Vintage Poster Archives
Women's Land Army 1943 | WW2 Recruitment Poster
Women's Land Army 1943 | WW2 Recruitment Poster
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A land girl in a khaki-yellow work shirt turns towards the viewer, arm extended, guiding cattle across an open pastoral hillside. Behind her, rolling green-yellow hills, a distant farmhouse, and a broad cream sky. The header, printed in blue at the top edge, sets the terms plainly: A VITAL WAR JOB... A HEALTHY OPEN-AIR LIFE. Below it, in hand-lettered black italic and bold crimson capitals, the call: Join the Women's Land Army.
This is the third print in a series of three Australian Women's Land Army recruitment posters produced in 1943 and printed by H and G Pty Ltd (series code WLA 3-43). The Australian Women's Land Army was established on 27 July 1942, formed on the model of the British Women's Land Army to address the agricultural labour shortage caused by wartime conscription. At its enrolment peak in December 1943, the organisation counted more than 3,400 women, most recruited from city backgrounds and placed on farms across Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, and South Australia. The poster series was designed to present rural labour as aspirational: the healthy outdoor life offered against the factory alternatives. This image focuses on cattle herding, one of the core tasks assigned to AWLA members alongside fruit picking, dairying, and grain harvesting.
All three posters in the WLA 3-43 series are held by the Imperial War Museum (PST 16606, 16608, 16609) and by the Australian War Memorial. The design sits within the wartime illustrative tradition of the early 1940s, combining commercial figurative rendering with bold display typography to produce a recruitment message that reads as both urgent and appealing. The crimson, gold, and cream palette gives the composition warmth without softening its purpose.
Reproduced using the Giclée process on 200gsm Enhanced Matte Fine Art Paper, with pigment-based archival inks on a natural white, smooth matte surface.
