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.

22 July Australian History

1802 He of the forever itchy feet, Captain Matthew Flinders, set sail yet again and charted the east coast of Oz, then the Gulf of Carpentaria, then a little further west , a bit more south and what do you know Bungaree had become the first Indigenous Aussie to circumnavigate the Fair Isle of Oz, bringing his mate Flinders along for funsies.

1870   A state flag of South Australia was adopted. Woot.

1888 The Derwent Valley Railway Line (Tas) was extended to Glenora in a mad, giddy rush of Gunzel Appreciation.

1900 Fred Lane, (better known as GOLD! winning Olympian Frederick Claude Vivian Lane) won 2 GOLD! medals whilst being the first Aussie to represent The Fair Isle of Oz in water sports.

1938   The Australian National War Memorial at Villers-Bretonneux, France was dedicated and opened by King George VI and Queen Elizabeth; Queen Elizabeth laid a small posy of poppies on the wreath laid by her husband, the King.

1979 ABC in Sydney and Melbourne presents the final instalment of multicultural television programs from the Special Broadcasting Service (SBS).

1981 Victoria’s television stations were forced to be restricted to only 2 hours of programming between 6 and 8pm to curb power use across the state following a snap strike called by power workers in the Latrobe Valley.

1983  Aviator and business bloke Dick Smith puttered over the finishing line of the first solo around the world helicopter flight.

2010 ABC gaily launched ABC News 24, the first 24-hour free-to-air news channel in Australia. Party.

21 July Australian History National Lamington Day

 National Lamington Day 

Lord Lamington was Governor of Queensland from 1896 to 1901 and it was in his household, nay in his very kitchen, where (or so the Legend of Lamington says) that a cook was faced with having only stale cake to serve to unexpected guests so she got creative. Lamingtons are a sponge cake dipped in chocolate then rolled in coconut, and considering Lady Lamington was pregnant (she gave birth to a son, Victor Alexander Brisbane William Cochrane-Baillie , on 23 July 1896) I surmise it was more likely that the chef/cook made the first Lamingtons with a pregnant lady suffering food cravings in mind.

One of the first, if not the first, media mention of Lamington Cake.

1855 Today saw the Order-In-Council to change the moniker of Tassie to...Tassie. Back in the day it was titled Van Diemen's (pronounced demon's) Land and, whilst we'd all like to refer to Taswegians as demons, some of them are quite nice, civilised humans. 
And even house trained.

1898 The then-Sydney Mayor, Mathew Harris, declared that the deliciously gorgeous Queen Victoria Market Building in Sydney was open for the good ladies to sashay their way gloriously through! Party.

1991 Lake Alexander, a man-made lake in Darwin, NT named in honour of a past Lord Mayor of Darwin, Alex Fong Lim, was officially opened on this day.

1979 Sweetheart the 5.1 metre saltie (salt water crocodile) was accidentally killed whilst being transported to a safer non-human area of the Northern Territory.

1991 Today saw the misplacement of the bow from the not-so-good-ship Kirki, just off the Western Australia coast, where they also managed to misplace 7,900 tonnes of oil.

2021 Today saw the trumpeting announcement that Bris-Vegas was chosen to host the 2032 Olympics and Paralympics. Party!

20 July Australian History

1888 The Women's Suffrage League was formed in South Australia.

1923 Victoria Railways got all silly and started introducing new fangled electric locomotives.

1972 By order of the government, 150 Australian Federal Police evicted the diplomatic staff and pro-landrights protestors, arrested eight people and removed the Tent Embassy by force. The violent eviction was followed by large-scale protests.

1975 The coast of NSW was gently washed and rinsed from the effects of a tsunami that originated in the Solomon Islands.

1979 Inaugural meeting of the National Farmers' Federation.

1989 Landcare became a nation-wide program when the Federal Govt announced the "Decade of Landcare" plan for the nation,  alongside the funding of $320 million.

1992 The Molong - Dubbo Railway Line (NSW) was kicked to the kerb.

2017 Jabiluka made news headlines in July with reports that a team of archaeologists had uncovered evidence confirming the colonisation of Australia at least 65,000 years ago.

19 July Australian History

1770 The Guugu Yimithirr people and Captain James Cook clashed over a dozen sea turtles that Cook's party caught for food near present-day Cooktown. Later, an Elder approached Cook, offering a broken spear as a gesture of reconciliation and the two parties settled their dispute.
The National Trust of Australia nominated the event as Australia's first documented act of reconciliation. The area where the two parties met is now known as Reconciliation Rocks.

Reconciliation Rocks.

1814 Matthew Flinders, the flute-playing, cat-loving map maker bloke (who probably came back as a long haired herbily enhanced hippie in the 1960s) dropped off the perch today, a mere 24 hours after his book was in print.

Following the rediscovery of his coffin during the HS2 excavations near London's Euston Station in 2019, today in 2024 he will be reinterred in his home village of Donington in Lincolnshire.

1873 Uluru was sitting in the sun, minding its own business when William Gosse eyeballed in a lascivious way and declared it to be Ayres Rock.

Hmph, rock my arse.
Uluru has always been called Uluru by the Anangu people. But it got renamed by that bloke who decided to add insult to injury by becoming the first known European to climb Uluru.

It was named, promoted, advertised all over the world as "Ayers Rock" until 1993, when it was baptised with the dual name Ayers Rock/Uluru. In 2002, the names were reversed, and is now known as Uluru/Ayers Rock.
BTW - Gosse named it after a politician/business bloke Sir Henry Ayers.

1958 The last tramline to be kicked to the kerb in Perth  (Western Australia) was the Inglewood Tram Line, which was replaced by trolley buses, but the final tram ran that evening.

1959 The railway line from Somerton to Upfield (Victoria) was reopened for Goods (freight) traffic for the brand-spanking-new Ford Motor Company.

1960 Australia's first aircraft hijacking took place today over Brisbane on the last Sydney-Brisbane flight for the day.

1965 UFO landed on Vaucluse Beach.

1989 After a series of mergers of regional educational institutions in NSW Charles Sturt University was officially incorporated today.

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.

17 July Australian History

1880 Today saw the last of the articles printed in the Queenslander newspaper that covered treatment of the Aboriginal People titled "The Way We Civilise"; written by journalist Carl Feilberg he fought for Aboriginal rights and against the blackbirding trade.

Blackbirding

1922 The North Coast Railway Line (NSW) was flung open with gay abandon from Coff's Harbour to Glenreagh.

1964 Donald Campbell got all Speedy Gonzales on Lake Eyre when he set the world record for four wheeled jet propelled vehicles at 403.10 mph.

1967 A mini Buffet service began serving up the hot tea on the Melbourne to Albury trains.

1976 The annual, long standing, Northern Territory News Walkabout was revived after a lapse and on a new course; this foot race has now since been discontinued.

2020 Border restrictions were lifted for interstate visitors coming into Northern Territory.