AUSSIE, AUSSIE, I SEE!

As someone who lives on the semi-rural outskirts of a provincial town on the opposite side of the world I seem to pay a disproportionate amount of attention to what happens in The New Yorker. Among my private pleasures is trying to sort out the message - if any - behind the illustrations that adorn their cover every week. The issue I've just found in my letter box (November 24 - The Food Issue) shows what looks like shelves in a fruit and veg shop.

It's a bright, cheerful display but there seems to be a subtext. The trays on the middle shelf have labels from parts foreign and sunny. So this is either a wistful comment on the onset of winter in the US. Or a subtle reminder of the town's reliance on food grown in other parts of the world and therefore the 'food miles' issue.
Either way, given that the tray at the centre of the cover is branded "AUSSIE LAND" I boldly suggest this is the first time the word Aussie - or possibly anything Australian - has appeared on a New Yorker Cover.