19th October through Oz History

1800 - Napoleon issued instructions to Baudin and Hamelin, who sailed in the Geographe and the Naturaliste, to explore the east and south coasts of Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania).

1812 – Indefatigable, the first direct convict transport from Britain to Tasmania rocked up in Hobart.

1824 - Having gone for a Sunday ramble around the block to go have a gander at that new Port Phillip, Hume and Hovell managed to eyeball the very fast flowing, very flooded Murrumbidgee River.

1826 - Edwin Smith Hall birthed Sydney's third newspaper, The Monitor.

1833 Great Aussie poet, who wasn't too shabby on the back of a horse, Adam Lindsay Gordon was pupped.

1872 – Holtermann's nugget, a 286 kg slab of granite containing 82.11 kg of gold, was found in New South Wales.

1887 - The steamer SS Cheviot was wrecked at Point Nepean, Victoria, with 35 lives lost.

The nearby beach was afterwards named Cheviot Beach.

This is from where the then-Prime Minister Harold Holt disappeared.

1897 - Today saw the delivery of a top chick who helped so many other women made into widows by war  they should have bronzed the baby shoes of the future Mrs Jesse Vasey.

1900 – Bill Ponsford, Australian batsman who twice broke the world record for the highest first-class score, was pupped in North Fitzroy, Melbourne.

1919 - The Darwin Rebellion was finally at an end when the despot ruler Dr Gilruth was evacuated with his family out of the NT.

1945 -The War Widow's Guild of Australia was formed today by Jesse Vasey OBE CBE.

1966 - NZ went all the way with LBJ for the US President's whirl-wind 24 hour visit.

1974 - First general election for the Northern Territory Legislative Assembly was held in the NT and was won by the Country Liberal Party.

1979 - The Aussie Federal Police was formed. This was achieved by merging the Commonwealth Police, ACT Police and the Narcotics Bureau.

1991 – The perjury trial of former Queensland Premier Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen ends in a hung jury. Prosecutors decide against a retrial on the basis of Joh's advancing age & divided public opinion.

2000 – Charles Perkins, Aboriginal activist died.

2001 – SIEV-X, an Indonesian fishing boat en route to Christmas Island, carrying over 400 asylum seekers, sank in international waters with the loss of 353 people.

2022 - The first War Widows Day, on the birthday of Jesse Vasey, founder of the War Widows Gild, was celebrated in QLD and NSW.

2024 - The National War Widows Day will be held and celebrated nationally so that all war widows can participate and be honoured in their sacrifice to our country.

18 October Stuff that happened throughout Oz in history

1790 – HMS Supply returned from Batavia with more supplies for the colony. 

1847 The forced exile of Tasmanian Aboriginal People to Wybalenna on Flinders Island paved the way for the unimpeded ongoing invasion of Tasmanian Aboriginal Lands, but the so-called 'friendly mission' came to an end today when the settlement was closed  and the remaining 14 men, 23 women and 10 children were removed and taken to the former convict station at putalina/Oyster Cove.

1854 – Billy Murdoch, regarded as the finest cricket batsman of his day, was hatched in Sandhurst, Victoria.

1869 – The Lithgow Zig Zag Railway was opened. 

1907 - Several of the already-formed new Surf Lifesavings Clubs created the Surf Bathing Association of NSW. Surf Lifesaving clubs soon spread all around the Isle of Oz, with estimations that more than 800,000 people have been saved over the decades.

1909 - NSW agreed to peacefully surrender the spare 2,400 sq. kms it had kicking around in the backyard behind the shed to become the seat what the Federal Govt could shine it's trousers on... the A.C.T Australian Capital Territory, whose own capital is Canberra.

1919 – Adrian Knox was appointed as the second Chief Justice of Australia. 

1924 - From the sheep farm in Shag Valley, NZ, Frank Bell sent the first radio transmission to zip smartly around the globe to London, where it was received and replied to by Cecil Goyder.

1934 – Charles Prince of Morphettville was found guilty of fraud for the "ring in" of Redlock at the Murray Bridge Racing Club on July 28. 

Redlock Fraud

1934 -  Having popped in for a spot of tennis, the Duke of Gloucester sang for his supper by officially opening the Centenary celebrations for Victoria.

1944 - HMAS Geelong was one of four corvettes lost during the Second World War. It collided with an American merchant ship off New Guinea.

1967 -  HMAS Perth struck by return fire near Cape Lai, Vietnam, while on the United States 7th Fleet 'gunline'. This was the only occasion on which an Australian warship suffered casualties from enemy fire during the Vietnam War.

1973 - Patrick White, author, won the Nobel Prize in Literature.

1973 - 'The Art of Aboriginal Australia', the first major international exhibition of contemporary Australian Indigenous art, was first exhibited in the new purpose-built gallery at the Art Gallery of NSW before it was exhibited in Canada.

2021 - Following the destruction of Indigenous Heritage sites at Juukan Gorge, the Australian Senate referred an inquiry to the Joint Standing Committee on Northern Australia for a report by 30 September 2020. The inquiry had to be extended, and it published its final report on 18 October 2021. The final report of the inquiry found that Rio Tinto's actions were “inexcusable and an affront, not only to the Puutu Kunti Kurrama and Pinikura (PKKP) but to all Australians”. Further, the report found that the disaster could happen again because legislation designed to protect cultural heritage has often “directly contributed to damage and destruction”.

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

16 October in Oz

1817 HMSC Mermaid was commissioned on this day ; the Mermaid was the infamous boat in which Phillip Parker King surveyed and chartered the coastline of Oz - and which he managed to drive and crash into a boab tree at what he named as Careening Bay on the Kimberley coast.

Nary a drink or drugs tester in sight.

THEN he had the sheer cheek to carve it into history by carving 'HMC Mermaid 1820' into the aforementioned boab tree.

Hmph, some people...!

1835 Exciting things were happening in the Port Phillip colony with the arrival of John Fawkner and his missus and ankle biters...he celebrated his 43rd birthday a mere four days later by completing the roof on the house he'd just knocked together.

1849 On the Cape York Peninsula Barbara Thompson had been a castaway who'd lived with the local Kaurareg for 5 years before being rescued by HMS Rattlesnake at Evans Bay on this date when she could finally get some decent shoes.

1852 The migrant ship Georgiana was anchored in Port Phillip Bay when the crew had a hankering for the goldfields; after a little mutiny that resulted in the demise of one of the ships' officers, they took to their heels and headed for them thar hills. 

1852 T'was a sunny Sat'dee arvo when bushrangers progressively bailed up and robbed 19 people, all within a few hours, on that little sandy track now known as Brighton Road, St Kilda, at approx. the spot where the Elsternwick Hotel now squats (oh, the tales I could tell about that establishment...!).

1854 There was a major robbery on the Bank of Victoria in Ballarat with up to £15,000 stolen.

1863 Good old Daisy Bates, she who protected and documented many of the Indigenous Peoples, their cultures, languages and wrote a book on her experiences, was pupped on this day. in Tipperary, Ireland.
She was also, briefly, hitched in unholy matrimony to Breaker Morant in 1883 but this must have slipped her mind when she wed, bigamously, a second time to John Bates in 1885.
Oops.

1936 Kiwi flyer Jean Batten took to the skies from Australia in the final leg of her challenge to fly from England - Oz - NZ.

She arrived at Mangere Aerodrome 10.5 hours after leaving Sydney, with the whole journey from England taking her 11 days and 45 mins.

1944 The blokes held a wild tea party at which they voted to rebrand their whole bag o' tricks under the name The Liberal Party of Australia.

1967 Royal Australian Navy Helicopters deployed to Vietnam.

1975 Balibo Five -

1982 At a national federal conference (a wild tea party, perhaps?) the peeps voted to change the brand name of their own bag o' tricks from National Country Party of Australia to just National Party of Australia.

Contrary to popular opinion many did not change their clocks or their socks at the same time.

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.

14 October stuff that happened on this day or when I can be bothered to look it up

1824 – W. C. Wentworth and Robert Wardell begin publication of The Australian, the first independent newspaper in Australia. 

1829 - The breaking of the 4 year drought in NSW. 

The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser, Thu 15 Oct 1829

1829 - Governor Darling proclaimed the Nineteen Counties of New South Wales which re-defined the Limits of Location, Location, Location beyond which settlement was prohibited.

1840 With the road from Adelaide to Port Adelaide completed the two Aussie Rules football teams could finally get down and dirty on the field. 

"A great procession of people, said to number 5000, travelled down the new road to Port Adelaide. Some 450 vehicles from four-in-hand barouches to bullock teams and donkey carts, as well as 500-600 equestrians made the journey. At the Port a regatta was held and 450 people sat down to a lavish lunch provided in the warehouses of the South Australian Company who had built the road. "

1879 – Author Miles Franklin born at Talbingo, New South Wales. 

1889 - The first electric tram in Oz was flung open for posteriors to be parked upon the bench seats as the people swayed to the rhythm from Doncaster to Box Hill

Opening day 

1923 – Severe floods in Melbourne, two drown. 

Fatalities in Melbourne

1927 - HMAS Adelaide arrived at the British Solomon Islands Protectorate as part of a British punitive expedition. The Royal Australian Navy operated as part of a British empire force in one of the first instances in which Australian forces intervened in regional affairs.

1935 – The Hornibrook Bridge opens, connecting Brisbane and Redcliffe, the 2.8 km bridge is one of the longest timber and girder bridges in Australia. 

1958 – Death of Douglas Mawson, Antarctic explorer and geologist, aged 76. 

1959 – Radio comedian and quiz show host Jack Davey dies. 

1959 – Death of Errol Flynn, flamboyant film actor, in Vancouver, British Columbia, aged 50. He shares coffin space with six bottles of whiskey, a parting gift from his drinking buddies. 

1968 – The town of Meckering, Western Australia, was badly damaged by an earthquake.

23 July Australian History

1773  Sir Thomas Makdougall Brisbane, namesake of Brisbane aka Party Town Bris-Vegas, was found in the cabbage patch.

1888 The South Coast Railway Line (NSW) was gaily thrown open from Coal Cliff to Clifton. Party.

1891 The Powers That Be in Victoria Railways plonked down some extra track betwixt Beechworth and Yackandandah.

1909 The very first council meeting of the Wildlife Preservation Society of Australia was held in all its glory.

1938 Bert Newton, award-winning media personality, was hatched.

1946 After the war, as the wartime signals intelligence units were wound down, government approval-in-principle for a new peacetime signals intelligence organisation was given on this day.

Aussie Signals Directorate was pupped.

*waves to the super spies*

1993 Youse can all get stuffed if youse don't like opals cos today the Big Bloke, who was wearing the Governor-General Tiara brimming with these beauties, Bill Hayden, declared that opals were the national gemstone.