theatre companies. J C Williamson organised one in association with a Melbourne season of the pantomime Mother Goose. Winners of this competition were offered engagements with his theatre company and were also filmed, the film being shown as the ‘pantomime beauty show’. Even the Lone Hand ran another competition, ‘to discover the most beautiful women in Australia and New Zealand’. This time the expert judging panel was replaced by a popular vote and a cash prize was offered ..." The contests referred to here occurred in 1915 and 1916.

'The Body Builder and Beauty Contests', by Caroline Daley, found at http://www.api-network.com/main/index.php?apply=sc...