Miss Earth winners Jessica Lane (center), Nellys Pimentel (top, left), Destiny Wagner (top, right), Drita Ziri (bottom, left), and Mina-Sue Choi/ARMIN P. ADINA
Australia finally posted its first Miss Earth victory when Jessica Lane bagged the crown in the recently-concluded competition, making her the seventh woman in a row to be the first in her country to capture the title.
The “Land Down Under” has been long due for a Miss Earth crown, after several Aussies came so close to winning it, and settling for the Miss Earth-Air title, the most recent being Sheridan Mortlock from 2022.
Since 2018, the Miss Earth pageant has been crowning “first queens,” starting with Nguyen Phuong Khanh, who not only posted Vietnam’s first victory in the Manila-based global tilt, but was also the first major international pageant winner from her country.
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In 2019, Puerto Rico recorded its first Miss Earth win through Nellys Pimentel, followed by Lindsay Coffey’s victory for the United States in the virtual edition of the competition in 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Another “first queen” was crowned in the second full-virtual edition of the international competition in 2021, Destiny Wagner who is also Belize’s first and so far only major global pageant winner.
The international pageant conducted another physical competition in 2022 when COVID restrictions loosened, and the crown that year went to Mina-Sue Choi, the first Miss Earth winner from Korea.
Albania scored its first major international pageant crown last year when Drita Ziri won the title in the competition held in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.
But Lane’s coronation marked another significant feat for Australia. Her victory also put her country among the elite circle of countries who has posted victories in all the four major global pageants–Miss Universe, Miss World, Miss International, and Miss Earth–a group that also includes the Philippines.