21 October in Australian history

1800 Where there's a fat sheep there's a fair wether....the good ship Buffalo toddled off to England from Oz with 6 sample Merino fleeces from John Macarthur...er, Mrs Macarthur who did all the hard yakka.

1818 Michael Howe went a' bushranging, changed his title from convict to "Lieutenant Governor of the woods" and ended up in a sticky mess; being shot by Private William Pugh and convict Thomas Worrall will do that, even on the banks of the Shannon River, Tasmania.

1886 - George Chaffey signed a mad-arse agreement with the Victorian Govt to knock together an irrigation settlement at Mildura.

1890 - Proclamation Day on 21 October 1890 was the real beginning of self-government in Western Australia. Proclamation Day was celebrated throughout the Colony; streets were lined with decorations, and events including sports, picnics and, in Perth itself, a 'Monster Tea'. At night fireworks and balls were staged. For many years after 1890 a public holiday known as Proclamation Day was celebrated on 21 October each year and in recent years ceremonies have been arranged on 21 October to commemorate the establishment of the State's Constitution.

1915 -  Vera Deakin, daughter of former PM Alfred Deakin, established Australia's Red Cross Missing and Wounded Enquiry Bureau in Cairo.

1940 Pastor Doug Nicholls made a basic plea for Indigenous Peoples to be treated as equals.

Townsville Daily Bulletin

1957 - Excitement, peoples! Australia's very first automatic telephone weather service made it's grand entrance in Melbourne today.

1969 - Zelda D'Aprano went to the Commonwealth Building, where a number of government offices were located, and chained herself to the entrance of the building in protest for Equal Pay.

1972 - Yippee! The Snowy Mountain Hydro-Electric Scheme was officially done and dusted, opened and online.

1978 – Civilian pilot Frederick Valentich went missing in a Cessna 182 over Bass Strait south of Melbourne, after reporting contact with an unidentified aircraft.

1985 - Throughout October 1985 Australian unions carried out industrial bans targeting the racist regime in South Africa. These covered aviation, shipping, building, mail, telecommunications and other industries, then finished with a march and rally in Sydney outside South African Airways on October 21. Their action came after the 1985 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting(CHOGM) meeting in the Bahamas watered down sanctions against apartheid.

2000 - The newly built Melbourne Museum was officially flung open for the great unwashed masses to mass.

2002 – Two people were killed in the Monash University shooting, while five others were injured.