Scene Magazine celebrates 20 years on the streets in 2013. Each week this year, in this column, we're looking back at what we, and you, were doing.Issues 1-20
27 October 1993 to 23 March 1994
Issue 1: You wouldn't recognise Club Scene Magazine as street press. Certainly not as the magazine that 10 years later, in 2003, would boast more magazines on the streets of Australia than any other title, being published weekly in Melbourne and Brisbane.
The editorial format was a hybrid of today's Scene Magazine, City News and something akin to a tourism booklet. The first edition was an A4 spot colour job sporting a nebulous cover image and spruiked an editorial direction: "Informative, Decisive, Stylish". Seriously!
On a more promising note, the inaugural edition foreshadowed Scene Mag's future as Brisbane and the Gold Coast's clubbing bible. Advertisers included NASA 2 at The Site (back cover and wrap), Subway (not the food chain, but the venue which became The Tube, The Underground Nightclub (where Paddington Barracks stands today), Mary Street, The Gig and yes Transformers!
Fashion was a weekly feature of the first 20 issues. Advertisers and editorials spanned The Mask, Fashion Fatalé, Anon (managed by Ultra Suite's Mykl Notman), The Valley Markets, Hyaena, Young Designers Showroom and Bessie Head. (Read more on ravewear in Time Capsule - Part 3).
By Issue 15, we'd introduced gloss front covers (the first of a number of Scene Mag firsts for street press not only in Brisbane, but Australia) and by then we were even starting to look like street press!
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |