1790 - Letters Patent empowered Governor Phillip to remit sentences and to emancipate convicts.
1822 - Hanged at Sydney, Valentine Wood, for robbing Sergeant Barlow on the Prospect Road; William Baxter, for attempted murder of Robert Hawkins on the Dog Trap Road; and, Thomas Till, for stealing a boat at Port Macquarie.
1824 - Hume and Hovell, explorers, first Europeans to see the snow capped mountains, now known as the Australian Alps. They named them the Snowy Mountains.
1836 - The population of Port Phillip is 186 males, 36 females, and 700 aborigines.
1836 - The King's School at Parramatta, New South Wales, opened.
1836 - The printing press which would print South Australia's proclamation as a British province arrived in the colony.
1843 - Hanged at Maitland Gaol, Harry and Melville (both indigenous), for the murder of a baby named Michael Keoghue near Glendon.
1846 - St. John's Church, West Maitland, now known as St. John's Cathedral, was blessed and opened by the pioneer priest, Dean J. T. Lynch.
1849 - Maitland Hospital, Campbell's Hill, New South Wales, was opened, and 10 patients from the old temporary hospital, Hannan House, West Maitland, were admitted.
1862 - Circuit Court at Rockhampton, Queensland, was proclaimed.
1867 - A quartz reef was discovered by Pollock and Lawrence, near the site of Gympie, Queensland, and was named the Lady Mary. In the previous month James Nash had discovered gold there. The locality was first called Nashville, but is now the town of Gympie.
1886 - Railway opened to Barcaldine, Queensland.
1888 - Sir Henry Blake, of Galway, was appointed Governor of Queensland. Mcllwraith (Premier) and Griffith (Opposition) joined forces in protest, and cabled a definite refusal to accept him. The appointment was withdrawn, and Sir Henry Blake was appointed Governor of Jamaica. He died in 1918.
1888 - Miners' strike at Newcastle ends after 11 weeks.
1889 - Hanged at Fremantle Prison, Ahle Pres (alias Harry Pres), a Singapore Malay, for the murder of Louis, a Filipino, near Halls Creek, on 9 June 1889.
1890 - The great maritime strike, which started on August 20, ends.
1902 - The S.S. Elingamite, an Australian passenger steamer, is wrecked on the Three Kings, near the most northerly point of New Zealand. It struck the cliff at 10.45 a.m. One boat with 52 passengers and crew reached Hohoura, 70 were rescued from the islands by the S.S. Zealandia, and five days later H.M.S. Penguin picked up a raft with eight survivors out of 18. Eight went down with the Elingamite, and the total number lost was 30.
1905 - The barque Thistle was wrecked at Palmerston Island.
1907 - The Harvester Judgment delivered by H. B. Higgins giving rise to the legal requirement for a basic wage, which dominated Australian economic life for the next 60 to 80 years.
1908 - The first P. and O. Company's cargo steamer to come to Brisbane arrives.
1909 - End of the Newcastle-Maitland coal strike of 18 weeks which started on March 14. It was more familiarly known as the Peter Bowling strike.
1917 - Heavy rain at Tweed Heads, New South Wales, receiving 12 inches on this day.
1919 - Queensland Judges' Retirement Bill receives the Royal assent.
1920 - Railway accident at Wokalup, Western Australia, cases the death of 12 men.
1929 - Severe damage by cyclonic storms at Kynuna, Queensland.
1934 - A grasshopper plague devours 20 tons of grain in two hours in Mildura.
1935 - Charles Kingsford Smith, early Australian aviator, dies during a flight from Allahabad, India to Singapore, aged 38.
1938 - Australian rules football player Bob Skilton, one of only four players to have won the Brownlow Medal three times, is born.
1940 - SS City of Rayville hits a mine in Bass Strait and becomes the first American vessel sunk during World War II.
1944 - "G for George" arrives at Amberley. This Lancaster bomber survived 89 operations with No. 460 Squadron RAAF. After touring to support war loan campaigns, it was presented to the Memorial. "George" is now on display at the Memorial in Anzac Hall.
1946 - Guus Hiddink, football coach of Australia at the 2006 FIFA World Cup, is born in Varsseveld.
1976 - Brett Lee, cricket fast bowler, is born in Wollongong, New South Wales.
1991 - Fremantle Prison is decommissioned.
2005 - Police claim to have averted a large scale terrorist attack after arresting 15 people in Melbourne and Sydney.
No comments