Australia became one unified country, from six separate states, in 1901. However, the first postage stamps for the new country were not issued until January 1913. This was partly due to disagreements of the design for the new stamps. There was a strong anti royalist lobby in the Government of the time who opposed the use of the Monarch's head on any new stamps, as was usual for British "Dominions" and this lead to delays in the production of the new stamps.

It was decided to hold a competition for the design of the new stamps and this attracted over 1000 designs. The first prize of £100 was awarded to Hermann Altmann with a design of a portrait of George V flanked by a kangaroo, emu and six shields bearing the emblems of each state.

This design did not meet the approval of the Postmaster General (a member of the "anti-royalist" Government), Charles Frazer, who decided instead to commission a design from Blamire Young, a noted water colourist, that would be typically "Australian in character". He suggested using the Australian outline along with the Kangaroo submitted by the competition's joint second winner, Arnold ("Baldy").

Young submitted 10 designs, which all incorporated a map outline of Australia. Eventually a simple design of the map with a Kangaroo in the middle was selected - the Kangaroo and Map series. The new design did not meet with universal support with protests that it was childlike. However, Frazier stood by the design and ordered it to be issued in different colours for different denominations.

When a new government was elected in June 1913 one of their first acts was to was to order a series of postage stamps designed with the profile of King George V, based on the original competition winner. In December the first KGV stamp was issued using engraving technique but this proved too expensive to produce. This was replaced by typographed values of the design, the famous King George V sideways issue usually know as Australian King George V Heads.

The Postmaster-General's Department in fact kept both basic designs in issue, until 1951 for the Kangaroo and Map design and 1936 years for the George V Heads.