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.

Edit January 1 anniversaries • January 1 anniversaries on English Wikipedia

January 2

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.

Edit January 2 anniversaries • January 2 anniversaries on English Wikipedia

January 3

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.

Edit January 3 anniversaries • January 3 anniversaries on English Wikipedia

January 4

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.

Edit January 4 anniversaries • January 4 anniversaries on English Wikipedia

January 5

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.

Edit January 5 anniversaries • January 5 anniversaries on English Wikipedia

January 6

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.

Edit January 6 anniversaries • January 6 anniversaries on English Wikipedia

January 7

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.

Edit January 7 anniversaries • January 7 anniversaries on English Wikipedia

January 8

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.

Edit January 8 anniversaries • January 8 anniversaries on English Wikipedia

January 9

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.

Edit January 9 anniversaries • January 9 anniversaries on English Wikipedia

January 10

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.

Edit January 10 anniversaries • January 10 anniversaries on English Wikipedia

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.

Edit January 11 anniversaries • January 11 anniversaries on English Wikipedia

January 12

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.

Edit January 12 anniversaries • January 12 anniversaries on English Wikipedia

January 13

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.

Edit January 13 anniversaries • January 13 anniversaries on English Wikipedia

January 14

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.

Edit January 14 anniversaries • January 14 anniversaries on English Wikipedia

January 15

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.

Edit January 15 anniversaries • January 15 anniversaries on English Wikipedia

January 16

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.

Edit January 16 anniversaries • January 16 anniversaries on English Wikipedia

January 17

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.

Edit January 17 anniversaries • January 17 anniversaries on English Wikipedia

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.

Edit January 18 anniversaries • January 18 anniversaries on English Wikipedia

January 19

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.

Edit January 19 anniversaries • January 19 anniversaries on English Wikipedia

January 20

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.

Edit January 20 anniversaries • January 20 anniversaries on English Wikipedia

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.

Edit January 21 anniversaries • January 21 anniversaries on English Wikipedia

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.

Edit January 22 anniversaries • January 22 anniversaries on English Wikipedia

January 23

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.

Edit January 23 anniversaries • January 23 anniversaries on English Wikipedia

January 24

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.

Edit January 24 anniversaries • January 24 anniversaries on English Wikipedia

January 25

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.

Edit January 25 anniversaries • January 25 anniversaries on English Wikipedia

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.

Edit January 26 anniversaries • January 26 anniversaries on English Wikipedia

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.

Edit January 27 anniversaries • January 27 anniversaries on English Wikipedia

January 28

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.

Edit January 28 anniversaries • January 28 anniversaries on English Wikipedia

January 29

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.

Edit January 29 anniversaries • January 29 anniversaries on English Wikipedia

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.

Edit January 30 anniversaries • January 30 anniversaries on English Wikipedia

January 31

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.

Edit January 31 anniversaries • January 31 anniversaries on English Wikipedia