Landscape architecture in Australia was advanced in 1979 when the first issue of a national professional journal, Landscape Australia, was published. Encouraged by the staff of the Centre of Environmental Studies at the University of Melbourne, Ralph Percival Neale (1922-2014) was the journal’s instigator and inaugural editor and he continued to produce the journal for the next 21 years as the only public forum for the profession. Neale was a shoe manufacturer, historian, photographer, painter, and naturalist who managed to bring these multiple skills and interests to bear on the journal. His contribution helped to present a particular charter for the profession that was overwhelmingly pitched at stewardship of the land. He did so in a manner that relied as much on representations of iconic Australian landscapes as it did the intellectual content of the articles and letters within. This paper explains Neale’s influence along with the broader motivations of a group of conservation-minded people that helped define a profession for Australia. It also examines the meanings and ideas communicated in the journal’s cover graphics, logos, slogans and photography, in order to shed light on the symbols that underpinned the identity of the Australian Institute of Landscape Architects (AILA) in its early decades of existence.