18 July Australian History

1814 Today saw Matthew Flinders' book, A Voyage to Terra Australis, finally in print where he named Australia... well, Australia.

A Voyage to Terra Australis.

1881 What eventually became Sydney's Prince Henry's Hospital started life as a sanitary camp at Little Bay for those suffering during a small pox epidemic.

1890 Crib Point was blessed by the Post Office Fairy Godmother when a post office was dropped off by the stork.

1910 Due to foggy weather obscuring the signals a Melbourne-bound train from Elsternwick ploughed into the back of a Melbourne-bound train from Brighton at Richmond Station.
Nine people died, 114 people were injured.

Train crash @ Richmond Station 18 July 1910

1914 Maurice Guillaux landed in Sydney - the first airmail delivery from Melbourne to Sydney was achieved.

Celebrating the arrival of the first airmail in Sydney from Melbourne 1914.

1966 Playschool dipped its round window into the turbid airwaves of telly when it debuted on the ABC in Oz.

1984 The National Crime Authority was established.

2005  Amy Gillett, cyclist and rower, was killed in Germany in a road accident.

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.