"The Australian Commonwealth" (Henry Stafford Northcote) (Image plate from Vanity Fair)

, 1904

Being hirsute was the go in the 1850s, 60s and 70s; but around about the 1880s the beard began to wane.

Although the tough, weathered, hard-drinking bushmen of the kind mythologised by writers like Banjo Paterson and Henry Lawson are popularly associated with the character of late nineteenth century Australia, it was also a time when alternative ideas about identity began to come into play.