of Queensland, the history of The Cane Toad Times and its role in the history of Queensland, Cane Toad Times: Poking fun in a police state, was mounted to showcase original issues of The Cane Toad Times publications as the centrepiece of an unfolding cultural history created by a collective of individuals who sought to expose a hidden Brisbane. The exhibition focussed on the writers, cartoonists and political activists who came together to produce The Cane Toad Times. The magazine, distributed nationally, dealt with popular culture issues including cane toads, Big Things, Bubbles Bathhouse and Queensland corruption. The exhibition drew on the collection of the State Library of Queensland and University of Queensland's Fryer Library's protest march posters, original copies of The Cane Toad Times, photographs, T-shirts and artwork by cartoonists including John Shakespeare, Matt Mawson, and Judy Dunn, in the Philip Bacon Gallery, level 4, State Library, Stanley Place, South Bank, Brisbane. The exhibition documents the birth of The Cane Toad Times in 1977 when Premier of Queensland, Joh Bjelke-Petersen was a decade into his reign. During this period Joh Bjelke-Petersen's government had banned the soundtrack of the musical Hair, declared a state of emergency during the 1971 South Africa rugby union tour of Australia, banned other political demonstrations and arrested of hundreds of street-marching protestors. Joh Bjelke-Petersen believed he was chosen by God to lead Queensland, claiming his 15 years living alone in a converted cow-bail, clearing 40 hectares of brigalow a day, gave him a better education than an Oxford degree. His conservative approach found favour with the prejudice and backwoods suspicion of many Queenslanders, especially outside the towns, where a country vote could be worth up to five times as much as a vote in the city in an electoral mal-apportionment known in Queensland as the gerrymander. Political protests were crushed, cultural and music venues shut down, and young people, considered to be troublemakers, were harassed. Protesters were considered misfits and malcontents, typified by Joh as ‘friends of the dirt’, the ‘anti-nuclear lot’ and the ‘everything for the aborigines crowd’. By 1983, Joh's Nationals were ruling in their own right with the simple slogan "Joh. Queensland.". The year of 1977 coincided with the onset of two crucial years of pitched battle on the campuses and streets of Brisbane. The battle was between Joh and his cohorts on one side — and on the other a rag-tag