22 July Australian History

1802 He of the forever itchy feet, Captain Matthew Flinders, set sail yet again and charted the east coast of Oz, then the Gulf of Carpentaria, then a little further west , a bit more south and what do you know Bungaree had become the first Indigenous Aussie to circumnavigate the Fair Isle of Oz, bringing his mate Flinders along for funsies.

1870   A state flag of South Australia was adopted. Woot.

1888 The Derwent Valley Railway Line (Tas) was extended to Glenora in a mad, giddy rush of Gunzel Appreciation.

1900 Fred Lane, (better known as GOLD! winning Olympian Frederick Claude Vivian Lane) won 2 GOLD! medals whilst being the first Aussie to represent The Fair Isle of Oz in water sports.

1938   The Australian National War Memorial at Villers-Bretonneux, France was dedicated and opened by King George VI and Queen Elizabeth; Queen Elizabeth laid a small posy of poppies on the wreath laid by her husband, the King.

1979 ABC in Sydney and Melbourne presents the final instalment of multicultural television programs from the Special Broadcasting Service (SBS).

1981 Victoria’s television stations were forced to be restricted to only 2 hours of programming between 6 and 8pm to curb power use across the state following a snap strike called by power workers in the Latrobe Valley.

1983  Aviator and business bloke Dick Smith puttered over the finishing line of the first solo around the world helicopter flight.

2010 ABC gaily launched ABC News 24, the first 24-hour free-to-air news channel in Australia. Party.

19 July Australian History

1770 The Guugu Yimithirr people and Captain James Cook clashed over a dozen sea turtles that Cook's party caught for food near present-day Cooktown. Later, an Elder approached Cook, offering a broken spear as a gesture of reconciliation and the two parties settled their dispute.
The National Trust of Australia nominated the event as Australia's first documented act of reconciliation. The area where the two parties met is now known as Reconciliation Rocks.

Reconciliation Rocks.

1814 Matthew Flinders, the flute-playing, cat-loving map maker bloke (who probably came back as a long haired herbily enhanced hippie in the 1960s) dropped off the perch today, a mere 24 hours after his book was in print.

Following the rediscovery of his coffin during the HS2 excavations near London's Euston Station in 2019, today in 2024 he will be reinterred in his home village of Donington in Lincolnshire.

1873 Uluru was sitting in the sun, minding its own business when William Gosse eyeballed in a lascivious way and declared it to be Ayres Rock.

Hmph, rock my arse.
Uluru has always been called Uluru by the Anangu people. But it got renamed by that bloke who decided to add insult to injury by becoming the first known European to climb Uluru.

It was named, promoted, advertised all over the world as "Ayers Rock" until 1993, when it was baptised with the dual name Ayers Rock/Uluru. In 2002, the names were reversed, and is now known as Uluru/Ayers Rock.
BTW - Gosse named it after a politician/business bloke Sir Henry Ayers.

1958 The last tramline to be kicked to the kerb in Perth  (Western Australia) was the Inglewood Tram Line, which was replaced by trolley buses, but the final tram ran that evening.

1959 The railway line from Somerton to Upfield (Victoria) was reopened for Goods (freight) traffic for the brand-spanking-new Ford Motor Company.

1960 Australia's first aircraft hijacking took place today over Brisbane on the last Sydney-Brisbane flight for the day.

1965 UFO landed on Vaucluse Beach.

1989 After a series of mergers of regional educational institutions in NSW Charles Sturt University was officially incorporated today.