Following the enterprising publication of Michael Leunig’s drawings and of Arthur Horner’s ‘Colonel Pewter’ and ‘Uriel’ cartoons Penguin’s latest offering in illustrated publishing in a wonderful book of evocations – a selection of many hundred Australia ‘trademark’ symbols created to identify local products ranging across the one hundred years from 1860.

Symbols of Australia is essentially a picture book. It has no conventional text apart from the introductions and preliminary notes, but there are captions which attempt to date the examples and sometimes explain their history significance.

Symbols and devices as means of identification, both in peace and war, have been part of European civilisation for many centuries. From the time of the early Christians, Apothecaries, Sorcerers, soldiers, printers, tradesman and craftsmen adopted symbols designed in abstract forms – some in monogram – as owner’s marks on tools, for identifying elements and chemicals, as badges of rank, or as personal trademarks on stone work among other uses. In fact the first true ‘trade’ marks were in those carved by European stonemasons into a stone of a building during the Middle Ages.