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

15 October in Things that happened on a Fairly Large Island through history

1810 Get Frocked, ladies!

Get gussied up to the nines, girls, the 73rd Regiment held the FIRST official HORSE RACE on this lump of soil known as Oz, in Hyde Park, Sin-City (Sydney).

First Sydney Races

1840 The first land sales of Portland were haggled over, fought over and went off like a frog in a sock at Melbourne, Victoria. Prices were as high as the perfume of some socks owing to the fact Portland was a serious contender as Big Smoke for the Southern Region of The Fair Isle of Oz.

1851 That banking badboy, con artist, Ben Boyd fell off the face of the earth when he popped in as the bite to eat with the native peoples at Guadalcanal Island , or so rumour has it, whilst doing a runner from creditors in his yacht Wanderer.

1871 The Germans in South Oz held a large festival in Tanunda to celebrate peace at the end of the Franco-Prussian War.

1895 The Gambling Act was passed with the canapes in sunny Qld which forced Tattersall's to up sticks and shift to Hobart in Tassie.

1915 General Sir John Monash was awarded the Companion of the Order of the Bath(CB).

1940 RAAF Base Townsville was hatched with the motto;

Guarding The North.

1953 Things were really starting to go off like a frog in a sock when the first British nuclear weapons testing on mainland Oz began with a blast into the past at Emu Fields in Crow Eater country South Australia.

Australia's Atom History

1970 The Westgate Bridge in Melbourne fell to earth, killing 35 workmen and injuring 17 more.

1970 Three cheers for the unions who passed a general Black Ban on the proposed redevelopment of Carlton in Melbourne.

1975 Malcolm Fraser, then-leader of the Opposition stated that they'd be blocking supply in the Senate until an election was called as they had no faith in the Whitlam Govt due to messy money matters that had been sort of secret until they weren't.

2004 HMAS Arunta popped in for a cuppa tea at Vladivostok, Russia.