Legends in their own lifetimes

Living Australians on Stamps

13 May - 16 September 2006
Curated by Lowana Cummin & Bruce Davidson

Until 1997, the only living people featured in their own right on Australian stamps were members of the Royal Family. That year, the Australian Legends series was introduced to allow notable living Australians to be celebrated on stamps.

Despite a strict policy before 1997, there were instances of identifiable living people being featured on stamps in the backgrounds. Some stamps referred to living people by name, depicting subjects associated with them.

This exhibition celebrates the lives of famous Australians who have been granted the honour of a stamp, and it reveals the identities of many ordinary Australians whose faces or bodies, however distant and blurred, appeared on tens of millions of stamps sent around the globe.