17 October in Australian history

1854 – The Melbourne daily newspaper The Age was first published. 

1854 - The Melbourne Exhibition opened; which included the opening of the first Exhibition Building, and a right old knees up with cocoa and rout cakes to see the final stragglers off on their broomsticks after sunset...

1854 Hearing that Bentley got off scott free for the untimely demise of James Scobie in his hotel, the Ballarat miners started a wee riot that got so hot under the collar that the Eureka Hotel got a bit more than singed and crispy around the edges.

1861 - The inaugural Melbourne Cup blasted off ....which overshadowed the 

1861 -  Cullin-la-Ringo Massacre. In what is thought to be the largest massacre of white settlers by Australian aborigines, the killings occurred after a group of settlers from Victoria led by politician Horatio Wills, set up a camp at Cullin-la-Ringo, which is located in present-day Central Queensland. 19 people were killed during the massacre.

1898 – The Perth Zoo opened with two lions and a tiger and no bears, oh, my. 

1898 - A bloke who loved books more than those flighty sheilas, David Scott Mitchell made it known throughout the land that he intended to leave his extensive Australiana collection to the Sydney Public Library so long as they pulled their fingers out and gave it a proper roof over it's head.
Subsequently the separate wing, The Mitchell Library, was cobbled together.

1900 – Natural gas was found at Roma in Queensland... well, that's what they want everyone to believe, but in reality those Banana Benders were seriously addicted to baked beans

1917 – The two halves of the Trans-Australian Railway finally met, joining Western Australia to the eastern states. 

1917 - Sumner Locke Elliott, Australian (later American) novelist, and author of Careful, He Might Hear You, was hatched in Sydney. 

1938 – Les Murray, poet and essayist was pupped in Nabiac, New South Wales. 

1949 - The Snowy Mountains Hydro Electric Scheme went off like a frog in a sock with the Chief Engineer William Hudson firing the first blast at the now-drowned town of Adaminaby

1964 -  Australian athlete Betty Cuthbert earned her 4th Olympic gold medal when she won the women's 400m at the Tokyo Games in Olympic record 52.0.

1964 - Lake Burley Griffin , a planned puddle in our nation's capital, was finally filled and was inaugurated by the then-Prime Minister, Sir Robert Menzies.

Visit Canberra

History of Lake Burley Griffin

1973 QE II and Prince Phillip beamed down from the Mother Ship to the Land of Oz for a short but sweet visit which included the grand opening of the Sydney Opera House.

2010 - Fitzroy-born lass, Mary MacKillop was canonised by Pope Benedict XVI in Rome. Saint Mary of the Cross MacKillop is Australia's first saint and throughout the universal Catholic church is now to be 'honoured devoutly among all the saints'.

Top chick.

2018 - Australian state of Queensland decriminalized abortion

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.