Swancon 10 – Ephemera

by Anna Hepworth

On opening the SwanCon ten envelope, there appears to be a single lonely item awaiting us. (and at present we have not found the folders for 11, 12 or 13 – this is presumably a failing in my filing system, although it may also be that we are missing such items – donations will be greeted with much glee and probably some extra glee to go with it). In fact, we find, carefully hidden within the folds of the Programme book, a further five single page items, not all of which are directly SwanCon related.

The major item is a lovely A4 saddle-stapled programme book with a fabulous black and white cover image of a gibbous moon with five assorted spacecraft (one Enterprise, one Hugo award shaped, one Apollo command module, one Thunderbird Three and one police-box shaped TARDIS), which hopefully has much exciting information contained within. [note: artwork appears unsigned]

The inside front cover has a postcard cartoon by Craig Hilton of a turkey and (?) a wombat, looking at a frame on a wall that has the words “Aussiecon II Art Show” inscribed on it. Conversation between the two individuals reads:

Turkey – “Heyyy… now this is something else. I mean — the sheer alienness of the landscape, lethal inhospitality, glowing ochre, the blinding nova piercing the stratosphere.”
Wombag – “Mmhhh. And actually, it’s a window.”
Turkey – “Oh, wow. Some backyard you’ve got here, Shirl.”

I say postcard, because it is one of a set of five postcards I have on my wall, which were bought from Craig Hilton in the dealer’s room at AussieCon IV. They are reissues of the original AussieCon II postcards. While the reissues are in colour, I can’t find any information about the originals.*

The other items in the folder are

  • Silver Swan Award Voting Form (white A4, double sided)
  • DUFF 1985 voting form – North America to Australia (blue, A4, double sided)
  • Progress report 4 (white, A4, double sided)
  • AussieCon two information sheet (yellow/gold, A4, doublesided, ridiculously small font size)
  • SwanCon X Auction information sheet (white, approx 1/3 A4, single sided)

* For those following along at home who don’t have a good memory for dates, both SwanCon 10 and AussieCon II were in 1985. AussieCon was in August, and SwanCon was on the Australia Day** Long Weekend
** 26th January

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2 Responses to Swancon 10 – Ephemera

  1. Thomas Bull says:

    There is a full-page ad for Swancon XI in the Aussiecon Two Convention Handbook.

  2. Interesting. Send us a photo if you like.

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