Item HT 4745 Invitation - Australasian Federal Convention Banquet, Issued to Herbert Power, 20 Jan 1898

Summary

Decorative invitation to the Australasian Federal Convention Banquet to be held on 20 January 1898 at the Melbourne Town Hall. It was issued to Mr Herbert Power and was printed by Sands & McDougall Ltd, Melbourne. The Australasian Federal Convention met, in three sessions, in Adelaide Sydney and Melbourne in 1897 and early 1898, to modify the draft constitution produced at the National Australasian Convention of 1891 which met in Sydney from 2 March to 9 April 1891.

Physical Description

Rectangular printed invitation card with decorative illustrations, photographs and text. The invitation is decorated with a border of flowers including pink heath, fuschias and possibly wattle; at the top is the arms of the City of Melbourne, with images of kangaroos and emus. To the left is an indigenous man carrying spear and boomerang against two scenes of pastoral settlement. To the right is a stockman with whip against a scene of a large city from across the water, and a gold mining town. There are black and white images of the capital cities of the colonies, clockwise from top: Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, Melbourne Town Hall, Hobart and Adelaide.