Australia has some of the highest rates of skin cancer in world.[i] Our country’s intense UV levels coupled with an outdoor lifestyle, and a strong beach culture have all contributed to the image and unfortunate reality of the “bronzed Aussie” in a “sunburnt country.” But the good news is that skin cancer is highly preventable. Australia is now home to some of the most successful skin cancer prevention programs in the world.
The SunSmart exhibition in ACMI’s permanent gallery highlights the near-50-year history of skin cancer prevention filmmaking in Victoria, from the iconic first Slip! Slop! Slap! campaign in 1981 to present-day health promotion. It explores how film has helped prevent skin cancer by shifting attitudes, behaviours, and even driving systemic change.
A long-standing problem: Skin cancer and its prevention
As early as the 1930s, medical authorities were noticing high levels of skin cancer in Australia,[ii] and recommended hats be worn outdoors.[iii] [iv] By the early 1980s, Australia had the reputation of having one of the highest rates of skin cancer in the world: a title we’ve held ever since.
In the 1960s, Australian cancer organisations began trying to educate the public on skin cancer protection. In 1966, the Queensland Cancer Council used the ‘Shady Lady’ character to encourage wearing hats and protective cream to prevent sun damage, which the Anti-Cancer Council of Victoria (now Cancer Council Victoria) used to inform its emerging sun protection campaigns. Cancer Council Victoria began issuing annual warnings about skin damage from 1970. At the same time, the national Federal Science Department started rating available sunscreens for their ability to protect against ultraviolet (UV) radiation.
Public health experts had long recognised film as a powerful tool for health promotion, especially after the introduction of television. In Victoria, films became a key way to bring important messages about sun protection into people’s homes, helping to correct myths that many Australians lived by. For example, that tanned skin couldn’t burn; sunscreen was only needed when it was sunny; and that only fair-skinned people could get skin cancer.
Cancer Council Victoria launched the ‘Take Cover’ campaign in 1979 to combat these myths. It especially encouraged Victorians to wear a broad-brimmed hat in response to data collected from 1960 to 1975, which showed that most skin cancers were on the face, and the number of cases was increasing, particularly amongst men.
The birth of Slip! Slop! Slap!
In 1981, the National Health and Medical Research Council formally recognised UV radiation as a major cause of skin cancer. In that same year, advertising creatives Philip Adams, Peter Best and Alex Stitt developed the iconic Slip! Slop! Slap! television campaign ads, featuring a memorable jingle sung by Sid the Seagull, a lovable cartoon character designed to enhance audience engagement. Sid encouraged everyone to 'Slip on a shirt, slop on some sunscreen, slap on a hat' - or 'Slip! Slop! Slap!’.
In November 1985, the Australasian College of Dermatologists together with the Australian Cancer Society (now Cancer Council Australia) and the state and territory-based Cancer Councils launched Australia’s first National Skin Cancer Awareness Week to enhance the profile of the Slip, Slop, Slap campaign.
As part of the November skin cancer awareness campaign, GPs, pharmacies and community health centres were sent a booklet on skin cancer diagnosis and posters with information about early-stage skin cancers. Educational talks, resources for maternal and child health centres and early childhood services were also prioritised.
In 1987, the Victorian Sun Protection and Sunburn Survey was launched, asking questions over the phone to 1,655 adults in Melbourne.[5] This research provided important baseline data on sun protection attitudes and practices. The survey received funding from the newly-created Victorian Health Promotion agency, VicHealth.
In this same year, Cancer Council Victoria sponsored the Victorian branch of the Surf Lifesaving Association of Australia. As well as linking the Slip! Slop! Slap! campaign with water safety information, lifesaving clubs on the 27 beaches patrolled in Victoria distributed 20,000 tubes of a low-cost, high-quality sunscreen to beach-goers.
This period also saw the creation of a campaign on skin cancer risk in the workplace, built around a publication co-developed by Cancer Council Victoria, the Victorian Trades Hall Council and the Association of Drafting, Supervisory and Technical Employees.
In 1987, Cancer Council Victoria began to work with unions, employers and labour organisations to develop guidelines on workers' UV radiation exposure. A set of national guidelines were produced by the Australian Council on Trade Unions and the National Occupational Health and Safety Commission (now WorkSafe Australia) following this work, which led to amendments to the Work Health and Safety Act 2011 specifying requirements for sun safety.
The launch of SunSmart
In 1988, Cancer Council Victoria launched the 'Pick up a spade and plant some shade' campaign, designed to encourage tree planting for shade purposes, particularly in schools. Following the success of Slip! Slop! Slap! a new skin cancer prevention program called SunSmart was established in this same year by Cancer Council Victoria.
In the 1990s, SunSmart messaging was increasingly directed at hard-to-reach audiences including young men. The ads of this time riffed on popular cultural themes that would appeal to adults. By showing a man and woman dancing semi-dressed in soft focus, the ‘Leave your hat on’ ad from 1991 directly referenced two famous pop-culture references: the 1986 Joe Cocker song of the same name and its music video, which featured a strip tease by actress Kim Basinger taken from the film 9½ Weeks.
In 1993-94, SunSmart launched an ad urging people to stay on 'the right side of the line', maintaining sun protection behaviours like using sunscreen as part of their everyday routine. The 1994-95 campaign was targeted at Victorians aged under 30, who were found to be twice as likely to get sunburnt as people aged over 30. Local government and recreation venues were encouraged to provide more shade for young people. Distribution of resources for teenagers was also prioritised.
This strategic shift by SunSmart was accompanied by the use of more graphic imagery from the mid-1990s, similar to creative approaches long used in anti-tobacco advertising and campaigns to prevent drink driving. New ads showed in painful detail how skin cancers are removed with a scalpel and the effect of melanoma on the body. One ad even used the message that sun protection was critical ‘unless you want to end up wearing your bum on your nose’.
This form of messaging was dominant in the 2000s, and similar ads were created by other state and territory Cancer Councils, all in the hope of shocking audiences into adopting new behaviours to prevent skin cancer.
Tackling Solariums through advocacy and legislative change
Commercial solariums became increasingly popular in Australia in the early 2000s, adding to users’ skin cancer risk. An early campaign by Cancer Councils around Australia called for control and monitoring of solariums, as well as community education programs about the dangers they posed.
Melbourne’s Clare Oliver died of skin cancer in 2007, aged just 26. Prior to her death, Clare became a vocal advocate for banning solariums. Her story received widespread media attention, increasing awareness about SunSmart’s advocacy for policy change. Following her passing, her powerful words of warning featured in one of the organisation’s most emotive ads, released in 2008. Speaking from hospice, Clare warned viewers that ‘no tan is worth dying for’.
These words were central to SunSmart’s advocacy and in 2007 it was announced by Victoria’s Health Minister that commercial solariums would be regulated. A ban on commercial solariums in Victoria came into effect in 2015. Today it is illegal to operate a commercial solarium anywhere in Australia.
SunSmart now and in the future
Seek! (shade) and Slide! (on sunglasses) were added to the Slip! Slop! Slap! catchphrase in 2005, with further campaigns directed at sun safety in the workplace and other priority settings executed over the 2010s and 2020s.
Today, sun protective behaviours are more routine for many Australians and the SunSmart logo adorns many schools and early childhood services.[6] In Victoria, SunSmart continues to deliver public education communications, including ads, social media content and the SunSmart Global UV app. While the SunSmart brand continues to evolve, the core mission remains to prevent and detect skin cancer early.
By Andrew May (Professor of History, University of Melbourne) and Thomas Kehoe (Historian, Cancer Council Victoria).
[1] SunSmart (2025), Skin cancer facts & stats. Avail: https://www.sunsmart.com.au/skin-cancer/skin-cancer-facts-stats
[2] E. H. Molesworth (1932), Prevention of cancer of the skin and buccal cavity. The Medical Journal of Australia 2(7): 196-199. Avail: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.5694/j.1326-5377.1932.tb89662.x
[3] Skin cancer, The Northern Miner, 17 April 1937. Avail: https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/81282329
[4] Herman Lawrence (1935), The incidence of skin conditions in Australia, British Medical Journal 2(3899): 572-575. Avail: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2461497
[5] T. Tabbakh, A. Volkov, M. Wakefield, and S. Dobbinson. (2019). Implementation of the SunSmart program and population sun protection behaviour in Melbourne, Australia: Results from cross-sectional summer surveys from 1987 to 2017. Plos Medicine 16(10). Avail: https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1002932
[6] Heather Walker et al. (2022), Forty years of Slip! Slop! Slap! A call to action on skin cancer prevention for Australia. Public Health Research & Practice 32(1). Avail: https://www.phrp.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/PHRP31452117.pdf