19th October through Oz History

1800 - Napoleon issued instructions to Baudin and Hamelin, who sailed in the Geographe and the Naturaliste, to explore the east and south coasts of Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania).

1812 – Indefatigable, the first direct convict transport from Britain to Tasmania rocked up in Hobart.

1824 - Having gone for a Sunday ramble around the block to go have a gander at that new Port Phillip, Hume and Hovell managed to eyeball the very fast flowing, very flooded Murrumbidgee River.

1826 - Edwin Smith Hall birthed Sydney's third newspaper, The Monitor.

1833 Great Aussie poet, who wasn't too shabby on the back of a horse, Adam Lindsay Gordon was pupped.

1872 – Holtermann's nugget, a 286 kg slab of granite containing 82.11 kg of gold, was found in New South Wales.

1887 - The steamer SS Cheviot was wrecked at Point Nepean, Victoria, with 35 lives lost.

The nearby beach was afterwards named Cheviot Beach.

This is from where the then-Prime Minister Harold Holt disappeared.

1897 - Today saw the delivery of a top chick who helped so many other women made into widows by war  they should have bronzed the baby shoes of the future Mrs Jesse Vasey.

1900 – Bill Ponsford, Australian batsman who twice broke the world record for the highest first-class score, was pupped in North Fitzroy, Melbourne.

1919 - The Darwin Rebellion was finally at an end when the despot ruler Dr Gilruth was evacuated with his family out of the NT.

1945 -The War Widow's Guild of Australia was formed today by Jesse Vasey OBE CBE.

1966 - NZ went all the way with LBJ for the US President's whirl-wind 24 hour visit.

1974 - First general election for the Northern Territory Legislative Assembly was held in the NT and was won by the Country Liberal Party.

1979 - The Aussie Federal Police was formed. This was achieved by merging the Commonwealth Police, ACT Police and the Narcotics Bureau.

1991 – The perjury trial of former Queensland Premier Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen ends in a hung jury. Prosecutors decide against a retrial on the basis of Joh's advancing age & divided public opinion.

2000 – Charles Perkins, Aboriginal activist died.

2001 – SIEV-X, an Indonesian fishing boat en route to Christmas Island, carrying over 400 asylum seekers, sank in international waters with the loss of 353 people.

2022 - The first War Widows Day, on the birthday of Jesse Vasey, founder of the War Widows Gild, was celebrated in QLD and NSW.

2024 - The National War Widows Day will be held and celebrated nationally so that all war widows can participate and be honoured in their sacrifice to our country.