The CEH congratulates Dr Josh Woodward on the successful examination of his doctoral thesis, ‘“A continent that Australians must be proud to advertise”: Nature, tourism and the national image, 1950-1988’. His thesis argued that an environmental dimension lays at the heart of the Australian tourist experience. Environmental imagery persisted across the century, even as values, tastes and opinions changed. Each chapter offers a case study of the nation's overall image, as well as of Sydney, Canberra, and the Great Barrier Reef. In each campaign, organisations and their administrators, particularly the Australian National Travel Association and the Australian Tourist Commission, recruited nature, whether of a specific destination or the continent as a whole, to enliven the wider image of the nation. Each organisation has left historians a vast record of sales ephemera (posters, brochures and television campaigns) as well as the internal correspondence, reports and memoranda that explain the decision-making driving advertising creation. But these organisations' commodification of nature went beyond the obvious commercial imperative to grow tourism as a profitable industry. Instead, the story of how promoters positioned Australian symbols of nature, scenic landscapes, and environmental attributes, like the conduciveness of the temperate climate for good health and mortality, belies a deeper twentieth-century narrative about how the nation imagined itself, and how it sought to be understood from the outside.

Josh published his research in Australian Historical Studies, History Australia, Journal of Australian Studies, and the Journal of Tourism History.

His thesis is now available via the Open Research Repository - https://openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au/items/f0bbfb96-6883-4cdd-b7bc-5ba26cb778ab