Portal:Australia/Anniversaries/August

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

August 1

• 1791 – The Third Fleet arrives at Port Jackson.
• 1819 – Explorer Augustus Gregory is born at Farnsfield, Nottingham, England.
• 1902 – The magazine New Idea is first published.
• 1905 – Flos Greig becomes the first woman admitted to practise as a barrister in Australia.
• 1984 – Australian banks are deregulated. Foreign banks were invited to operate in Australia on 10 September.

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August 2

• 1851 – Gold is first discovered in Ballarat, Victoria, leading to the Victorian gold rush.
• 1861 – Edith Cowan, the first Australian woman elected as a representative in an Australian parliament, was born near Geraldton, Western Australia.
• 1989 – The Australian cricket team captained by Allan Border wins the Ashes in England, for the first time since 1934.
• 1991 – The Palm Grove Hostel fire kills 12 people in Dungog, New South Wales.
• 1997 – Stuart Diver, a ski instructor, is rescued as the sole survivor of the Thredbo landslide.

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August 3

• 1918 – Australia House opens in London.
• 1962 – The first members of the Australian Army Training Team Vietnam arrive in Vietnam.

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August 4

• 1845 – The ship Cataraqui is wrecked off the coast of Tasmania, the 406 people on board drown.
• 1851 – The Governor of Western Australia complains of receiving too many convicts as 300 ticket of leave men arrive unexpectedly.
• 1914 – Australia enters World War I, 400,000 Australians participate directly.

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August 5

The Japanese Garden in Cowra commemorating the breakout (Spring 2004)

• 1806 – Captain William Bligh arrived in Sydney to take over the governorship.
• 1824 – Convict and cannibal Alexander Pearce is hung for his crimes.
• 1944 – At least 545 Japanese prosioners of war attempt to escape from a camp in Cowra, over 200 die.
• 1947 – Australia becomes a member of the International Monetary Fund.

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August 6

• 1915 – The Battle of Lone Pine begins on Gallipoli, seven Australians are awarded the Victoria Crosses for this battle.
• 1919 – Harry Butler made the first air flight over a major body of water in Australia.
• 1951 – Entertainer Daryl Somers is born.
• 1986 – Retailers Coles & Co and Myer Pty Ltd amalgamate.
• 1986 – A record 328 millimetres of rain is dumped on Sydney, New South Wales in a single day. The resulting floods kill six people.
• 1996 – Australian census takes place.

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August 7

• 1892 – Sir Arthur Coles, businessman and philanthropist is born.
• 1946 – The Overseas Telecommunications Commission (OTC) is established.
• 1975 – David Hicks, a prisoner of the United States Government at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, was born in Adelaide, South Australia.
• 1990 – John Cain resigns as Victorian Premier over a series of financial scandals and is replaced by the first female premier of Victoria, Joan Kirner.
• 1994 – The Tasty nightclub raid in Melbourne sees 463 patrons strip searched during police raids.

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August 8

• 1895 – The steamship SS Catterthun strikes Seal Rocks, New South Wales, and founders, killing 55 persons.
• 1914 – Enlistment for World War I begins.
• 1918 – Australian forces contribute to one of the greatest advances in World War I at the Battle of Amiens.
• 1973 – Landscape designer Edna Walling died.

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August 9

• 1915 – Alexander Burton died at Lone Pine, Gallipoli, Turkey. He was awarded the Victoria Cross.
• 1942 – HMAS Canberra is sunk in the Battle of Savo Island.
• 1962 – The Federal Government bans the drug, thalidomide.
• 1968 – Actor Eric Bana is born.
• 1987 – Julian Knight commits the Hoddle Street massacre in Melbourne, claiming seven lives and injuring nineteen others.
• 1990 – Joan Kirner becomes Victoria's first female Premier after John Cain II retires from Parliament.
• 2004 – Richard Butler, the controversial governor of Tasmania, resigns.

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August 10

• 1853 – A Jubilee Festival was held in Hobart to mark the cessation of convict transportation to the colony.
• 1885 – The Broken Hill Proprietary Company (later to become the world's largest mining company, BHP Billiton) is registered as a company in Victoria.
• 1914 – Recruiting begins for the First Australian Imperial Force. Australia had offered a force of 20,000 troops.
• 1920 – The Princes Highway is opened, connecting Sydney and Adelaide via Melbourne.

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August 11

• 1870 – Melbourne Town Hall is opened.
• 1989 – Actor John Meillon dies.
• 1989 – A pilots' strike cripples domestic air travel in Australia.
• 2003 – Major-General Michael Jeffery is sworn in as Governor General.

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August 12

• 1829 – Helen Dance, wife of the captain of the ship Sulphur, cut down a tree to mark the day of the founding of the town of Perth, Western Australia.
• 1900 – Frederick Lane wins the Men's 200 metre freestyle at the 1900 Summer Olympics.
• 1916 – Over the preceding four days Martin O'Meara repeatedly went out and brought in wounded officers and men from "No Man's Land" under intense artillery and machine-gun fire during the Battle of Pozières; for his gallantry he was awarded the Victoria Cross.
• 1918 – King George V knights John Monash on the battlefield, the first British commander to be knighted in that way for 200 years.

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August 13

• 1940 – Three members of the Australian Cabinet, Air Minister James Fairbairn, Information Minister Sir Henry Gullett and Army Minister Brigadier Geoffrey Street, were killed, along with the Chief of the General Staff of the Australian Army, General Sir Brudenell White in the Canberra air disaster.
• 1989 – Thirteen people die in a hot air balloon accident near Alice Springs, Northern Territory.

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August 14

Australian House of Representatives

• 1963 – Yolngu people petitioned the Australian House of Representatives with a bark petition after the government sold part of the Arnhem Land reserve on 13 March to a bauxite mining company.
• 1984 – The racehorse Fine Cotton is the centre of a substitution scam at Eagle Farm Racecourse, Brisbane, Queensland.

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August 15

• 1914 – The First Australian Imperial Force was formed following Britain's declaration of War on Germany.
• 1945 – VP Day is celebrated.
• 1969 – Bernard Fanning, lead singer of Powderfinger is born.
• 1983 – Hon Sir James Killen, first elected to the Australian House of Representatives on 10 December 1955, resigned. He was one of the longer serving members.

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August 16

• 1940 – Film director Bruce Beresford is born.
• 1998 – Two Victoria police officers, Gary Silk and Rodney Miller are murdered in Moorabbin, Victoria.
• 1999 – The Bolte Bridge over the Yarra River is opened in Melbourne, Victoria.
• 2004 – Serial killer Peter Dupas is sentenced to his second term of life imprisonment.

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August 17

Dingo

• 1895 – The Albert Railway Bridge opens in Brisbane.
• 1953 – Actress Noni Hazelhurst is born.
• 1980 – Two-month-old Azaria Chamberlain disappears at Uluru, her mother claimed a dingo took the infant.
• 1991 – Wade Frankum commits the Strathfield Massacre in Sydney.

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August 18

• 1883 – Roger William Bede Vaughan, the second Roman Catholic Archbishop of Sydney dies, aged 49.
• 1904 – George Reid becomes the fourth Prime Minister of Australia.
• 1966 – The Battle of Long Tan was a decisive Australian victory in the Vietnam War. The date is commemorated in Australia as Long Tan Day, also known as Vietnam Veterans' Remembrance Day.
• 1983 – Douglas Crabbe rams his 25 ton Mack truck through a hotel wall in Yulara, Northern Territory, killing five people.
• 1984 – The Fine Cotton scam is discovered at Eagle Farm Racecourse, Brisbane.
• 1986 – Janine Haines become the leader of the Australian Democrats and Australia’s first female party leader.
• 1989 – A national pilots' strike begins, defence force planes were used for some domestic flights.

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August 19

Photo of the Rabbit proof fence, taken in 1927

• 1820 – Joseph Wild discovers Lake George and names the Snowy Mountains.
• 1907 – The Rabbit-proof fence is completed.
• 1961 – Four Corners TV current affairs program first screened.
• 1986 – Nine-year-old Sydney schoolgirl Samantha Knight disappears from Bondi in Sydney.

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August 20

Map of the Burke and Wills expedition

• 1857 – The Dunbar is wrecked at the entrance to Sydney Harbour, killing 121 pessangers.
• 1860 – Burke and Wills expedition sets off from Royal Park, Melbourne at about 4 pm watched by around 15,000 spectators.
• 1908 – The United States Great White Fleet arrives in Sydney.
• 2003 – Politicians Pauline Hanson and David Ettridge are sentenced to three years in prison after being found guilty of electoral fraud in Queensland, the charges are later overturned.

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August 21

• 1842 – Hobart was proclaimed a city.
• 1943 – Enid Lyons and Dorothy Tangney are the first Australian women elected to the Australian House of Representatives and Senate respectively.
• 1984 – The Federal budget is televised for the first time.
• 2005 – Michelle Leslie is arrested in Bali after being found with two ecstasy pills in her handbag at an open-air dance party just outside of Kuta.

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August 22

• 1770 – Captain James Cook claims the east coast of New Holland in the name of King George III, naming the site Possession Island.
• 1872 – The 3200 km Australian Overland Telegraph Line is completed.
• 1930 – The two spans of the Sydney Harbour Bridge are joined.
• 1985 – A Royal Commission found that there was no link between chemical defoliant Agent Orange and health problems of Vietnam war veterans.

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August 23

• 1895 – Bushranger James Alpin McPherson, known as The Wild Scotchman, dies aged 53.
• 1966 – Led by spokesman Vincent Lingiari, the Gurindji workers and families walked off Wave Hill and began their seven-year strike.
• 1989 – Australia's 1,645 domestic airline pilots resign over an airline's move to sack and sue them over a dispute.
• 2003 – Jack Dyer, Australian footballer, dies aged 89.

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August 24

• 1915 – The town of Holbrook, New South Wales was renamed from Germanton.
• 2001 – The Tampa crisis begins when the MV Tampa tries to help a boatload of refugees, mainly from Afghanistan.

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August 25

• 1824 – The Legislative Council of New South Wales sits for the first time.
• 1903 – The Judiciary Act 1903 receives Royal Assent, creating the High Court of Australia.
• 1981 – The Rembrant Hotel fire kills 19 people in Kings Cross, Sydney.

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August 26

• 1951 – Actress and television presenter Delvene Delaney is born.
• 2005 – The inaugural A-League national football (soccer) season begins.

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August 27

• 1870 – John Forrest arrives in Adelaide from Perth, after leading an expedition along the south coast via the Great Australian Bight.
• 1908 – Sir Don Bradman, Australian cricketer is born.
• 1976 – Mark Webber, Australian race car driver is born.

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August 28

• 1896 – Arthur Calwell, Leader of the Australian Labor Party from 1960 to 1967, is born in Melbourne.
• 1933 – The Brisbane newspaper, The Courier-Mail, first appears.
• 1941 – Arthur Fadden becomes the thirteenth Prime Minister of Australia.

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August 29

• 1882 – Australian cricketers win The Ashes for the first time.
• 1998 – The Liberal Party government of Tony Rundle is voted out in Tasmania and replaced with an ALP government of Jim Bacon.
• 2001 – Graham "Shirley" Strachan, lead singer of Australian 1970s rock group Skyhooks, is killed in a helicopter accident.

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August 30

• 1916 – Rescue of the 22 men Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition who remained on Elephant Island.
• 1959 – Mark 'Jacko' Jackson, Australian rules footballer and actor is born.
• 1992 – The Sydney Harbour Tunnel officially opens.
• 1999 – East Timor votes for independence from Indonesia. In the violence that follows, Australia is a major contributor of peacekeeping forces.

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August 31

FrankMacfarlaneBurnet

• 1814 – Admiral Arthur Phillip, British naval officer and Governors of New South Wales, dies at Bath, England aged 75.
• 1918 – The Battle of Mont St. Quentin, a famous Australian action under the leadership of Lieutenant General Sir John Monash, begins.
• 1945 – The Liberal Party of Australia is founded by Robert Menzies.
• 1985 – Death of Frank Macfarlane Burnet, Australian biologist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

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