Portal:Australia/Anniversaries/January

These are the selected anniversaries for January that appear on the Australia portal. The "edit" links edit the portal subpages that are displayed as sections here.

January 1

John Hope, 7th Earl of Hopetoun, was Australia's first Governor-General.

• 1838 – John Pascoe Fawkner founds the Melbourne Advertiser, the first newspaper to be established in what is now Victoria.
• 1856 – Van Diemen's Land is granted self-government, with the name of the island and colony officially changed to Tasmania.
• 1901 – The Australian colonies are officially federated to form the Commonwealth of Australia, with John Adrian Louis Hope, 7th Earl of Hopetoun (pictured) appointed as the first Governor-General of Australia.
• 1915 – Six people are shot and killed and another seven wounded in an attack at a picnic near Broken Hill, New South Wales.
• 1983 – The Closer Economic Relations free trade agreement between Australia and New Zealand comes into force.
• 2005 – The Australia–United States Free Trade Agreement, a preferential trade agreement between Australia and the United States, comes into force.

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January 2

6d "kangaroo & map", used at Woolloongabba Queensland

• 1837 – the Supreme Court of South Australia is established by Letters Patent, five days after the founding of the colony.
• 1913 – Australian philately proper begins with the Kangaroo and Map series of stamps.
• 1943 – Australia sends its first envoy to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
• 1961 – Combined oral contraceptive pills are first sold in Australia
• 1992 – George H. W. Bush becomes the first President of the United States to address the Parliament of Australia.

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January 3

Incandescent light bulb

• 1827 – First boat regatta held on the Derwent River.
• 1840 – The Melbourne newspaper The Herald is founded by George Cavenagh as The Port Phillip Herald.
• 1870 – A state flag of Western Australia is adopted.
• 1886 – Leg break and googly bowler Arthur Mailey is born in Sydney.
• 1900 – Electric lighting is installed on Adelaide streets.

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January 4

Fremantle prison

• 1854 – Captain William McDonald aboard the Samarang discovers the McDonald Islands.
• 1982 – Former Prime Minister Sir William McMahon resigns his seat in Parliament.
• 1988 – A prison riot at Fremantle prison causes AUD$1.8 million damage.
• 2006 – Sheikh Maktoum bin Rashid Al Maktoum Vice President, Prime Minister and Ruler of Dubai dies at the Gold Coast of a heart attack.

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January 5

Tasman Bridge

• 1891 – The 1891 Australian shearers' strike begins, which leads to the formation of the Australian Labor Party.
• 1966 – Construction of Waverley Park in Melbourne begins.
• 1975 – The first One-day International cricket match is played at the MCG, between Australia and England.
• 1975 – The Tasman Bridge disaster claims 12 lives.

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January 6

Don Bradman

• 1930 – Don Bradman scores a record 452 not out in one cricket innings.
• 1932 – Joseph Lyons becomes the tenth Prime Minister of Australia.
• 1939 – Swimming champion Murray Rose is born in Nairn, Scotland.
• 1980 – Guillermo Vilas defeats John Sadri to win the Australian Open tennis Championship.
• 2004 – Australian captain Steve Waugh retires from Test cricket, playing his last match against India at the Sydney Cricket Ground.

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January 7

George Bass

• 1799 – Bass and Flinders complete their circumnavigation of Van Diemen’s Land.
• 1867 – Riots at the Crocodile Creek goldfield destroy the property of Chinese miners.
• 1920 – Edmund Barton, the first Prime Minister of Australia, dies aged 70.
• 1931 – Guy Menzies completes the first solo trans-Tasman flight, from Sydney to the West Coast of New Zealand.
• 1965 – The first hydrofoil ferry begins operation in Sydney.

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January 8

Portrait of Alfred Felton by John Longstaff

• 1810 – The Derwent Star and Van Diemen's Land Intelligencer, Australia's second newspaper and the first in Van Diemen’s Land, begins publication.
• 1878 – The telephone is used for the first time in Australia in Melbourne.
• 1885 – John Curtin, 14th Prime Minister of Australia is born in Creswick in central Victoria.
• 1904 – Death of art collector and philanthropist Alfred Felton and the establishment of the Felton Bequest for the National Gallery of Victoria.

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January 9

Hallam Tennyson, 2nd Baron Tennyson

• 1868 – The last convicts arrive in Western Australia.
• 1903 – Hallam Tennyson, 2nd Baron Tennyson is appointed the second Governor-General of Australia.
• 1909 – Australia defeats England nine points to three in the first rugby union test match at Blackheath's Rectory Field in England.
• 1997 – Yachtsman Tony Bullimore is found alive five days after his boat capsized in the Southern Ocean.

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January 10

Willem de Vlamingh

• 1697 – Willem de Vlamingh made the first documented European sighting of the land region which became the city of Perth.
• 1968 – John Gorton becomes the nineteenth Prime Minister of Australia.
• 1977 – The Easey Street murders, an unsolved crime in which two women were brutally stabbed to death in their home in the inner-Melbourne suburb of Collingwood.
• 1989 – Assistant Australian Federal Police commissioner Colin Winchester is shot dead in the driveway of his Canberra home.
• 2006 – Six Australians die when a bus flips over in Egypt.

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January 11

• 1965 – The Wanda Beach Murders occur in Sydney and remain unsolved.
• 1986 – The Gateway Bridge opens in Brisbane.
• 1990 – Convicted drug trafficker Warren Fellows receives a royal pardon and is released from jail in Thailand
• 2005 – Nine people are killed in bushfires in South Australia, making them the worst fires seen in Australia since Ash Wednesday.

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January 12

George Silk's classic picture taken at Buna, New Guinea, on Christmas Day, 1942

• 1943 – Australian and American forces begin attack on Sanananda during the Battle of Buna–Gona.
• 1976 – Eight-year-old Eloise Worledge is abducted from her home in Beaumaris, Victoria. No trace of her has ever been found.
• 2003 – Maurice Gibb of the band the Bee Gees passes away.
• 2005 – Australia's first Twenty20 cricket game was played at the WACA ground between the Western Warriors and the Victorian Bushrangers. It drew a sellout crowd of 20,700.

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January 13

Portrait of Charles Augustus FitzRoy

• 1851 – Charles Augustus FitzRoy commissioned as "Governor-General of all Her Majesty's Australian possessions". This position was a forerunner of the Governor-General of Australia.
• 1939 – Victoria experiences the Black Friday bushfires.
• 1939 – Melbourne records its hottest temperature of 45.6 degrees Celsius.
• 1995 – Poet, critic, publisher and bookseller Max Harris, founder of the literary journal Angry Penguins, dies aged 73.
• 2004 – The Spirit of Tasmania III makes its inaugural trip from Sydney to Devonport. It ceased in 2006.

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January 14

Dorothea Mackellar

• 1803 – Lieut-Col David Collins commissioned in England to found a new settlement on Bass Strait, preferably at Port Phillip.
• 1815 – The road over the Blue Mountains is completed to the Macquarie River.
• 1962 – Bushfires ravage Lara and the Dandenong Ranges in Victoria, causing 14 deaths.
• 1968 – Poet Dorothea Mackellar dies. Her most well known work is My Country.
• 1977 – Actor Peter Finch dies.
• 2002 – Controversial MP Pauline Hanson resigns as leader of the One Nation Party.
• 2002 – CASA grounds 5000 light aircraft that had used contaminated Mobil fuel.

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January 15

Huon Peninsula seen from space (false color)

• 1842 – Mary MacKillop, the only Australian to be canonised, is born in Fitzroy, Victoria.
• 1944 – Australian 9th Division capture the town of Sio destroying the Japanese 20th Division in the protracted Huon Peninsula Campaign.
• 1944 – The destroyer HMAS Bataan is launched by the wife of US General Douglas MacArthur.
• 1987 – Greg Inglis, rugby league player for the Melbourne Storm, is born in Kempsey, New South Wales.

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January 16

Geoffrey Gallop, Premier of Western Australia (2001–2006)

• 1796 – Australia's first theatre opens in Sydney.
• 1962 – Frank Hurley, the first official Australian Imperial Force photographer, dies.
• 1998 – The first victim of the Melbourne gangland killings, Alphonse Gangitano is murdered in his Templestowe home.
• 2006 – Premier of Western Australia Geoff Gallop resigns, citing clinical depression as the reason.

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January 17

Aboriginal Tent Embassy

• 1899 – Novelist Nevil Shute is born in Ealing, London.
• 1922 – The first Archibald Prize for portraiture is won by William McInnes.
• 1944 – Meat rationing began in Australia.
• 1970 – Cyclone Ada hits Central Queensland, killing 14.
• 1972 – A tent embassy is set up in Canberra outside Parliament House, protesting land rights.

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January 18

Lt. Henry Lidgbird Ball, Commander of Supply

• 1788 – HMS Supply of the First Fleet arrived in Botany Bay.
• 1878 – Construction of The Ghan railway line starts in Port Augusta, South Australia.
• 1934 – Qantas and Imperial Airways join forces and establish Qantas Empire Airways.
• 1977 – A train derailment and bridge collapse kills 83 in the Granville railway disaster.
• 2003 – The Canberra bushfires reach the city, killing four people and destroying in excess of 400 houses.

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January 19

View of Cooktown from Grassy Hill.

• 1907 – A tropical cyclone hits Cooktown, Queensland, killing six.
• 1957 – The Argus newspaper appears for the last time.
• 1975 – 2JJ, the predecessor of youth radio Triple J, commences broadcasting in Sydney.
• 2004 – Cricketer David Hookes dies following an altercation outside the Beaconsfield Hotel in St Kilda.
• 2006 – Former leader of the Australian Labor Party Mark Latham is charged with common assault, malicious damage and stealing from a person after an altercation with a News Ltd reporter.

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January 20

Headstone of Captain Moonlite at Gundagai cemetery

• 1880 – Andrew George Scott, known as bushranger Captain Moonlite, was hanged in Sydney.
• 1942 – Charles Groves Wright Anderson wins a Victoria Cross at Muar River, Malaya.
• 1944 – 17 people are killed at Brooklyn, New South Wales when a mail train and a bus collide at a level crossing.
• 2003 – Death of John Halfpenny, aged 68, trade union leader.

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January 21

Isaac Isaacs, Governor-General of Australia

• 1887 – Brisbane receives a daily rainfall of 465 millimetres (18.3 inches), a record for any Australian capital city.
• 1904 – Henry Northcote, 1st Baron Northcote is appointed the third Governor General of Australia.
• 1918 – The Mackay cyclone struck Mackay, Queensland, causing serious damage and killing 30.
• 1931 – Isaac Isaacs becomes the first Australian born Governor-General of Australia
• 1941 – World War II: Australian and British forces attack Tobruk, Libya.
• 1966 – Richard Layton Butler, Premier of South Australia, dies.
• 1974 – Entertainer, Rove McManus is born.

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January 22

Sir Henry Parkes, often called the Father of Federation

• 1899 – Leaders of six Australian colonies meet in Melbourne to discuss confederation.
• 1920 – The Australian Country Party is formed at a meeting of farmers in Melbourne.
• 1931 – Frank Gavan Duffy is appointed as the fourth Chief Justice of Australia.
• 1941 – Tobruk surrenders to Australian 6th Division.
• 1943 – HMAS Patricia Cam is sunk by Japanese aircraft near the Wessel Islands.

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January 23

Gen. MacArthur coming ashore back to the Philippines.

• 1796 – The distilling of spirits is prohibited.
• 1943 – World War II: Australian and American forces finally defeat the Japanese army in Papua. This turning point in the Pacific War marks the beginning of the end of Japanese aggression.
• 1948 – De Havilland Australia conducts the first flight of its three-engined DHA-3 Drover transport aircraft at Bankstown Airport.
• 1999 – Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two sons are burned alive by radical Hindus while sleeping in their car in Eastern India.

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January 24

An Australian soldier in South Vietnam

• 1903 – The Goldfields Water Supply Scheme piping water from Perth to the goldfields of Coolgardie was completed.
• 1908 – The Eastern Suburbs Rugby League Football Club, now known as the Sydney Roosters, are formed at Paddington Town Hall.
• 1967 – Members of 1st Australian Task Force in Vietnam make contact with the enemy for the first time in the area of the Bien Hoa.
• 1999 – A full size replica of the Duyfken, built by the "Duyfken 1606 Replica Foundation" and the Maritime Museum of Western Australia, is launched in Fremantle.

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January 25

HMAS Tarakan in 1948

• 1886 – The first assembly of the Federal Council of Australia was held in Hobart.
• 1900 – State Labor politicians meet in Sydney to formally found the federal Labor party.
• 1950 – The landing ship HMAS Tarakan explodes at Garden Island in Sydney, killing eight.
• 1998 – American tourists Tom and Eileen Lonergan are left behind on their scuba dive near the Great Barrier Reef.

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January 26

A contemporary propaganda cartoon of Bligh's arrest

• 1788 – The First Fleet landed in Sydney Cove.
• 1808 – John Macarthur is arrested sparking the Rum Rebellion. Military officers supporting Macarthur arrest Governor Bligh.
• 1849 – The Australasian Anti-Transportation League was formed after public meeting at Launceston, Tasmania.
• 1928 – Indigenous Australian protestors hold the first Day of Mourning.
• 1943 – The Defence (Citizen Military Forces) Act (1943) is passed which provided for the use of conscripts in the South-Western Pacific Zone (SWPZ) during the period of war.
• 1958 – Australia's first and only nuclear reactor HIFAR goes critical for the first time, full power generation occurs for the first time in 1960.
• 1958 – Thousands of Greek men riot in Melbourne when the bridal ship Castel Felice is nine hours late
• 1959 – Darwin is granted city status.
• 1960 – The Australian of the Year awards are first granted.
• 1966 – The Beaumont children disappear, never to be found.
• 1971 – In the capital city of Australia four children and three young adults are killed in the 1971 Canberra flood.
• 1981 – The Australian Institute of Sport is opened.
• 1994 – A man fires two blank shots at Charles, Prince of Wales in Sydney.

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January 27

• 1906 – A cyclone damages Cairns and Innisfail in Queensland.
• 1921 – Victoria Cross winner Maurice Vincent Buckley dies following a riding accident at Boolarra in Gippsland.
• 1941 – Following the capture of Tobruk, two brigades of the 6th Australian Division under Major General Iven Mackay pursue the Italians westwards and encounters an Italian rear guard at Derna.

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January 28

Mamdouh Habib

• 1915 – The Sinai and Palestine Campaign begins during the Middle Eastern Theatre of World War I.
• 1991 – RAN Clearance Diving Team departs Perth for Kuwait during the First Gulf War.
• 2005 – Mamdouh Habib is released from the United States military prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

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January 29

Prof. Germaine Greer

• 1939 – Academic, writer, and broadcaster Germaine Greer is born in Melbourne.
• 1941 – Actress Maggie Kirkpatrick is born.
• 1986 – Cricketer Bruce Reid takes a hat-trick in the One-day International match against New Zealand at the SCG.

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January 30

Old Parliament House

• 1893 – The Federal Bank collapses, starting the Australian banking crisis of 1893.
• 1924 – The first cabinet meeting is held in Canberra at Yarralumla House.
• 1995 – John Howard becomes federal Liberal leader and thus federal leader of the opposition after the resignation of Alexander Downer.

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January 31

Map of Nauru

• 1814 – The "holey dollar" and "dump" go into circulation.
• 1880 – The Bulletin magazine is first published.
• 1968 – Nauru declares independence from Australia.
• 2003 – Six people died in the Waterfall train disaster.

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