For the love of Australia: 40 years of Australian Geographic

The story of Australian Geographic begins on Sydney’s northern rim, with the smell of eucalyptus and fresh print. In January 1986 the first issue shipped out, and the little post office in Terrey Hills, the outer Sydney suburb where the AG Centre office compound had been built, was swamped. People queued for something they hadn’t known they were missing until it existed: a journal that took Australia seriously – and joyfully. 

Founder Dick Smith didn’t pretend to know publishing. But he knew curiosity and how to gather capable people. He took the mood he’d loved as a child in Walkabout magazine and reshaped it for a modern country, recruiting a crew that would will a new kind of publication into being: editor Howard Whelan, art director Tony Gordon, business brain Ike Bain, and – soon – cartographer Will Pringle. “My success in life has come from surrounding myself with capable people,” Dick says. “If ever there is an example of that, it’s Australian Geographic.” 

From the start, AG’s ethos ran counter to that of most other media. Dick insisted on narrative pieces and a bias towards the upbeat. “Try and keep the articles in the first person…with positive opinions,” he says of briefing writers in those early days. “When I started Australian Geographic, many journalists would say, ‘We are taught to be objective.’ And I would say, ‘I want subjective.’”

Dick wanted contributors to be writers, not stenographers – adventurers with notebooks, responsible not just for facts but for storytelling.

Howard remembers how that conviction shaped the journal’s launch. Dick built committees – expedition, scientific research, publishing – with high-powered names, mailed personal invitations, and then did something radical with advertising: he made it “by invitation only”, capped it, and sold out the first four issues in a week. A showman? Sure. But also a businessman who understood how to generate interest by making the publication exclusive. 

It was called a ‘journal’ back then. ‘Magazine’ felt disposable; ‘journal’ sounded like a ledger of record. You could see the intention in the full name from those early days – Australian Geographic: Dick Smith’s Journal of Adventure and Discovery – a mouthful, but one that told you exactly what it was about 

And the crowd came. Subscriptions surged past 200,000, peaking around 220,000 – more Australian subscribers than National Geographic in the local market at the time. “Commentators joked that growing stacks of our journal would soon counterbalance the stacks of our yellow-bordered competitor, eventually making the planet wobble the other way,” Howard says.

Building a legacy masthead

In a country hypnotised by TV and gloss, wildlife art was put on the cover. Not stock celebrity portraits or paparazzi grabs, but commissioned illustrations that declared a point of view. 

Chrissie Goldrick, who came in first as a picture researcher, then picture editor, and later steered the masthead through a decade of change as Editor-in-Chief, says that in a sea of sameness, AG’s wildlife illustrations gave it a voice that was “hugely distinctive” on a crowded newsstand. The first photographic cover – a mesmerising portrait of young Yolngu boy, Micky – didn’t arrive until Issue 84 (October 2006). 

Photographs and maps added new layers to the journal’s stories. Howard likes to say AG’s Australia for Adventurers & Dreamers wall map had more words than an entire issue. It was less of an exaggeration than you might imagine. The product of Will’s relentless craft and Rosy Whelan’s research and writing was a map so exacting it required a swag of referees to maintain the credo: ‘We will live and die on our accuracy.’

National Geographic tried to poach Will. Of course it did. That’s what happens when you hire the best in the country and ask them to build something that lasts. And overseeing the design of everything, from the journal and its inserts (think maps and stunning informative posters) to all of AG’s books and spin-offs, was Tony Gordon’s meticulous eye.

Ken Eastwood, who wrote and commissioned more field pieces than almost anyone, recalls what it meant for the writers. “It was a privilege to have the time and resources,” he says, to chase a story “into tight corners” and to spend “over a week working with the legendary Peter Dombrovskis’ images…researching and describing exactly the location and evocation of every photo”. That kind of care took time. “An assignment could take 10 to 14 days,” Ken recalls.

The house style sought to faithfully capture Australia’s places and people. It wanted to show that Australia is complicated and beautiful – worth the cost of a return flight to a town you’ve never heard of.

Forging the Society’s mission

From day one, AG aimed to fuel exploration, conservation and science. In 1986, that kind of ‘profit with purpose’ sounded eccentric. But within a year, the Australian Geographic Society formed to help the people who take on wild tasks – and return with knowledge – to tell their stories so that others might follow. “Explorers are the ones who go into nature before anyone else does,” says Chrissie, who is now Chair of the Society. “Our adventurers are models for courage, endurance and responsibility.”

The Society’s mission still reads like a field brief: support conservation and natural heritage projects, fund scientific research, and back adventurers attempting the impossible. 

One of the clearest expressions of that mission came in AG’s scientific expeditions. In Issue 5 (Jan–Mar 1987), AG retraced the path of Burke and Wills at Cooper Creek, camping with scientists beneath coolibahs while studying the floodplains of Kati Thanda–Lake Eyre. “They catalogued fungi, mammals and birds, turning the outback into a living laboratory,” Ken says of his first AG assignment. “It was extraordinary watching them fit their different disciplines together. For many, it was the first time they had worked collaboratively like this.”

That expedition kicked off a long tradition of scientific outreach. Soon came the heritage-science work at Mawson’s Huts, Antarctica. Teams partly sponsored by AG undertook conservation efforts: checking structural integrity, removing snow and ice from interiors, reinforcing timbers – standing guard over history as it battled the ice. Expeditions like this set AG apart – stepping into nature and doing the work so that these stories could be shared in their truest form.

Adventure has always been stitched into the charter. Adventurers would test their limits in deserts, jungles and seas, above ground and below, then return home with tales and data that deepen our understanding of the natural world. 

Over time, AG’s encouragement of adventure has resulted in an honour roll of individuals who have defined Australian endeavour. Greg Mortimer – scaling giants of the Himalayas and making first Australian ascents in Antarctica – has long been a standard-bearer of mountain daring. Tim Macartney-Snape climbed and walked from sea level to the top of Mt Everest. Brigitte Muir, who in 1997 became the first Australian woman to summit Everest and later completed the Seven Summits – the highest peak on each of the continents – showed that adventure involves risk, endurance and mapping one’s limits. In 2022, sailor Lisa Blair spent 92 days in one of the coldest, fiercest environments on earth: sailing solo, nonstop and unassisted around Antarctica. 

And alongside them all stands Dick Smith himself, from his 1964 expedition to Lord Howe Island’s Balls Pyramid – “the adventure that set me on course for a life of adventure” – to his solo flights around the world and daring balloon crossings.

In this spirit, the Australian Geographic Society Awards were eventually created to recognise achievements in both exploration and conservation, celebrating individual feats on a national stage. The Society’s awards broadcast a clear message: this is who we are, and these are the values we reward. “Adventure remains a really important part of the mix for us,” Chrissie says. It gets people out of cities and into nature – and they often return with the kinds of observations that inspire further research.

The human side was always key. Take, for example, AG’s Wilderness Couples series – a collection of love stories in some of the world’s grittiest environments. An ad on page 27 of Issue 4 (Oct–Dec 1986) read: “A year in the wilderness: imagine spending a year in splendid isolation in a place like this magnificent stretch of Kimberley coast. We’re looking for an adventurous couple who will accept such a challenge.” The ad was accompanied by an enticing image of turquoise waters, a white-sand beach, and the rugged ochre sea cliffs of the Kimberley, in Western Australia.

Mike and Susan Cusack answered the call – along with 500 other hopeful couples – and were chosen to spend 12 months testing both themselves and the idea that a year in the wild could reveal truths a laboratory couldn’t. Their journals and images – building a shelter from bush timbers and living with the land (think heat, dehydration, feral animals, drought, and the quiet wonders of a wet season exploding into life) – embodied AG’s blend of science and storytelling.

That ethos continued in 1993, when Damon and Deanne Howes headed into the wilds of south-western Tasmania (Issue 36, Oct–Dec 1994). Newly engaged, they believed 12 months living in a self-constructed A-frame would make a unique and strong foundation for their marriage. 

Two years later, Don and Margie McIntyre carried the experiment south – far south – living for 12 months in Antarctica in a tiny box they built themselves and chained to rocks as a holdfast (Issue 44, Oct–Dec 1996). Battling katabatic winds and months of blizzard-induced isolation, their survival became one of the Society’s most dramatic wilderness sagas. 

Through their journals, photographs and fieldwork, the three couples helped continue to shape AG’s approach to understanding and celebrating Australia.

Stories like these bound readers to the brand in more than name; every subscriber was also a Society member, part of a community that saw its own values reflected in the feats it helped fund. From that circle of readers and explorers grew a kind of ballast, enough to steady new ventures – books, films, a picture library – spun from the same deep archive. Long before anyone called it “content strategy”, AG was finding second lives for its stories, sending them back out into the world in different skins. “Take what we already own and cut it different ways,” Chrissie says in summary of the approach. That commercial nous kept the lights on as print trends cooled and gave stories second and third lives. 

Even today, that instinct to turn curiosity into concrete things shows up in AG’s spin-offs: Australian Geographic Adventure, a magazine that celebrates epic trips and adventure gear; in Australian Geographic Travel, a sister company providing nature-based experiences that channel proceeds straight back to the Society; and in the Australian Geographic Shop. Relaunched online in 2023, the shop sells curated products and donates all profits to the Society. 

AG’s retail stores were part of the brand’s expansion from the early 1990s; a place where kids could lose themselves among telescopes, star maps and jars of polished stones. You could wander in for a compass, a book on beetles, or a globe that spun smooth under your palm, and walk out feeling the world was bigger than you had thought. In 2007, the retail arm peeled away from the publishing side, and the number of stores swelled and shrunk with the years – but the spirit endures. Those little shops gave the community a doorway into the magazine’s world, a place where curiosity could be held, weighed and taken home in a paper bag.

Then there’s the photography. Beyond the striking images that appear in every issue, AG also showcases incredible nature work through the Australian Geographic Nature Photographer of the Year. Owned by the South Australian Museum and delivered with AG’s support, the competition is now in its third decade, drawing work from photographers around the world to celebrate the fauna, flora and natural formations of the Australia, New Zealand, Antarctica and New Guinea (ANZANG) bioregion. Each year, the winning and finalist images become a travelling exhibition, touring major galleries and regional centres across Australia and New Zealand, where hundreds of thousands of visitors file past to see the world through a different lens.

Sustaining the impact 

Stories don’t live only in print anymore. Dick is clear-eyed about that. His grandkids don’t read magazines – on paper or online, he says – and they don’t watch documentaries either. He worries about the future, about attention, about what can cut through the pull of our phones. It’s hard not to.

And yet the magazine he thought might last five years is now into its fifth decade. Part of the reason lies where you’d expect – in stubborn editorial values. “It’s independent, deeply researched, and fact-checked,” says current Editor-in-Chief Karen McGhee when asked what keeps AG strong. The magazine remains committed to delivering original stories curated by expert editors rather than delivered by algorithm. 

Part of that longevity lies, too, in its ability to adapt to new media. The brand’s digital platforms now reach huge audiences daily, with video, explainers, travel guides, photo essays and practical nature advice supported by the print edition content. How huge? Some 2 million followers across all digital platforms at the time of writing – evidence that short-form storytelling, done with care, can carry the long-form spirit into new spaces.

The focus for AG has always fundamentally and unashamedly been Australia, and that remains the same. But its entry point is now in more than one place. The print magazine remains bimonthly, built mostly around in-depth, insightful and heavily researched yarns with photography, cartography and illustrations to match. And, as it was in the very beginning, every subscriber becomes a member of the AG Society by default – a community formalised in the subscription’s very structure.

A few polestars have never moved. First, the idea that tone is a choice. Dick always wanted the content to be positive, but AG’s writers were never Pollyannas who only saw good. They reported on feral pests and collapsing ecosystems, ice that thinned, rivers that ran backwards, towns torn asunder – news that no-one wants but everyone needs. But AG also believed the country deserved stories that showed what worked – what was being saved and how – paired with practical ways to help. “Here’s the problem, here are solutions; now, what are you going to do?” Chrissie says. That call to action tempered bad news with agency. 

Second, the conviction that craft matters. Ken’s file notes about those multi-week assignments are a reminder of the time it takes to be accurate and fair. Will’s maps stood out for their precision and practical value. The refereeing process and the ‘We will live and die on our accuracy’ signs revealed a culture of rigour.

Third, the belief that adventure is not escapism. When newspapers told adventurers to “come back when someone dies”, AG chose a different angle – not saccharine, but humane – because risk is only half the story. The other half is preparation, awe and the knowledge that rides home in a battered field journal. 

Fourth, the understanding that community is a flywheel. From the subscriber who becomes a Society member, to the awards that lift a scientist or a climber into public view, to the travel programs that return profits to grants, the model makes a circle. You pay for a story; another person gets to make the next one. 

Reasons to be cheerful

Dick Smith is remembered in the story of AG as a founder with a mischievous thesis: let capable people do their best work, insist on first-person accounts, and keep your eye on what’s good about this country without sugar-coating what’s challenging, and the audiences will come. He liked to keep teams small, because he felt companies are too big when the boss doesn’t know people’s names. “I love the creation of it,” he says. “Of starting new things.” 

Howard frames it more simply. For him, there were no gimmicks or tricks; just a conviction that Australia deserved great storytelling, maps that mattered, and photographs that stopped you in your tracks. “We were trying to make something enduring,” he says. “Something people would treasure and keep.”

Chrissie sees the brand as a promise kept: independent, original, fact-checked Australian journalism – still profitable, still stubborn, still valuable in a media landscape that rewards the fast over the true. 

Karen is optimistic about AG’s future and its place in the Australian media landscape. “Remarkably, given the parlous state of publishing during recent years, the magazine itself continues to hold strong with readership on the rise during the past couple of years,” Karen says, explaining that some 1.5 million readers take in the magazine’s content in either digital or print form. “We’ve managed to not only survive but, in many ways, thrive, while so many magazines have gone under. I think it’s because our content, which largely celebrates everything Australian, has truly come into its own in this brave new world of climate change, biodiversity loss and other environmental concerns.

“We’ve been in this space since we started and we understand it deeply, which sets us up as an incredibly trusted source of information about these sorts of issues at a time when people want so much more than only unsubstantiated, unverified and highly biased opinions.”

She also thinks it has been crucial that AG has had a continuing commitment to getting its writers and photographers out “into the field” to find and gather original stories where they happen – not just picking them up via phone, text or press release. “You often feel when you head out into a country town or remote settlement that the residents have been patiently waiting for you to turn up and share a beer and a yarn that AG will relate to the rest of Australia,” Karen says. 

Ken flips open a notebook and points to the names of people who let us into their lives for weeks at a time – the farmers, rangers, adventurers, scientists and schoolkids who morphed from subjects to hosts. That’s the real legacy: a readership built from hospitality and attention.

And the journal itself? Today it lives in multiple rooms. For print, it’s the quiet lounge where you can still sit with a story. Online, the conversation is louder and quicker, but no less serious. Millions drop in every month, and the Instagram and TikTok crowd will oftentimes linger for a dancing spider or a desert sky – which feels like a win for wonder.

The legacy lives on

On some days journalism is a ledger – dates, numbers, peer reviews, corrections. On better days it’s a shared map with creases from hard use. Australian Geographic, at 40, feels like that second thing. It’s a field guide to a place that is both familiar and barely known; it’s the notes in the margins; it’s the stubborn idea that the truth, told well, can make you want to go outside.

Think of those hand-painted covers and the day AG finally yielded to a photograph; of Will’s maps that could pull a mountain into focus; of the AG Society pinning medals to muddy shirts under a stage light; of Ken chasing a sentence along a fence line; of Chrissie carving a business model from a picture library so the next expedition could sail; of Howard reading letters to the editor that arrived before there was even an edition off the presses; of Dick, grinning, and asking reporters to write from the gut and mean it.

Happy 40th, AG. The country still needs your kind of attention. And there are still miles to go.

Liz Ginis is a long-time AG writer and former Director of Content.