16 July Australian History

1800 – Reverends Richard Johnson and Samuel Marsden opened a church school at Ryde.
Which was just as well as newspapers at the time claimed the whole colony was the scene of

The Cumberland Argus and Fruitgrowers Advocate

1847 The good ship Rattlesnake slithered into port at Sydney to float about doing a scientific survey and some charting bizzo; but the more important thang was that self-taught anatomist and biologist Thomas Huxley met his future wife Henrietta Heathorn. Party!

Thomas Huxley

Henrietta Heathorn

1888 Railway line betwixt Palmerston (Darwin) and Adelaide River began. Party!

1900 Australian Mounted Troops struck the North East to reach the railway lines behind the Boers in Pretoria.

1900 Aussie journo George Morrison was injured while rescuing a defender during the Chinese Boxer Rebellion.
George was better known for having walked all over Australia due to his itchy feet.

In 1910 John Duigan had nothing better to do so he built an aeroplane and flew it on this day on his parents property in Victoria.

1914  Maurice Guillaux left the Royal Melbourne Showgrounds in Flemington to fly to Sydney in a Blériot monoplane in the first delivery of airmail. He arrived in Sydney on 18 July after nine and a half hours of flying time.

1943 Australian troops advanced from Wau, New Guinea, toward Salamaua.

1956 HSV-7 in Melbourne began channelling the spirit world for test transmissions of the idiot box in monochrome (TCN-9 in Sydney had jumped the gun 3 days earlier).

1962  Public funding of private schools became an issue following a strike by parents and the community who closed Catholic schools in Goulburn, New South Wales on this day, resulting in government funding for private schools.

1986 An explosion at Moura No. 4 mine in Moura, Queensland killed 12 people.

15 July Australian History

1851 – Charles La Trobe, aka Charley Joe, was appointed as first Lieutenant Governor of Victoria.Party!

Charles La Trobe

1912 – The first branch of the Commonwealth Bank opened. Party!

1915 The first group of NZ wounded soldiers returned from Gallipoli to Wellington, NZ on board the ship Willochra. 

1918 HMAT Barunga was travelling to Australia with 800 sick and wounded when it was torpedoed on this day. Destroyers were quickly on the scene to pick up survivors and saved all the ships crew.

1922 A zoo in USA, the Bronx Zoo, had taken delivery of a male platypus and it was first put on display to the public on this day. Party!

1940 The Volunteer Defence Force, composed mainly of World War I veterans, was formed for home defence by the Returned Services League. 

1942 The 2nd NZ Division captured Ruwiesat Ridge.

1964 Rupert Murdoch *hack* brought his new toy out to show off ; a new fish n chip wrapper called The Australian. Hmph.

1971 Today saw the introduction of the HQ Holden Kingswood! Party!

1977 Anti-drugs campaigner Donald Mackay vanished near Griffith, presumed murdered. 

1978 Today saw the biggest LGBT rights protest/demonstration to date with more than two thousand people in attendance.

1995  The Queensland state election partied itself into a hung Parliament, but with the support of independent Liz Cunningham the Coalition (Liberal Party & National Party) formed the Government in Queensland. 

2009 A Tsunami warning was issued at 7: 46 pm by the Bureau of Meteorology following an earthquake measuring 7.9 just off the NZ coast.

12 July Australian History

 1818 The Wallambangle River found a pesky chap named George Evans pottering about it's skirts, and was a tad miffed to be told it would now be known as the Castlereagh River, named after the bloke who was then wearing the tiara of the Secretary of The Colonies.

1863 British forces invade Waikato ,NZ

1889 The first women's trade union was formed in NZ in response to the totally crap working conditions in the clothing industry.

1911 The Scottsdale Railway Line (Tas) extended to Branxholm on this very fine day.

1922 The Tasmanian Government Railways line was extended to Wiltshire Junction on this day connecting with the already existing line between Stanley and Smithton.

1942 The Aussies reached Kokoda in New Guinea.

1945 HMAS DIAMANTINA reported the finding of a small roll of paper, identified as a carrier-pigeon message, in the stomach of a shark caught off Saposa, New Guinea.
The message was translated and found to be an appeal for assistance from the 42nd ALC Company, Japanese Army, 7 July, 1945.

1965 Last 3rd Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment, ambush of Malayan Emergency.

1979 The former Gilbert Islands sashayed her way down the Big Blue Marble catwalk in her new guise as the newly INDEPENDENT Republic Of Kiribati (pronounced Kiri - bas). Party!

1983 At a community meeting at The Laird Hotel in Collingwood to address the then-developing health crisis of HIV/AIDS the Victorian AIDS Action Committee was formed (now known as Thorne Harbour Health).

3 July in Australian History

1797 Following much fighting between the European settlers and the Indigenous people in the Hawkesbury area Governor John Hunter sent a group of soldiers to protect the settlers.

1850 Tired of saddling their broomsticks and kick-starting their horses, The Powers That Were got the lads on the tools to begin construction of the First Ever Railway Line in The Fair Isle of Oz; actually t'was the daughter of the Governor Charles FitzRoy, the Honourable Mrs. Mary Stewart, who prettily modelled the spade whilst she turned the first sod of the Sydney Railway Company at Cleveland Paddocks to begin work on the Sydney-Parramatta Railway Line.

The Hon. Mrs. Mary Stewart, nee FitzRoy.

1915 A medical report from the 1st Australian Casualty Clearing Station situated at Anzac Cove observed that “Dysentery is becoming very acute, and cases of extreme collapse are occurring”.

It is estimated that approximately 700 soldiers died from diseases.

1931 The Chemical Warfare Board was renamed as the Chemical Defence Board.

1942 Tea was now rationed; each adult was only allowed half a pound (approx. 230gms) of tea every 5 weeks.

This was in place for 8 years until 1 July 1950.

1947 Bust out the cake tin, Marge, SUGAR RATIONING HAS ENDED 

But don't bother with the teapot.

Sugar had been rationed since it was introduced nearly five years earlier, on 29 August 1942. 

Examiner

1989 The Commission of Inquiry into Possible Illegal Activities and Associated Police Misconduct (the Fitzgerald Inquiry; 1987–1989) ended with Tony Fitzgerald QC submitting his final report.

As a result, a number of high-profile politicians were charged with crimes, and Queensland Police Commissioner Terry Lewis was charged with corruption.

Sources:

Golden Gifts for a Governor's Daughter

Public Health at ANZAC Cove

Dysentery and the ANZAC Legend

The Gallipoli Campaign

Chemical Warfare in Australia Timeline

Part 3 of Australian Frontier Wars; The Hawkesbury Nepean Wars

The Fitzgerald Inquiry

The Fitzgerald Inquiry Report

The Fitzgerald Inquiry - The History Lesson We Must Never Forget

Critchley Parker ; Lost In Tasmania Searching For A New Jerusalem; Poynduk 1942

 Critchley Parker, aged only 31, trekked into the Tasmanian wilderness in an effort to find suitable land for future Jewish settlements far away from the bloodshed of Europe.

He was not Jewish himself but he was infatuated with a (married) Jewish journalist named Caroline Isaacson, and was determined to help find a permanent peaceful refuge for those fleeing the violent horrors of WW2. 

During his fateful trek near Port Davey he discovered a small pond with swans, called poynduk in the local Ninene language. Critchley hoped to name the settlement Poynduk but this was not to be.

Critchley had had TB which had left his lungs and overall health in a weakened state; the weather turned suddenly and he was caught in bucketing rain for weeks that triggered pleurisy. He had planned to light a signal fire to alert the fisherman to come pick him up but he ran out of matches, ran out of food, ran out of time.

But he never ran out of plans for the future settlement of Poynduk; he wrote in his copious notes that he wished it to be based on the "principals of racial tolerance and international brotherhood", to have universities open to students of all colours, medical facilities, schools, hydro-electric power plants. 

Critchley planned for the Tasmanian Games to be hosted at Poynduk each year; the games would celebrate not just sports but poetry, plays, weaving, music and pottery.

Alas, with his early death in the wilderness Critchley's plans for Poynduk were dashed for good.

Further reading -

“Poynduk”: the Extravagant, Impossible (and Understandable) Dreams of Critchley Parker