ABSTRACT
In a special edition of the Melbourne Morning Herald onMonday 1 January 1901 the large and broad headlines that spreadacross the front page of the newspaper proclaimed the fact ofFederation, the birth of a new nation, and the ‘glorious news’.that the people of Australia were at last free of English rule.The more conservative Agecarried the declaration of theCommonwealth in a less vivid display and chose to giveprominent attention to a message from the Prime Minister,Edmund Barton, which pointed out that it was the duty of his‘fellow Australians’ to assist the first Federal governmentto meet its highest aspirations. 1 The leaderarticle had little option but to point out that people werenow living in the twentieth century, and though they ‘haddone with the Nineteenth’ it was necessary to consider the argument that time alone was not something which made sharp divisions in human affairs. Indeed, the heritage of the past had not been seriously interrupted or greatly disturbed by the momentous events of the day. It almost appears that the editor chose to offer the evidence of this belief by retaining, as much as possible, the everyday appearance of the newspaper's carefully laid out columns and reporting on a normal range of domestic news concerned with the details of beer adulteration, cemetery problems, the quicker delivery of letters and the introduction of concentrated milk. The news from overseas was dominated by reports of the Boer War. In an article on the conduct of the war, and recent developments in the South African campaign, it had been observed by the correspondent that ‘some of the sublimest heroism of the war came from weak women who devoted themselves to the assignment of the battlefield's heroes’. 2 There is nothing in the report to indicate that the reference to the physical constitution and character of women is anything other than a solemn comment. Two or three days after those eventful hours of a brand-new century both Melbourne newspapers returned to their regular reporting activities. The sober reflections of the Age that changes in the chain of human events are slow-moving seemed all too apparent. Nevertheless, the start of 1901 would be forever judged as a significant landmark in the nation's history.
