The “Australian Square Dance Review” is the longest running and major Square Dance publication in the South Pacific region.
It is produced and published voluntarily by the National Square Dance Society of Australia Inc
It was initially produced as a full hard copy edition and published 10 times a year.
However in 2017 it became a fully digital magazine and is published quarterly.
Over the past few years there has been an additional special edition produced for the Australian National Square Dance Convention.
It is available online and if you would like to be advised when each edition is published, please complete the registration form.
We are also endeavoring to compile a register of all copies as a way of preserving the history of Square Dancing in Australia.
A list of back copies and what we have scanned already and is now available below.
If you have a copy that is missing and would be keen to share it with us, we would love to hear from you.
The copies below are from the era when we had 10 issues per year
Last Updated 20 09 2024
As you can see, there are several hundred links to the copies
Should you find any broken links, please let us know so they can be rectified
The quality of the scanned documents varies and they reflect the condition they were in when we obtained them.
Remember that some of these documents are over 60 years old so we are glad to have reproduced them here before they are lost forever.
A History of “The Australian Square Dance Review”
By Jim White NSW (decd)
In an endeavour to publicise and let dancers know what was going on, I wrote the first square dance magazine in NSW – “Let’s go Square Dancing”, the forerunner to “The South Pacific Square Dance Review”, Now known as the “Australian Square Dance Review” It was typed on stencils for a Gestetner machine by Madge Griffith, and the society secretary Bruce Hinton and helpers copied it off. (There were no photocopiers in those days and printing press products for short runs were too expensive). Then, for a short time, it became part of the Love Brothers dance publication on dancing in general until that folded. At that stage, we found a small printer who would do it cheaply and renamed it “South Pacific Square Dance Review” as by then we were posting to clubs or societies in every state as well as New Zealand. Graham Rigby joined us in the production and distribution of the magazine in Queensland. Later all States received copies.
But one of our biggest problems with State distributions was the postal department who either took too long to deliver or who lost the package altogether. I ceased to be editor in 1958 when I decided to go overseas for 9 months, and Tom McGrath took over.
Notes:
* In January 2010, the South Pacific Square Dance Review was renamed “The Australian Square Dance Review” in order to reflect its true coverage of Square Dancing throughout Australia.
* From January 2017, the Review was reduced from 10 issues per year to 4 issues & these are available via email.
The listing of these documents started out as a combined effort by Kevin Thomas and Adrian Brown.(dec)
Adrians Grandmother, Marion had two very large boxes that contained all copies of the Magazine since its inception.
Adrian took one box to scan and upload and Kevin took the other one.
Unfortunately, in 2009 we tragedly lost Adrian and his family in the Black Saturday bushfires, (link) together with those copies that were in his house at the time.
Several years later, Kevin decided to continue what he and Adrian had started so many years before and set about finding as many copies as he could, uploading them as to preserve the history of Square Dancing in Australia and as a memory to Adrian and his wonderful family.
If you have any of the missing isuues, we would love to be able to copy them so that we can complete the task started by Adrian and Kevin.
Our thanks go to Marion Brown.dec (VIC) , Gary, John & Carol Carpenter , Roslind Todd (NSW), Nev McLachlan (QLD), Russel Wall (QLD), Frances Hickson, NSW, Debbie Asquith, NSW, Barry & Kaye Chandler, TAS and Pat Saunder, VIC for many of the copies we have scanned and published above.
Thanks also to The Australian National Square Dance Convention Board for the use of their scanner and to Kevin Thomas for the use of his time and software in bringing these documents to you.
# denotes that the copy is incomplete
If you have any of the missing copies we would love to hear from you so to preserve the history of Square Dancing in Australia
This page is provided by the National Square Dance Society of Australia Inc as a service to Square Dancing and related dance forms
Got a Question, Idea, Problem or Praise? Please contact us
