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Bubonic plague
The first case of bubonic plague in Australia was reported. There were relatively few deaths due to a coordinated response from health authorities and government -
Federation
Australia became an independent nation when the British Parliament passed legislation enabling the six Australian colonies to collectively govern in their own right as the Commonwealth of Australia. -
White Australia Policy
The Immigration Restriction Act came into law. The legislation was specifically designed to limit non-British migration to Australia and allowed for the deportation of 'undesirable' people who had settled in any Australian colony prior to federation. -
Franchise Act
Women in Australia over the age of 21 could now vote in national elections and stand for the Australian Parliament. -
Papua New Guinea
Australia assumed responsibility for the externa territory of Papua - the southern half of what is now Papua New Guinea -
Age and invalid pensions
The newly formed Commonwealth Parliament passed the Invalid and Old-Age pensions Act. -
Founding of Canberra
The Governor-General's wife, Lady Denman, announced that Canberra was the name of Australia's new national capital. -
Aborigines Protection Act
The Aborigines Protection Act 1909 gave the NWS Aboriginal Protection Board power to remove any Indigenous child at any time for any reason. -
Gallipoli landing
Australian soldiers landed at what is now called Anzac Cove on the Gallipoli Peninsula. -
First ANZAC Day
On the first anniversary of the landing at Gallipoli, ANZAC Day was observed around Australis and wherever soldiers were posted. It is still commemorated to this day. -
Influenza Pandemic
The 'Spanish flu' pandemic emerged at the end of the WW1, killing more that 50 million people worldwide. About 50 percent of the population in Australia fell ill and around 15,000 died as the virus spread through Australia. -
Versaillies Treaty
At 11am on 11 November, the Armistice ending the WW1 cam into effect. After four years of fighting, Germany and its allies were defeated. Two months later, delegates of the western allies convened in Paris to determine the term of the Treaty of Versailles. -
Qantas established
W Hudson Fysh, Paul McGinness and Fergus McMaster established the Queensland and Northern Territory Ariel Services Ltd with two open cabin biplanes. -
Edith Cowan
Edith Cowan was the first woman to be elected to an Australian parliament. She was elected because of the work she had done to improve the lot of women, children and the under-privileged. -
Formation of the AAPA
The Australian Aboriginal Progressive Association is recognized as the country's first politically organized and united Aboriginal activist group. It campaigned for Indigenous rights to land ownership, citizenship, control over their own affairs and to end the practice of removing Aboriginal children from their families. -
Charles Kingsford Smith crosses the Pacific
Australian pilots Charles Kingsford Smith and Charles Ulm became the first people to cross the Pacific Ocean by air in their three-engine Fokker aircraft, the Southern Cross. -
Bradman's first century
Don Bradman scored his first international test century. It was against England at the MCG in the third test of the 1928-29 Ashes series. -
Phar Lap
Phar Lap won 37 races from 51 starts, including the 1930 Melbourne Cup -
Great Depression
In the second half of the 1920s the Australian economy suffered from falling wheat and wool prices, and competition from other commodity-producing countries. Australia was also borrowing vast sums of money, which dried up as the economy slowed. Then the Wall Street crash of 1929 led to a worldwide economic depression. The Australian economy collapsed and unemployment reached a peak of 32 per cent in 1932. It took Australia almost a decade to recover from the Great Depression. -
Sydney Harbour Bridge opens
In 1922 the NSW Parliament passed the Sydney Harbour Bridge Act. Construction began on the approaches to the span in 1923 an on the bridge itself in 1925. More that 1600 people worked on the bridge during its construction. It then opened to the public on the 19th of March, 1932 -
Start of the ABC
The ABC has been a trusted source of quality entertainment, ne Today the broadcaster reaches close to 20 million viewers and listeners per week. -
Introduction of the cane toads
Released in Queensland to help the cane industry deal with insect attacks on sugar can roots, it has since spread all the way across to northern WA. It has had a serious impact on the ecosystems of northern Australia because it has no predator's. -
Kokoda Trail
After the fall of Singapore in February 1942, the focus of the Pacific War moved closer to Australia. Japanese forces bombed Darwin and launched an attack over Papua’s Owen Stanley Ranges with a view to capturing Port Moresby. A desperate and vicious seven-month campaign followed, which saw 600 Australian soldiers killed and 1600 wounded, compared to more than 10,000 Japanese fatalities. In January 1943 Japanese resistance on Papua ceased. -
Second World War conscription
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First women in parliament
In 1902, Australia became the first nation to introduce equal federal suffrage. It took another 41 years for the first women to be elected to the Australian Parliament. -
Penicillin
Discovered in 1928 by Alexander Fleming, the drug was made medically useful in the 1940's by a team of Oxford scientist led by Australian Howard Florey and German refugee Ernst Chain. -
Holden Launch
The Holden transformed suburban Australia, boosted national pride and quickly became a national icon. it was Australia's first locally made mass-production car. -
Black box flight recorder invented
In 1954 Dr David Warren first came up with the idea of a device that would record not only flight data but also voices and other sounds in aircraft cockpits immediately prior to a crash. The prototype he designed in the late 1950s met with indifference in Australia but was greeted with enthusiasm elsewhere in the world. Today flight recorders are mandatory on all major aircraft throughout the world and have made a huge contribution to air safety. -
Queen Elizabeth II
An estimate 75% of Australia's 9 million people glimpsed her in person at least once. The tour was seen as an opportunity to display Australia's affluence and modern outlook in the post-war period and to promote the unity of culture, language and kinship under a common allegiance to the Crown. -
Australian flag defined
Before 1954, Australia's official flag was the Union Jack. This was changed when the Flags Act came into effect -
TV and Melbourne Olympics
Since the first transmission, television has gone on to become the most influential news and entertainment in the nation. From fewer that 100,000 televisions in 1956, there are now more than 18 million operating across Australia. -
First modern skyscraper
Orica House was completer in 1958 by architectural firm Bates, Smart and McCutecheon. -
Iron ore exports
On 24 November 1960 the federal government agreed to the partial lifting of an iron ore export ban that had been in place in Australia since 1938. Large deposits of iron ore were being discovered in the Pilbara region of Western Australia and with Japanese demand for raw materials increasing rapidly the industry took off. In 1960 Australia shipped 500 tons of iron ore overseas; in 2013 we exported 300 million tons. -
Indigenous Australians right to vote
From the first federal electoral Act in 1902 to 1965, when the last state changed its law, tens of thousands of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people were subject to regulations which prohibited them from voting at federal and state elections. It wasn’t until 1984 that Indigenous people were finally treated like other voters and required to enrol and vote at elections. -
Australian troops committed to Vietnam
On 29 April 1965 Prime Minister Robert Menzies announced in parliament that Australia would send a battalion of combat troops to Vietnam. The decision was motivated by a desire to strengthen strategic relations with the United States and to halt the spread of communism in South-East Asia. By the time Australia withdrew its forces almost eight years later, 521 Australian service personnel would be dead. -
End of the White Australia policy
Under the new legislation, all potential migrants were now subject to the same rules and restrictions surrounding visas and were eligible to become citizens of Australia after the same waiting period. People were selected based on what they might offer Australian society, rather than their race or nationality. -
Mungo Lady
In 1968 geologist Jim Bowler discovered human bones around the now dry Lake Mungo in south-western New South Wales. Bowler and his colleagues named her Mungo Lady and discovered that she had been ritually buried. We now know that the remains of Mungo Lady are 40,000 to 42,000 years old, making them the oldest human remains found anywhere in Australia. -
Patrick White wins Nobel Prize
Whites work explores some of humankind's great existential questions in a distinctively Australian environment. -
Sydney Opera House
It is one of the 20th century's most iconic buildings. It broke new ground for design and engineering around the world. -
Cyclone Tracey
Cyclone Tracy, which hit Darwin in the small hours of Christmas Day 1974, killed 71 people and devastated 80 per cent of the city. In the days and weeks following the disaster, most of the traumatized population left the city. -
Great Barrier Reef Marine Park
The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park was created by the Australian Government in 1975 to save the reef from oil drilling and mineral extraction while permitting other activities life fishing and tourism in specified areas. -
Vietnamese refugees boat arrival
The first boatload of refugees fleeing Vietnam sailed into Darwin Harbour, heralding a series of arrivals over the next few years. In 2011, the national census showed that 185,000 people in Australia were born in Vietnam. -
Macquarie Dictionary
The Macquarie Dictionary was the first dictionary to provide Australians with a comprehensive coverage of the language they spoke. -
America's Cup win
At 5:21, the yacht Australia II crossed the finish line to win the America's Cup. It was the first America's Cup race in 132 years that a country other than USA won. -
Medicare
The highly controversial Medicare system was introduced. It established basic health care for all Australians -
Sex Discrimination Act
The Sex Discrimination Act ensured that women had the same access to jobs, services and accommodation as men. -
Handback of Uluru to the Anangu people
It ended decades of determined lobbying by the traditional owners to have their rights recognized. -
Mabo decision
High Court of Australia recognized that a group of Torres Strait Islanders, led by Eddie Mabo, held ownership of Mer (Murray Island). In acknowledging the traditional rights of the Meriam people to their land, the court also held that native title existed for all Indigenous people. This landmark decision gave rise to important native title legislation the following year and rendered terra nullius a legal fiction. -
Nicky Winmar's stand
Aboriginal Australian Football League (AFL) player Nicky Winmar stood defiantly in front of opposition spectators who had been hurling racial abuse at him. He lifted his jersey and pointed at his skin, shouting, ‘I’m black and I’m proud to be black.’ Up to that point, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander AFL players had endured racial abuse on the field from spectators and other players. Winmar’s stand, opened the way to a code of conduct that was the first of its kind in Australia. -
Dogs leave Antarctica
Australian scientist used dogs in Antarctica from the early 1950's to 1993. They were withdrawn in December 1993 to comply with an international agreement to protect Antarctica from introduced species. -
Wifi
The work of CSIRO scientists lies at the heart of wireless networks now in use around the globe. CSIRO’s groundbreaking work in radio astronomy, involving detailed knowledge of the structure and behavior of radio waves, led to a successful solution to the problem of how to move large quantities of data around indoor environments. By 2012 CSIRO had licenses with 23 companies which had generated a revenue in excess of $430 million. -
Port Authur massacre
35 people lost their lives and 18 more were injured when a lone gunman went on a shooting rampage in Port Arthur, Tasmania.
Within 4 months of the massacre, John Howard orchestrated a tightening of Australia's state and gun laws, which are now some of the strictest in the world.
