The aeroplane offers a new way of imagining the Australian Commonwealth. This board game, registered for copyright in 1911, forms part of the National Archives copyright collection. National Archives of Australia, A1861, 2371   In January 1901, John Forrest, Premier of Western Australia, sent a telegram reminding the Prime Minister, Edmund Barton, that he should mention the idea of a uniform gauge for railways in his parliamentary speech: 'the question of transcontinental railway [is] very popular here'. National Archives of Australia, A6, 1901/33   The Trans-Australian Railway was a major reason for Western Australia to federate with the other colonies, and its opening in 1917 was the occasion for much rejoicing, as this souvenir program indicates. Library and Information Service of Western Australia, Battye Library, PR969/1   This illuminated address outlines the commission given by King George V to his son the Duke of York (later King George VI), to open the 'first meeting of the Federal Parliament in the new capital city of the Commonwealth of Australia' in 1927. National Archives of Australia, A4867   On 22 January 1931 Sir Isaac Isaacs became the first Australian-born Governor-General of the Commonwealth of Australia. This proclamation announces that he has taken the oaths of office, fulfilling the commission of King George V, who had given his reluctant consent to the appointment at the insistence of the Prime Minister, James Scullin. National Archives of Australia, A6661, 145   The dictation test was used as a means of excluding 'undesirable' immigrants. These test passages, issued to Customs officers in 1934, are in English. In the same year, Egon Kisch, a communist writer and scholar from Czechoslovakia, was required to take dictation in Scottish Gaelic. National Archives of Australia, A1, 1935/704