A Letter From the Publisher

By Robert L. Miller

"Once again," said Prime Minister Bob Hawke of Australia, "TIME has scooped its competitors." While other Australian publications had been planning projects to mark the country's 200th birthday, TIME AUSTRALIA was unveiling its lavish special issue ahead of most of the pack. At a ceremony in Melbourne two weeks ago to launch the 128-page commemorative edition, Hawke declared, "In TIME AUSTRALIA, we have an example of an outstandingly successful news venture based on the world's greatest magazine, but already becoming identifiably Australian in character."

Only 16 months earlier, we had replaced our existing Australian edition with TIME AUSTRALIA, a joint venture between Time Inc. and John Fairfax & Sons, one of that country's leading publishers (the Sydney Morning Herald, The Age in Melbourne). Since then the venture's ten-member, Melbourne-based editorial staff has combined TIME's weekly coverage of world events with added stories about Australian politics, business, social issues and culture. Assessing our progress, Hawke said, "This is already TIME with an Australian accent."

Actually, TIME AUSTRALIA shares the style of our other, New York City-edited editions. The bicentennial issue is loosely modeled on two similar editions produced for the 1976 U.S. bicentenary. Titled The World of 1788: A Nation Is Born, the Australian effort is a TIME-like account of life in Terra Australis and in the world beginning Jan. 26, 1788, the day the first fleet carrying British convicts landed at Sydney Cove, an event recognized as Australia's birth.

TIME AUSTRALIA Editor Jefferson Penberthy is the man who has given the magazine its distinctive mix of Australian energy and traditional TIME quality. Last May, for example, he assigned Queensland Correspondent Frank Robson to find out why a number of Aborigines were dying in prisons and jails under mysterious circumstances. At the same time that Robson's cover story ran, a Royal Commission was established to investigate the problem. Last month TIME AUSTRALIA won two of the prestigious W.G. Walkley awards, Australia's highest journalism prizes, for Robson's story and for Photographer David May's cover picture of jailed Aborigines. The prizes and the special issue are, as they say in Australia, real bobby-dazzlers, mates.