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Australia is about the same size
as the 48 adjoining
US states.
(SSFC, 10/9/05, Par p.27)
The states of Australia included Queensland (Brisbane); the island
state of Tasmania (about the size of West Virginia).
3.6Bil BC
Fossils of bacteria from Western Australia and south Africa date to
about this time.
(SFC, 8/23/96, p.A21)(NH, 7/98, p.22)
3.5Bil BC The Apex Chert of Australia indicate that
by this time at least 11 kinds of bacteria existed.
(PacDis, Winter ’97, p.34)
3.4Bil BC Scientists in 2006 reported that
stromatolites in western Australia, created about this time, were
likely formed when dirt sediments mixed with carbon dioxide, expelled
from bacteria, along with water and minerals trapped in the microbe’s
sticky mucilage.
(SFC, 6/8/06, p.A6)
2.7Bil BC In 1999 Australian geologists under Jochen
J. Brocks reported fossil "biomolecules" from this time. Traces of
steranes produced by eukaryotes, and methylhopanes from cyanobacteria
were reported.
(SFC, 8/13/99, p.A1,21)
1.2Bil BC Scientists reported in 2002 that sandstone
rocks from the Sterling Range of Australia showed evidence of wormlike
creatures from about this time.
(SFC, 5/10/02, p.A2)
170Mil BC The semi-aquatic platypus is thought to
have split off from a common ancestor shared with humans approximately
about this time. In 2008 scientists laid bare the platypus genome of
2.2 billion base pairs spread across 18,500 genes.
(AFP, 5/8/08)
115Mil BC In 2007 scientists reported that large,
carnivorous dinosaurs roamed southern Australia about this time, when
the continent was joined to the Antarctica. The 12-foot dinosaurs were
padded with body fat to survive temperatures as low as minus 30 degrees
Celsius. Their findings were based on fossil footprints.
(Reuters, 10/23/07)
100Mil BC Australia split from Gondwana about this
time and began drifting north away from what is now Antarctica, pushed
by the expansion of a rift valley into the eastern Indian Ocean.
(AP, 6/8/06)
100Mil BC A snake, later named Wonambi, emerged in
Australia about this time. It was believed to have gone extinct about
50,000 BC.
(SFC, 2/16/06, p.A4)
650Mil BC In 2008 Australian scientists said they had
discovered in an outback mountain range a reef that was under water at
this time.
(AFP, 9/22/08)
630Mil BC-542 Mil BC This is known as the Ediacaran
Period, during which animals began to appear according to the fossil
record. It is named after the locality in Australia where they were
first discovered.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ediacaran)
560Mil BC In 2003 a fossil of a 2.56-inch fishlike
animal from the Flinders Ranges of southern Australia was believed to
be at least 560 million years old, 30 million years older than the
previous record.
(AP, 10/23/03)
380Mil BC In 2009 Scientists from Australia and
Britain studying 380 million-year-old fossils of the armored placoderm
fish, or Incisoscutum richiei, said embryos in the fish indicated that
sex as we know it, fertilization of eggs while they are still inside a
female, took place as much as 30 million years earlier than previously
thought. They originally thought the fish laid their eggs before
fertilization.
(AP, 2/26/09)
250Mil BC The worst mass extinction in Earth’s
history occurred about this time. 90% of life in the oceans and 70% of
land animals disappeared within a million years due to a suspected
asteroid impact. This was later called the "Permian-Triassic
Extinction" and "The Great Dying." Scientists later suspected that an
eruption of flood basalt in Russia, the Siberian Traps, caused the
massive extinction. In 2004 scientists suggested that the extinction
was caused by a meteorite that hit the north coast of Pangea, forming a
crater known as the Bedout High, later a part of the Australian
continent. [see 225 and 200 mil]
(SFC, 2/23/01, p.A1)(SFC, 6/10/02, p.A6)(Econ,
11/8/03, p.78)(SFC, 5/14/04, p.A1)
130Mil BC Stegosaurus dinosaurs left footprints near
Broome.
(SFC, 10/16/96, p.A10)
115Mil BC In 2006 scientists identified two ancient
reptiles that swam in icy waters off Australia about this time. The
discoveries, dubbed Umoonasaurus and Opallionectes, belonged to a group
of animals called plesiosaurs, long-necked marine reptiles that lived
during the time of the dinosaurs. Both creatures lived in a freezing
polar sea that covered what is now Australia, when the continent was
located much closer to Antarctica.
(AP, 7/28/06)
110Mil BC The Daintree rain forest of North
Queensland dated to this time.
(SSFC, 6/9/02, p.C7)
25Mil BC In 1997 a teenage surfer named Staumn Hunter
found a whale fossil in a limestone rock at Jan Juc Beach, Australia.
Researchers named it Janjucetus hunderi in his honor. In 2006
researchers said it was an ancestor of modern baleen whales. The fossil
suggests a creature that grew to a little more than 11 feet with teeth
about an inch-and-a-half long.
(www.livescience.com/animalworld/060830_whale_fossil.html)
25Mil BC In 2007 Scientists reported that a fossil
from this time, found in Queensland, Australia, in the 1990s, has
revealed that a predecessor of the hopping kangaroo once galloped on
all fours, had dog-like fangs and possibly climbed trees.
(AP, 12/6/07)
20Mil BC-10Mil BC A team of Australian
paleontologists in 2006 said they had found the fossilized remains of a
fanged killer kangaroo and what they describe as a "demon duck of doom"
that lived during this period in Queensland state.
(AP, 7/12/06)
150000BC In 1980 evidence of Aboriginal habitation
were discovered in charcoal remains deep in the bed of the Great
Barrier Reef and dated to about this time.
(SFEC, 2/28/99, p.T4)
114000BC Controversial data from the Jinmium
rock-shelter in northern Australia suggests humans may have reached the
continent at this time.
(AM, Mar/Apr 97 p.21)
100000BC-50000BC The 200-pound Genyornis newtoni, an
ostrich-like bird, and the 25-foot Megalonia lizard were among the
megafauna that flourished in Australia during this period.
(SFC, 1/8/99, p.A2)
53000BC-50000BC During this period the first humans
migrated to Australia from the islands of Indonesia. It is believed
that they came in bamboo rafts from Indonesia and also from southern
China.
(SFC, 1/8/99, p.A2)(NG, Oct. 1988, p.467)
53000BC-45000BC Australia’s early human population
wiped out the continent’s megafauna over this period.
(SFC, 6/8/01, p.A8)
51000BC The fossil of a Diprotodon, a giant marsupial
from this time, was excavated in 2001 from Cox’s Creek in New South
Wales.
(SFC, 6/8/01, p.A8)
48000BC-44000BC In Australia about 85% of the
land-dwelling megafauna weighing over 100 pounds went extinct about
this time. It was later suspected that systematic burning of the
forests by humans contributed to the extinction. Some 55 species died
off including the 230-pound flightless "thunder bird" called genyornis.
(SFC, 1/8/99, p.A2)(SFC, 6/8/01, p.A8)
45000BC The extinction of most of Australia’s large
animals occurred about this time, shortly after the arrival of humans.
(SFC, 7/8/05, p.A2)
41000BC The skull of a giant kangaroo dating to this
time was found in a cave in the thick rainforest of the rugged
northwest of Tasmania in 2000. Scientists used the skull to argue that
that man likely hunted to death the giant kangaroo and other very large
animals on the southern island of Tasmania.
(AP, 8/12/08)
38000BCE-1996 Scientists in Australia said that they
found a shrub in Tasmania that began growing 40,000 years ago. Dubbed
"King’s Holly," the plant clones itself and now covers 2 secluded river
gullies in the remote southwest.
(SFC, 10/26/96, p.A17)
35000BC In 2008 archeologists unearthed tools dating
back at least 35,000 years in a rock shelter in Australia's remote
northwest, making it one of the oldest archaeological finds in that
part of the country.
(AP, 4/7/08)
35000BC-25000BC Aboriginal rock paintings in
Australia were made as far back as this time.
(SFEC, 2/28/99, p.T4)
20000BC In Australia scientists in 2005 said hundreds
of human footprints dating back 20,000 years were discovered in a dry
lake bed near Willandra Lakes, southwest of Sydney.
(Reuters, 12/21/05)
1500BC Domesticated dogs companied people to Timor,
New Guinea and Australia by about this time. The dogs reverted to a
feral existence and in Australia became dingoes.
(NH, 11/1/04, p.14)
1522 In 2007 The book "Beyond
Capricorn" said a 16th century maritime map in a Los Angeles library
vault, which accurately marks geographical sites along Australia's east
coast in Portuguese, proves that Portuguese seafarer Christopher de
Mendonca lead a fleet of four ships into Botany Bay in this year.
(Reuters, 3/21/07)
1642 Nov 24, Abel Janszoon Tasman
(d.1659) discovered Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania).
(MC, 11/24/01)
1659 Oct 10, Able Janszoon Tasman,
navigator, died at about 56. He discovered Tasmania.
(WUD, 1994 p.1455)(MC, 10/10/01)
1757 Jun 1, Ignaz J. Pleyel,
Austrian composer, piano builder (Piano method), was born. (MC, 6/1/02)
1768 Aug 26, Capt James Cook
departed from Plymouth with Endeavour to the Pacific Ocean. Daniel
Solander and Joseph Banks accompanied Cook to catalog plants and
animals of Australia and New Zealand on the 3-year journey.
(www.artstor.org/what-is-artstor/w-html/col-endeavour-london.shtml)(SSFC,
4/19/09,
Books
p.J7)
1768-1771 Capt. James Cook charted the coasts of both
the north and south islands of New Zealand and Australia. Cook made his
historic voyages in colliers, slow but strong ships designed primarily
for carrying coal. His ship was named the Endeavour. Cook's voyage to
Australia kept a botanical record called the Banks Florilegium. The 738
original plates commissioned by Sir Joseph Banks was not printed until
a 100 set limited edition in 1989.
(SFC, 6/18/96, p.D1)(WSJ, 10/5/99, p.A24)
1770 Apr 9, Captain James Cook
discovered Botany Bay on the Australian continent.
(HN, 4/9/98)
1770 Apr 19, Capt. James Cook
first saw Australia. [see Apr 9]
(MC, 4/19/02)
1770 Apr 20, Captain Cook arrived
in New South Wales, Australia.
(HN, 4/20/98)
1770 Jun 11, Capt. James Cook,
commander of the British ship Endeavour, discovered the Great Barrier
Reef off Australia by running onto it.
(AP, 6/11/97)(HN, 6/11/98)
1774 Capt. Cook discovered the
13-square-mile Norfolk Island 1,000 miles east of Sidney. It was later
turned into a penal settlement from which the last prisoner left in
1855.
(AP, 8/12/02)
1787 May 13, Arthur Phillip set
sail from Portsmouth, Great Britain, with 11 ships of criminals to
Australia. By year’s end some 50,000 British convict servants were
transported to the American colonies in commutation of death sentences.
After the American Revolution, Britain continued dumping convicts in
the US illegally into 1787. Australia eventually replaced America for
this purpose. Penal transports continued until 1853, which left a
remarkable legacy: an almost totally unexplored continent settled
largely by convicted felons.
(HNQ,
1/24/99)(www.foundingdocs.gov.au/item.asp?dID=35)
1788 Jan 18, The first English
settlers arrived in Australia's Botany Bay to establish a penal colony.
They found the location unsuitable and Capt. Arthur Philip moved on to
Sydney Cove. England sent the first sheep along with convicts to
Australia.
(NG, 5.1988, pp. 575)(SFEC, 1/4/98, p.T4)(AP,
1/18/98)(Econ, 5/7/05, Survey p.14)
1788 Jan 26, The 1st fleet of
ships carrying 736 convicts from England landed at Sydney Cove, New
South Wales, Australia. The first European settlers in Australia, led
by Capt. Arthur Phillip, landed in present-day Sydney. The day is since
known as Australia’s national day. In 2006 Thomas Keneally authored
“The Commonwealth of Thieves: The Story of the Founding of Australia.”
(AP, 1/26/98)(HN, 1/26/99)(WSJ, 9/19/00, p.A1)(Econ,
7/15/06, p.83)
1788 As British settlers arrived
in Australia the native Aborigines are believed to have numbered about
750,000, and to have inhabited Australia for up to 70,000 years.
(AP, 1/30/08)
1789 The prison ship Lady Julian
delivered over 200 women to the penal colony at Sydney harbor. In 2002
Sian Rees authored "The Floating Brothel: The Extraordinary True Story
of an Eighteenth-Century Ship and Its Cargo of Female Convicts."
(SSFC, 3/3/02, p.M3)
1789 Smallpox was introduced to
Australia and caused devastation among the aborigines.
(SFC, 10/19/01, p.A17)
1790 Pemulway, an Aboriginal
warrior, speared and killed the governor’s gamekeeper at Botany Bay and
waged war against the British for 12 years. His head was later sent to
England. Eric Willmot later authored "Pemulway, the Rainbow Warrior."
(SFEC, 9/10/00, p.T4)
1791 In Australia officials
granted parcels of land around Sydney to convicts who have served their
time, beginning years of dispossession of Aborigines that continued as
white settlers dispersed throughout Australia. Clashes between
Aborigines and settlers led to tens of thousands of deaths among
Aborigines and hundreds of settler deaths.
(AP, 1/30/08)
1792 Arthur Phillip, the 1st
governor of New South Wales, Australia, returned to England accompanied
by Bennelong, an Aboriginal who had earlier attacked and wounded him.
Philip later gave Bennelong a house on a point in Sydney Cove. In 1973
it became the site of the Sydney Opera House.
(Econ, 7/15/06, p.83)
1795 Apr 28, Charles Sturt
(d.1869), explorer of Australia, was born in India. British explorer
Charles Sturt is known as the "father of Australian exploration." He
was the first to penetrate deep into Australia's interior from 1828 to
1845 during three hazardous expeditions. In 1828 he discovered the
Darling River and in January 1830 the Murray River, which he followed
until he reached present day Goolwa. His last expedition came to an end
when his eyesight was impaired by exposure and illness. Scotsman John
McDouall Stuart was part of Stuart's final expedition and went on to
become a major explorer, crossing the continent from Adelaide to Port
Darwin in 1862.
(http://members.ozemail.com.au/~fliranre/home.htm)(HN, 4/28/98)(HNQ,
5/26/98)
1797 Australia’s first coal mining
began at Newcastle.
(Econ, 6/6/09, p.39)
1802 A British exploring party led
by Matthew Flinders landed on a 96-mile-long island southwest of
Adelaide and slaughtered 31 kangaroos for a feast. This 3rd largest
island off Australia was thus named Kangaroo Island. Flinders named the
Great Barrier Reef and found a passage to the Corral Sea.
(SFEC,12/21/97, p.T6)(SSFC, 3/24/02, p.C22)(WSJ,
7/23/04, p.W12)
1803 Mar 5, Australia's first
newspaper, "The Sydney Gazette & New South Wales Advertiser" was
1st published.
(TL-user)
1804 Oct 9, Hobart, Tasmania, was
founded.
(MC, 10/9/01)
1804 Soldiers fired on an
aboriginal hunting party on Tasmania and killed some 50 people. Some
were salted down and sent to Sydney as anthropological curiosities.
(WSJ, 8/2100, p.A1)
1813 Explorers Gregory Blaxland,
William Wentworth and William Lawson blazed the first trail from Sydney
across the Blue Mountains to the fertile western plains.
(Hem., 1/97, p.53)
1819 In Sydney convict labor built
the Hyde Park Barracks and the state Parliament.
(SFEC, 1/4/98, p.T4)
1829 In Western Australia the
Nyoongar people were largely dispossessed by white settlement. In 2006
they proved native title to over more than 6,000 square kilometers
(2,300 square miles) covering Perth and its surrounds by continuing to
observe traditional customs.
(AFP, 9/20/06)
c1830-1840 Wine production began in Hunter Valley,
north of Sydney
(SFEC, 9/10/00, p.T6)
1831 The Sydney Morning Herald
printed its premier issue at the Keep Within Compass pub.
(SFEC, 9/10/00, p.T10)
1831 James Busby, Scottish-born
father of Australian viticulture, collected 680 different vines from
botanical gardens in Montpellier, Paris and London and brought them to
Australia. These included the syrah grape, called shiraz in Australia.
(SFC, 5/5/05, p.F10)
1833 Jul, In Australia the native
warrior Yagan was shot dead by teenage bounty hunters. He had been a
go-between for his people and European settlers in Western Australia
and later an implacable foe. His head and the tribal tattoo on his back
were hacked off and taken to Britain for study and display. The body
parts were returned in Sep 1997. A statue was erected in his honor on
an island park in Perth in 1983. It was repeatedly vandalized and its
head was sawed off in 1997 shortly after the homecoming of Yagan’s real
head.
(SFEC, 10/5/97, p.A20)
1833 Oct 19, Adam Lindsay Gordon,
Australian poet, was born.
(HN, 10/19/00)
1834 Aug, The barque Charles Eaton
was wrecked on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. 2 years later the
schooner Isabella arrived in Sydney with the cabin boy of the lost
ship, a 5-year old child and 17 skulls of passengers murdered on
Boydang Island. This event prompted an expedition to survey the reef,
the Torres Strait and the southern coast of new Guinea. In 2005 Jordan
Goodman authored “The Rattlesnake: A Voyage of Discovery to the Coral
Sea,” an account of the survey expedition.
(Econ, 3/19/05, p.88)
1835 Dec 30, HMS Beagle and
Charles Darwin sailed from NZ to Sydney.
(MC, 12/30/01)
1836 Feb 17, HMS Beagle and
Charles Darwin left Tasmania.
(MC, 2/17/02)
1836 Mar 6, HMS Beagle and Darwin
reached King George's Sound, Australia.
(MC, 3/6/02)
1837 Nov 21, Thomas Morris of
Australia skipped rope 22,806 times.
(MC, 11/21/01)
1840 Polish explorer Paul
Strzelecki named the highest peak in honor of the Polish national hero
Tadeusz Kosciusko. Early surveyors messed up the transcription and the
peak was named Mt. Kosciusko. There was a move in 1996 to restore the
missing z to the name.
(SFEC, 11/24/96, T7)
1844 Wine production began at the
Penfold Magill Estate in Adelaide.
(SFEC, 9/10/00, p.T6)
1845 Cooper’s Creek, 800 miles
north of Melbourne, was discovered by non-Aborigines.
(ON, 12/01, p.)
1847 Johann Gramp, founder of
Orlando Wines, planted the first vineyard in the Barossa Valley on the
banks of Jacob’s Creek.
(Label, JC Merlot-1999, 8/8/00)
1850 Jul 14, The 1st public
demonstration of ice made by refrigeration took place. James Harrison
of Australia designed an ice-making machine. It was an improvement on
one invented by Jacob Perkins in 1834.
(MC, 7/14/02)(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R14)
1850 Rabbits were introduced to
Australia about this time and soon became pests.
(Nat. Hist., 4/96, p.16)
1850 The Granny Smith apple
originated about this time in Australia. According to Morgan and
Richards The Book of Apples: A Mrs. Smith, born in England in 1800,
emigrated to Australia in 1838. In 1860s she found some seedlings
growing in a creek where she had tipped out some apples brought back
from Sydney. Tree was propagated and later family increased their
orchards and marketed fruit in Sydney.
(www.newint.org/issue212/simply.htm)(http://tinyurl.com/32lr8c)
1851 Australia’s first gold rush
began and raised boomtowns like Ballarat.
(SFEC, 9/10/00, p.T9)
1854 Nov, A wooden boat called
Mystery set sail from Cornwall, bound for Australia with seven
Cornishmen hoping to escape their lives of poverty and dig for gold
Down Under, a trip that eventually took 116 days.
(AFP, 10/21/08)
1855-1880 Edward "Ned" Kelly was an outlaw folk hero
who was hung for his crimes. Inspired by tales of the American
ironclad, the Monitor, Kelly wore an 80-pound suit of armor during his
final crimes. In 2000 Peter Carey authored the novel "True History of
the Kelly Gang."
(SFC, 5/3/97, p.E4)(WSJ, 1/05/00, p.W8)(SSFC,
1/14/01, BR p.1)
1856 The state of Victoria first
adopted paper ballots for voting.
(WSJ, 11/9/00, p.A1)
1856 Australia's Van Dieman's
Island was renamed Tasmania.
(Econ, 1/17/04, p.37)
1856 Rabbits were let loose in
Australia about this time.
(WSJ, 4/5/96, p.B-6)
1856 Descendants of the Bounty
mutineers moved from Pitcairn to Norfolk Island, 1,000 miles from the
Australia mainland.
(Econ, 7/10/04, p.38)
1857 Nov 26, First Australian
Parliament opened in Melbourne.
(AP, 11/26/02)
1857 The Botanical Garden in
Adelaide was founded.
(SFEC, 10/25/98, p.T5)
1857 Robert O’Hara Burke (36), a
police superintendent, was hired by a committee in Melbourne to cross
the continent.
(ON, 12/01, p.1)
1859 The Yalumba Winery in the
Barossa Valley, South Australia, was begun by the Sam Smith family.
(SFEC, 10/25/98, p.T5)
1860 Aug 20, Robert O’Hara Burke
led a group of 15 men, 27 camels and 23 horses out of Melbourne on an
expedition to cross Australia.
(ON, 12/01, p.1)
1860 Nov 11, Robert O’Hara Burke
arrived at Cooper’s Creek with his advanced party of 8 men, 15 horses
and 16 camels.
(ON, 12/01, p.1)
1860 Dec 16, Robert O’Hara Burke
set out from Cooper’s Creek toward the gulf of Carpentaria with 3 men,
William Wills (26), John King (21) and Charles Gray, 6 camels and 1
horse.
(ON, 12/01, p.2)
1860 Explorers Burke and Wills
disappeared after spending a final night at Menindee on the Darling
River.
(SFEC, 10/11/98, Par p.32)
1861 Feb 11, Burke and Wills
approached the coast of Carpetaria but were forced to turn back when no
path through the coastal marsh was found.
(ON, 12/01, p.2,3)
1861 Feb 13, The 4-man Burke party
began their 700-mile return to Cooper’s Creek under constant rain.
(ON, 12/01, p.2)
1861 Apr 17, Charles Gray, the
ex-sailor in the Burke party, was found dead in his bed roll.
(ON, 12/01, p.2)
1861 Apr 21, The Burke party of 3
reached Cooper’s Creek and found a message that the 4-man depot party
under William Brahe had left earlier the same day for Darling with 6
camels and 12 horses. The Burke party departed Cooper’s Creek for the
police station at Mount Hopeless, 150 miles away.
(ON, 12/01, p.3)
1861 Apr 29, The Burke party shot
one of their last 2 camels after it got stuck in mud. Supplies were
divided between the 3 men and one camel.
(ON, 12/01, p.4)
1861 May 7, The lost Burke party
encountered some Aborigines and partook of some nardoo cakes that
provided a euphoric effect.
(ON, 12/01, p.4)
1861 May 30, William Wills
returned to the Cooper’s Creek depot and left an updated message as to
the Burke party’s plight.
(ON, 12/01, p.5)
1861 Jun 29, Burke and King left
William Wills in search of Aborigines.
(ON, 12/01, p.5)
1861 Jul 2, Robert O’Hara Burke
died near Cooper’s Creek and John King pressed on to look for native
Aborigines. King later returned to William Wills but found him dead.
King continued to survive with the local Aborigines until he was
rescued. In 1991 Tom Bonyhady authored "Burke and Wills: From Melbourne
to Myth."
(ON, 12/01, p.5)
1861 Sep 18, John King (d.1872)
was found by a rescue party.
(ON, 12/01, p.)
1862 Scotsman explorer John
McDouall Stuart crossed the continent from Adelaide to Port Darwin.
(HNQ, 5/26/98)
1864 Feb 17, Andrew Barton "Banjo"
Paterson (d.1941), Australian poet and journalist, was born. He is best
known for his song “Waltzing Matilda.”
(HN, 2/17/01)(NG, 8/04, p.29)
1866 Jan 2, Gilbert Murray,
Australian born scholar who became the chairman of the League of
Nations, 1923 through 1928, was born.
(HN, 1/2/99)
1867 Mar 5, An abortive Fenian
uprising against English rule took place in Ireland. The unsuccessful
rebellion by the Irish Republican Brotherhood, known as the Fenians,
gave Australia it final generation of convicts. The 1999 book "The
Great Shame and the Triumph of the Irish in the English-Speaking World"
by Thomas Keneally tells the story of the Irish shipped to Australia.
(AP, 3/5/98)(SFEC, 9/26/99, BR p.1,6)
1870 Henry Redford rustled a
thousand head of cattle from near Fairfield and drove them over a
thousand miles across uncharted desert to market in South Australia.
(NG, 12/97, p.56)
1872 Oct 19, World's largest gold
nugget (215 kg) was found in New South Wales, Australia.
(MC, 10/19/01)
1874 Sep 1, In Australia Sydney
General Post Office opened.
(SC, 9/1/02)
1878 Jan 19, The narrow-gauge Ghan
rail line was begun to serve cattle and sheep ranchers in the outback.
It reached Alice Springs in 1929. Camels from Afghanistan, India and
Pakistan were imported to help work on the line.
(SFEC, 10/10/99, p.T9)
1879 The Royal National Park,
Australia’s first national park, was officially gazetted.
(Hem., 1/97, p.56)
1880 Nov 11, In Australia Ned
Kelly (b.1855), outlaw, was hanged. Kelly was hanged at the Old
Melbourne Gaol but documents show his remains and those of 32 other
executed prisoners were exhumed and reburied at Pentridge Prison in
1929.
(WSJ, 9/21/00, p.A8)(SSFC, 1/14/01, BR p.6)(AP,
3/9/08)
1880 Sydney journalists J.F.
Archibald and John Haynes founded “The Bulletin” with an editorial
focus on political and business commentary, with some literary content.
The magazine shut down in 2008 due to falling circulation blamed in
part on the Internet.
(AP, 1/24/08)
1880 Melbourne, Australia, held an
Int’l. Exposition.
(Hem, 8/02, p.46)
1882 Jul 8, Percy Grainger,
composer, pianist, conductor (Hill Songs), was born in Melbourne.
(MC, 7/8/02)
1882 Aug 29, Australia defeated
England in cricket for the first time. The following day a obituary
appeared in the Sporting Times addressed to the British team.
(HN, 8/29/98)
1883 Davenport Bromfield
(1862-1954), a surveyor, ran away with Mary Ware (1851-1935), a married
mother of 3. They escaped to New Zealand and then to San Francisco,
where Bromfield became an established surveyor in San Mateo County.
(Ind, 1/5/02, 5A)
1883 An itinerant boundary rider
discovered a silver lode at Broken Hill in New South Wales.
(Hem., 2/97, p.91)
1884 The Ghan rail line reached
Oodnadatta.
(SFEC, 10/10/99, p.T9)
1884 The Six Foot Track, a 26-mile
bridle trail joining Katoomba and Jenolan Caves, was first mentioned in
newsprint.
(Hem., 1/97, p.54)
1886 Peter "Black Prince" Jackson
(1861-1901), St. Croix-born boxer, won the Australian heavyweight
championship. In 1892 he won the British Empire title.
(www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/298854/Peter-Jackson)
1886 The Clunies-Ross family was
granted the Cocos Islands in the Indian Ocean, about 2,700 kilometers
(1,680 miles) northwest of Perth, by Queen Victoria. Captain John
Clunies-Ross, a Scottish trader, had landed there in 1825.
(AFP, 1/21/08)
1887 A cyclone killed some 140
oyster crewmen in Broome, Australia.
(NG, 11/04, p.98)
1886-1952 Sister Elizabeth Kenny, Australian nurse:
"Some minds remain open long enough for the truth not only to enter but
to pass on through by way of a ready exit without pausing anywhere
along the route."
(AP, 11/25/97)
1888 The Queen Victoria Building
was built in Sydney, Australia.
(Hem, 6/96, p.64)
1888 George Chaffey, a
Canadian-born, irrigation expert, selected a site for an irrigation
colony near Mildurain Victoria. This led to the establishment of the
Chateau Mildura Winery. The name was changed to Mildara in 1937.
(SSFC, 4/29/01, p.E7)
1889 Jan 16, An Australian record
temperature of 128F, or 53C, was recorded in Cloncurry, Queensland.
(MC, 1/16/02)
1889 Dec, The poem Clancy of the
Overflow by Banjo Paterson 1st appeared in the Christmas edition of
Australia’s Bulletin magazine.
(NG, 8/04, p.10)
1889 The Sydney Town Hall was
built and in the Italian Renaissance style. It was later restored.
(SFEC, 1/4/98, p.T4)
1890-1900 A gold mining boom led to the growth of
Kalgoorlie, 300 miles inland from Perth in Western Australia.
(SFEC, 9/10/00, p.T10)
1890-1900 Australia experienced a big drought that
caused a major retreat and reassessment by farmers.
(AP, 5/24/05)
1892 The Sydney Victorian style
Strand Arcade on George Street was built.
(SFEC, 1/4/98, p.T4)
1893 The Daly Waters Hotel and Pub
opened in the Northern Territory town of Daly Waters.
(SFEC, 9/10/00, p.T10)
1895 A.A.B. Peterson, aka Banjo
Paterson, (1864-1941) wrote his poem Waltzing Matilda while on holiday
in Queensland, Australia. The name referred to a slang term for
drifting around the outback with a bedroll (your matilda) slung over
the shoulder. Christina Macpherson adopted the poem to the Scottish
tune “Thou Bonnie Wood o’ Craigielea.” He later had his image pictured
on Australia's $10 bill.
(SFEC, 5/30/99, Z1 p.8)(NG, 8/04, p.24)
1895-1902 In Australia a drought over this period was
so severe that it helped nudge Australia’s 6 states into uniting. It
thus came to be called the federation drought.
(Econ, 4/28/07,
p.82)(www.austehc.unimelb.edu.au/fam/1610.html)
1898 Sep 24, Howard W Florey,
pathologist, was born in Australia. He purified penicillin and won a
Nobel Prize 1945.
(MC, 9/24/01)
1900 Jul 9, Queen Victoria signed
The Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act, uniting 6 separate
colonies under a federal government, effective Jan 1, 1901.
(HN, 7/9/98)(www.servat.unibe.ch/icl/as__indx.html)
1900 In Australia Helena
Rubinstein (b.1871 in Cracow) opened a beauty shop and sold a cold
cream developed a Hungarian chemist and relative, Jacob Lykusky.
(SFEM, 8/23/98, p.29)
1901 Jan 1, The Commonwealth of
Australia became official as established in the July 9, 1900,
Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act. 6 colonies became an
independent federation with Edmund Barton as the 1st prime minister.
Although independent it still recognized Britain’s royalty as
Australia’s head of state. The governor-general, a representative of
the queen nominated by the prime minister, was appointed by the British
monarch.
(AP, 1/1/98)(SFC, 2/3/98, p.A7)(SFC, 12/31/00, p.A18)
1901 Jul 28, Alfred Renton Bryant
Bridges (d.1990), aka Harry Bridges, American labor leader who headed
the West Coast Longshoremen’s Union, was born in Australia.
(SFC, 7/27/01, p.A21)(HN, 7/28/98)
1901 An immigration act was
introduced that became known as the "White Australia Policy." It
allowed custom’s agents to require that an immigrant write a passage of
50 words in a European language directed by the officer. The dictation
requirement was ended in 1958 and the whole policy was ended in 1973.
The term "wog" (Westernized Oriental Gentleman) referred to non
European immigrants while "skippies" described Anglo-Saxons.
(SFC, 5/9/00, p.A14)
1902 In Australia various
governments met at Corowa on the Murray River, to try to secure their
water supply.
(Econ, 2/23/08, p.60)
1904 The first regional art
gallery in New South Wales was built at Broken Hill.
(Hem., 2/97, p.94)
1906 Sep 1, Papua was placed under
Australian administration.
(SC, 9/1/02)
1908 Aug 20, The American Great
White Fleet arrived in Sydney, Australia, to a warm welcome.
(HN, 8/20/98)
1908 Dec 26, Jack Johnson
(1878-1946) of Texas knocked out Tommy Burns in Australia to become the
1st black world heavyweight boxing champion. He was not officially
given the title until 1910 when he beat Jim Jeffries in Las Vegas. In
1913 Johnson fled the US because of trumped up charges of violating the
Mann Act's stipulations against transporting white women across state
lines for prostitution. Johnson held the title until 1915. In 1920 he
returned to the US, was arrested and served a one year sentence in
Leavenworth in Kansas, where he was appointed athletic director of the
prison.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Johnson_(boxer))(ON, 4/09, p.7)
1909 Feb 17, Marjorie Lawrence,
soprano (Venus-Tannhauser), was born in Australia.
(MC, 2/17/02)
1909 Dec 5, George Taylor made the
first manned glider flight in Australia in a glider that he designed
himself.
(HN, 12/5/98)
1910 Australia’s government began
removing Aboriginal children from their families, in what was
considered to be best for the children. The race was later estimated to
number about 60,000 nationally at this time, and was said to be doomed
to extinction. The policy continued into the 1970s. As many as 100,000
children were seized from their parents creating what was later called
the "stolen generation."
(SFC, 5/29/97, p.A10)(SFC, 5/26/00, p.A20)(AP,
1/30/08)
1911 The Australian federal
government took control of the Northern Territory as part of a deal to
build a railway linking Adelaide to Darwin.
(Econ, 8/9/03, p.36)
1912 May 28, Patrick White,
Australian writer (The Tree of Man, The Eye of the Storm), was born.
(HN, 5/28/01)
1912 The Vlaming Head Lighthouse
was built on the North West Cape.
(SFEC, 11/14/99, p.T4)
1914 Nov 9, The Australian light
cruiser HMAS Sydney wrecked the German cruiser Emden, forcing her to
beach on a reef on North Keeling Island in the Indian Ocean.
(HN, 11/9/99)
1915 Apr 25, Australian and New
Zealand troops landed at Gallipoli in Turkey in hopes of attacking the
Central Powers from below. Allied soldiers, ANZAC, invaded the
Gallipoli Peninsula in Turkey in an unsuccessful attempt to take the
Ottoman Turkish Empire out of the war. The allies were defeated in one
of the deadliest battles of the war.
(AP, 4/25/97)(SFC, 2/18/98, p.A18)(HN, 4/25/99)
1915 Aug 7, In the assault up
Russell's Top at Gallipoli 232 Australians died.
(MC, 8/7/02)
1915 Dec 18, In a single night,
about 20,000 Australian and New Zealand troops slipped away from
Gallipoli, undetected by the Turks defending the peninsula.
(HN, 12/18/98)
1916 Apr 26, Morris L. West,
novelist (Shoes of the Fisherman), was born in Australia.
(MC, 4/26/02)
1918 Mar 23, Alick Wickham dove
200' into Australia's Yarra River.
(SS, 3/23/02)
1918 The last quartz mines closed
in Ballarat.
(SFEC, 9/10/00, p.T9)
1919 Dec 10, Captain Ross Smith
became the first person to fly 11,500 miles from England to Australia.
(HN, 12/10/98)
1920 Mar 16, Leo McKern, actor
(Blue Lagoon, Help, Mouse that Roared, Rumpole of the Bailey), was born
in Sydney, Australia.
(MC, 3/16/02)
1920 Nov 3, Oodgeroo Noonuccal
[Kath Walker], Australian Aboriginal poet, was born.
(HN, 11/3/00)
1920 Australia-based Qantas
Airlines was founded as Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial
Services Ltd. Regular passenger service began in 1922.
(AP, 7/25/08)(http://airlines.ws/qantas.htm)
1921 Big Flat, Australia, near
Coober Pedy. Opals were discovered. Today 70% of the local people
(3,500) live underground in former mines and specially dug caves since
it gets so hot in the summer (130 degrees). Coober Pedy is
derived from the aboriginal term "kupa piti," which means white man’s
hole.
(WSJ, 6/12/95, p.A-12)
1922 Nov 2, Australian Qantas
airways began service.
(MC, 11/2/01)
1922 Vegemite, a salty, slightly
bitter spread made from brewer's yeast, was introduced by Australian
chemist Cyril Callister for the Fred Walker Cheese Company in
Melbourne. The company wanted a Vitamin B-rich spread that could
compete with Britain's popular Marmite. The name came in a 1923
national poll. In 2009 Kraft Foods Australia announced that a creamier
variation of Vegemite would be on store shelves July 5 alongside the
original.
(AP, 6/15/09)
1922 Reginald Arthur Borstel
(b.1875), Australian artist, died. He was known for his ship portraits.
(SSFC, 3/27/05, p.B5)
1922 Henry Lawson (b.1867),
Australian poet, died.
(NG, 8/04, p.1)
1922 In Australia Colin Campbell
Ross was hanged for raping and murdering Alma Tirtschke (12) and
dumping her body in an alley in 1921. In 2008 the city of Melbourne
posthumously pardoned him for the crime after new tests found crucial
evidence against him was flawed.
(Reuters, 5/27/08)
1926 Nov 7, Joan Sutherland,
operatic singer, was born in Sydney, Australia. She retired in 1990 and
in 1998 published her autobiography.
(WSJ, 3/25/98, p.A20)(HN, 11/7/98)(MC, 11/7/01)
1927 A new law prohibited hunters
from killing koalas for their pelts.
(SFC, 7/29/00, p.E3)
1928 Feb 7, Australian Bert
Hinkler took off from London in a two-seat Avro 581E Avian biplane on
the first leg of his solo flight from England to Australia.
(HNQ, 2/7/01)
1928 Feb 22, Australian Bert
Hinkler ended his 11,250-mile adventure in Darwin, Australia, after
flying 128 hours in less than 16 days. The unassuming Hinkler's
grueling flight was little noted by the press until he reached India,
then the world press got caught up in the drama of another "Lone Eagle"
performance so soon after Charles A. Lindbergh's transatlantic flight.
As he plotted a course across Asia and the Timor Sea using a London
Times atlas as his navigational chart, a newspaper editor dubbed him
"Hustling Hinkler," a nickname later immortalized by the American Tin
Pan Alley hit song, "Hustling Hinkler Up in the Sky."
(HNPD, 2/7/99)
1928 Jun 9, Charles
Kingsford-Smith & Charles Ulm were the 1st to fly across the
Pacific when they ended their flight from California to Brisbane,
Australia.
(NPub, 2002, p.11)
1928 Capt. Harry Lyon navigated
the southern Cross on its epic flight from San Francisco Bay to
Australia.
(SFC, 8/15/03, p.E9)
1928 The Bathers Pavilion
Restaurant opened on Sydney’s Balmoral Beach.
(SFEC, 1/4/98, p.T5)
1929 Aug 6, The 1,360 km. Ghan
rail line reached Alice Springs. It was named after Afghan camel
drivers who predated the railway. In 2004 service was extended to
Darwin.
(SFEC, 10/10/99, p.T9)(SSFC, 10/26/03, p.C2)
1930 Apr 29, Telephone connection
England-Australia went into service.
(MC, 4/29/02)
1930 May 24, Amy Johnson became
the first woman to fly from England to Australia.
(HN, 5/24/98)
1930 Oct 8, Paul Hogan, Australian
actor (Crocodile Dundee, Lightning Jack), was born.
(MC, 10/8/01)
1931 Feb 23, Nellie Melba (Helen
Mitchell), Australian soprano, died.
(MC, 2/23/02)
1931 Mar 11, Rupert Murdoch, media
baron, was born in Melbourne, Australia.
(WSJ, 6/5/07,
p.A20)(www.filmreference.com/film/22/Rupert-Murdoch.html)
1931 Jul 28, Hubert Wilkins,
Australian explorer, set out from England for Norway aboard the
submarine Nautilus. The ship was the former US WW I vessel O-12.
Wilkins planned to reach the North Pole but failed. [see Aug 28]
(ON, 1/02, p.8)
1931 Arnhem Land in northern
Australia was made an Aboriginal reserve.
(SFEC, 2/28/99, p.T1)
1931 The last lesser bilby
(Macrotis leucura), a small marsupial with rabbit-like ears, was
collected. It had been widespread in Australia’s sand dune deserts and
Aborigines reported that a few survived into the 1960’s.
(Nat. Hist., 4/96, p.17)
1932 Mar 19, Sydney Harbor Bridge,
Australia, officially opened.
(AP, 3/19/03)
1932 Dec 19, The British
Broadcasting Corp. began transmitting overseas with its "Empire
Service" to Australia.
(AP, 12/19/97)
1932 Sydney’s Harbor Bridge
between north and south Sydney was completed after 10 years. It was
supposed to be the world's longest single-span bridge on completion,
but New York’s Bayonne Bridge beat it by 25 inches.
(SFEC, 1/4/98, p.T1)(USAT, 9/17/99, p.1D)(SFEC,
9/10/00, p.T12)
1932 Phar Lap, an Australian race
horse, took ill and died after being taken to the United States. The
giant New Zealand-born chestnut became an icon in Australia during the
Great Depression, winning 37 of his 51 races, including one Melbourne
Cup in 1930 and two Cox Plates in 1930 and 1931. In 2008 tests proved
that Phar Lap was poisoned by arsenic.
(AFP, 6/19/08)
1933 Sep 14, Zoe Caldwell, actress
(Prime of Miss Jean Brodie), was born in Australia. In 2001 Caldwell
authored “I Will Be Cleopatra: An Actress’s Journey.”
(www.infoplease.com)(SSFC, 12/16/01, p.M4)
1935 In Australia cane toads from
Hawaii were introduced to wipe out beetles that were devastating
Queensland's sugar cane industry. The beetles survived and the toads
became a pest and a threat to the native quolls, small spotted
marsupials. On march 28, 2009, a festive mass killing of the creatures
began as “Toad Day Out.” The corpses were turned into fertilizer for
the very farmers who've battled the pests for years.
(Econ, 7/12/03, p.38)(SFC, 6/10/06, p.B8)(AP,
3/26/09)
1935 A 2nd cyclone again killed
some 140 oyster crewmen in Broome, Australia. [see 1887]
(NG, 11/04, p.98)
1937 In Australia the assimilation
of mixed-blood Aborigines, by force if necessary, was adopted as
official policy at a meeting of federal and state officials, while
Aborigines living a "tribal life" are to stay on reserves.
(AP, 1/30/08)
1938 Jul 28, Robert Hughes
[Studley Forrest], writer, critic, was born in Australia.
(SC, 7/28/02)
1938 Xavier Herbert authored
“Capricornia,” a sweeping novel of social relations between Australia’s
white majority and indigenous aboriginals in the far north. The novel
became a classic example of well-intentioned social protest.
(Econ, 3/3/07, p.89)
1939 Jan 29, Germaine Greer,
feminist, author (Female Eunuch), was born in Melbourne, Australia.
(MC, 1/29/02)
1939 Sep 3, Britain and France
declared war on Germany, two days after the Nazi invasion of Poland.
After Germany ignored Great Britain's ultimatum to stop the invasion of
Poland, Great Britain declares war on Germany, marking the beginning of
World War II in Europe. France follows 6 hours later quickly joined by
Australia, NZ, South Africa & Canada.
(AP, 9/3/97)(HN, 9/3/98)(MC, 9/3/01)
1939 Australia set up a wheat
board for growers to market their crops collectively and get better
prices. The AWB was privatized in 1999 and later quoted on the stock
market.
(Econ, 7/30/05, p.59)
1940 Jul 1, Australia refused
entry to Dutch Jewish refugees.
(MC, 7/1/02)
1940 Aug 16, Bruce Beresford,
Australian film director, was born. His films include "Breaker Morant"
and "Driving Miss Daisy."
(HN, 8/16/00)
1940 Aug 31, Jack Thompson of
Australia, actor (Breaker Morant), was born.
(YN, 8/31/99)
1940 Nov 8, The MV City of
Rayville, an American freighter carrying a cargo of lead, wool and
copper from Australia to New York, sank in the Bass Strait after
striking a German mine, a year before the United States entered the
war. One seaman drowned while trying to recover personal items from the
sinking vessel but 37 other crew survived. In 2009 the wreck was found
off of Australia’s southeastern coast.
(AP, 4/1/09)
1941 Jan 21, Australia &
Britain attacked Tobruk, Libya.
(MC, 1/21/02)
1941 Jan 22, British and
Australian troops captured Tobruk from Italians.
(MC, 1/22/02)
1941 Feb 5, Andrew Barton "Banjo"
Paterson (b.1864), Australian poet and journalist, died. He is best
known for his song “Waltzing Matilda.”
(www.whatsthenumber.com/oz/voice/writers/paterson0.htm)(NG, 8/04, p.29)
1941 Nov 19, The ship HMAS Sydney
was sunk off the west coast of Australia in a battle with the German
raider Kormoran, with the loss of all 645 on board. The Kormoran also
sank, but 318 of the German vessel's crew of 397 were rescued. The
9,500 ton Kormoran had been disguised as a Dutch merchant ship when it
opened fire on the Sydney. The government banned all media from
reporting the news for 12 days as it scrambled to explain what
happened. In March, 2008, the wrecks of the Kormoran and the Sydney
were found. In 2009 a military inquiry said Navy Capt. Joseph Burnett
made "errors of judgment" in the tragedy.
(AFP, 8/10/07)(AP, 3/16/08)(Reuters, 4/8/08)(AP,
11/19/08)(AP, 8/12/09)
1941 Dec 7, Australian bombers
landed on Timor and Ambon.
(MC, 12/7/01)
1942 Feb 19, Port Darwin, on the
northern coast of Australia, was bombed by about 150 Japanese
warplanes; at least 243 people were killed. General George C. Kenney,
who pioneered aerial warfare strategy and tactics in the Pacific
theater, ordered 3,000 parafrag bombs to be sent to Australia, where he
thought they might come in handy against the Japanese. Darwin was
virtually leveled by 64 bombing raids over 21 months.
(HN, 2/19/98)(SFEC, 9/10/00, p.T10)(AP, 2/19/08)
1942 May 31, In Australia 3 midget
submarines slipped into the Sidney Harbor after being launched from a
fleet of five larger Japanese submarines offshore. Two were spotted and
attacked, leading the two-man crews to commit suicide. A 3rd midget
submarine managed to fire two torpedoes at the US heavy cruiser USS
Chicago, one of which exploded beneath an Australian depot ship HMAS
Kuttabul, killing 21 sailors. In 2006 the M24 midget submarine was
found by scuba divers in deep waters off the coast. In 2007 the
Australian government decided to leave the M24 and its 2 Japanese
sailors undisturbed on the seabed.
(AFP, 11/24/06)(AFP, 5/23/07)
1942 Oct 26, In the 4th day of the
battle at El Alamein (Egypt) the Australians made a breakthrough.
(MC, 10/26/01)
1942 Oct 30, On the 8th day of
battle at El Alamein a new Australian assault began.
(MC, 10/30/01)
1943 Mar 2, The battle of the
Bismarck Sea began. US and Australian warplanes were able to inflict
heavy damage on a Japanese convoy.
(AP, 3/2/07)
1943 Mar 3, US defeated Japan in
the Battle of Bismarck Sea.
(SC, 3/3/02)
1943 May 7, Peter Carey,
Australian writer (Illywhacker, Oscar and Lucinda), was born.
(HN, 5/7/02)
1943 Jun 14, A US Army B-17 took
off from Mackay, Australia, and crashed in fog at nearby Bakers Creek,
killing 40 of the 41 servicemen crammed into the bomb bay and crannies
of the aircraft. Wartime censorship restrictions suppressed news of the
crash.
(AP, 6/14/03)
1943 A draught occurred in the
outback of Western Australia.
(NH, 2/97, p.12)
1944 Jan 18, Paul Keating was born.
(WP, 6/29/96, p.A20)
1944 Sep 12, A US submarine patrol
that included the USS Pampanito, the Growler and the Sealion II, came
upon a Japanese convoy carrying war material. The Japanese transport
Kachidoki Maru, carrying over 900 British soldier, was sunk by the
Pampanito. Much of the convoy was sunk including most of some 2,000
Allied prisoners of war. The subs after chasing stragglers of the
convoy returned to find 159 British and Australian survivors clinging
to wreckage [see Sep 14]. Some 1000 POWs from Australia were on the
Japanese freighter Enoura Maru sunk by the USS Sealion. Alistair
Urquhart of Scotland, a prisoner on the Kachidoki Maru, was picked up 5
days later by a Japanese whaling ship and taken to Japan, where he was
forced to work in a coal mine. Kachidoki Maru had been captured earlier
in the war as the President Harrison home ported in SF. The Pampanito
was later berthed as a visitor attraction in SF. In 2008 Urquhart (89)
visited the Pampanito.
(SFC, 5/27/97, p.A17)(SFC,12/5/97, p.C3)(SFC,
9/17/08, p.B1)
1944 Sep 14, The submarine USS
Pampanito picked up 73 allied prisoners left adrift following the Sep
12 submarine attack on a Japanese convoy that included the transport
ship Rakuyo Maru.
(SFC, 3/18/09, p.B2)
1945 Australian soldier Edward
Kenna (d.2009 at 90) single-handedly stormed a Japanese machine-gun
nest at Wewak, New Guinea, firing a Bren gun from his hip with enemy
bullets passing under his arms as he advanced. Kenna was awarded a
Victoria Cross for his valor.
(AFP, 7/9/09)
1947 Joan Sutherland made her
operatic debut in Sydney.
(WSJ, 3/25/98, p.A20)
1951 Jul 31, Evonne Goolagong,
Australian tennis player and first aborigine in an international sport,
was born.
(HN, 7/31/98)
1952 Oct 3, The British detonated
their 1st atomic bomb, a 25-kiloton device, in the Monte Bello Islands
off Australia. In 1998 a visit to the islands was limited to one hour
due to lingering radiation.
(SFC, 1/2/99, p.A14)(SFC, 3/13/02, p.A26)(AP,
10/3/08)
1952 In Australia Rupert Murdoch
(21) inherited 2 fledgling newspapers in Adelaide. By 2003 his empire
generated $17 billion a year in revenues.
(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R42)(Econ, 8/30/03, p.61)
1953 May 25, Jane Priest, Prince
Charles' lover, was born in Perth, Australia.
(SC, 5/25/02)
1954 Feb 3, Millions greeted Queen
Elizabeth in Sydney on her first royal trip to Australia.
(HN, 2/3/99)
1954 Sep 8, SEATO (Southeast Asia
Treaty Organization), a sister organization to NATO, was created under
the Manila Pact by the Southeast Asia Collective Defense Treaty, to
stop communist spread in Southeast Asia (Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos).
The United States, Australia, France, Great Britain, New Zealand, the
Philippines, Pakistan, and Thailand signed the mutual defense treaty.
SEATO dissolved in 1977.
(HNQ, 4/2/01)(http://tinyurl.com/hpawj)
1954 In Australia Evdokia Petrov
(d.2002), Soviet Union spy, was abducted by Soviet agents after she and
her husband Vladimir Petrov (d.1991), the third secretary at the Soviet
embassy in Australia, defected. Australian police snatched her back as
her plane stopped for fuel in Darwin.
(AP, 7/26/02)
1956 Nov 22, Melbourne opened the
16th Olympiad. 65 countries and 4,276 athletes competed. Closing
ceremonies were held on Dec 8. The Netherlands and Spain withdrew from
the summer Olympics in support of Hungary following Russia’s invasion.
45 athletes from Hungary defected during the games. Egypt, Lebanon and
Iraq boycotted the games in protest over British and French actions
over the Suez Canal. China boycotted protesting the inclusion of
athletes from Taiwan.
(SFEC, 9/10/00, p.T8)(WSJ, 9/15/00, p.A1)(WSJ,
4/12/08, p.R2)
1958 Jun 19, Entrepreneurs Richard
Knerr and Arthur Melin sought a trademark for a plastic cylinder based
on a similar toy in Australia. Wham-O began selling the Hula Hoop
following a demonstration of a rattan hoop imported from Australia.
After one year teenagers in the US purchased some 100 million hoops at
a suggested retail price of $1.98.
(SFC, 7/1/02, p.B5)(SFC, 6/19/08, p.C3)
1958 Oct 1, Britain transferred
Christmas Island (south of Java) to Australia.
(MC, 10/1/01)
1958 Nov 30, Australian explorer
Sir Hubert Wilkins (70) died. In 1959 the USS Skate became the 1st
submarine to surface at the North Pole and the ships crew held a
funeral service and scattered the ashes of Wilkins (d.1958), who had
attempted the feat in 1931.
(ON, 1/02, p.9)
1958 Slim Dusty (1927-2003),
Australian country music singer, made a hit with the song "A Pub With
No Beer."
(SFC, 9/20/03, p.A21)
1959 Aug 31, Australia defeated
the US for tennis' Davis Cup.
(YN, 8/31/99)
1961 Feb 20, Percy Aldridge
Grainger (78), Australian-US composer, pianist, died.
(MC, 2/20/02)
1961 In Australia the Packer
family bought The Bulletin magazine (1880-2008), scrapped its racist
masthead ("Australia for the White Man"), and entered a period of
strong growth, high circulation and influence.
(AP, 1/24/08)
1962 Australia granted Aborigines
the right to vote.
(Econ, 5/7/05, Survey p.14)
1963 Sep 18, The USSR ordered 58.5
million barrels of cereal from Australia.
(MC, 9/18/01)
1964 Nov 10, Australia began a
draft to fulfill its commitment in Vietnam.
(HN, 11/10/98)
1965 Apr 29, Australian government
announced it would send troops to Vietnam.
(MC, 4/29/02)
1966 Mar 8, Australia announced
that it would triple the number of troops in Vietnam.
(HN, 3/8/98)
1966 Mar 27, Anti-Vietnam war
demonstrations took place in US, Europe and Australia.
(MC, 3/27/02)
1966 Aug 18, Australians bloodily
repulsed a Viet Cong attack at Long Tan, South Vietnam.
(HN, 8/18/98)
1967 Feb 3, Ronald Ryan (b.1925)
was the last person executed in Australia.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Ryan)
1967 May 27, Australians approved
a referendum to amend the constitution to allow the federal government
to make laws for indigenous Australians and to include them in the
national census. The referendum became law on August 10.
(Econ, 6/2/07,
p.43)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_referendum,_1967_(Aboriginals))
1967 Dec 17, Australia’s PM Harold
Holt (59) plunged into the surf at Victoria during a stroll on the
beach and vanished. In 2005 a coroner officially confirmed that Holt
had drowned.
(SFEM, 10/11/98, p.26)(AP, 9/2/05)
1967 Exmouth was founded near the
tip of the North West Cape in western Australia as a support base for a
US Naval Communications Station.
(SFEC, 11/14/99, p.T1)
1967 Australia pressured
mining-company officials to develop the Panguna mine on Bougainville,
Papua New Guinea, in the face of local opposition. Cabinet minutes of
this were not declassified until 1998.
(WSJ, 3/18/98, p.A14)
1969 Jun 2, Australian aircraft
carrier Melbourne sliced the destroyer USS Frank E. Evans in half
during NATO maneuvers off the shore of South Vietnam. 74 US sailors
were killed.
(HN, 6/2/98)(SFC, 6/19/08, p.B5)
1969 The Indian Pacific Railway
was completed with a new standard gauge from Sydney to Perth, 2,720
miles. Until this time different rail lines employed different gauges.
(SFEM, 10/11/98, p.29)
1969 At their peak in 1969, 68,889
combat troops from Australia, New Zealand, the Republic of Korea,
Thailand and the Philippines were deployed in Vietnam.
(HNQ, 4/14/00)
1969 Filippo Casella began making
wine in Australia after having moved from Italy. Casella Wines
introduced their Yellow Tail brand in 2001.
(SFC, 1/5/06, p.F2)
1970 Apr 29, In Australia a large
wooden log was placed on the winding track in front of a royal train
carrying Queen Elizabeth and her husband Prince Philip to the town of
Orange. The train did not derail as it was traveling too slowly. The
incident was only revealed in 2009 by a retired detective.
(AFP, 1/28/09)
1970 Jul 2, Jessie Street
(b.1889), Australian civil rights activist, died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jessie_Street)
1970 Nov 3, An Australian bomber
crashed in Vietnam near the Laos border. The bodies of Flying Officer
Michael Herbert (24) and navigator, Pilot Officer Robert Carver (24),
were listed as missing until their remains were discovered in 2009.
They were the last of Australia’s Vietnam era MIAs.
(AP, 7/30/09)
1970 Germaine Greer (b.1939),
Australian academic writer, published "The Female Eunuch." The work
insisted on women's right to free sexuality and vaginal pleasure. In
1999 Christine Wallace published the biography: "Germaine Greer:
Untamed Shrew."
(SFEC, 7/4/99, BR
p.5)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germaine_Greer)
1970 The film "Walkabout" by
Nicolas Roeg was produced. It was about the Australian aborigines.
(SFC, 12/29/96, DB p.8)
1970 In Australia the last laws
granting authorities wide powers to take Aboriginal children away from
their families were abolished. Many Aborigines said statistics show the
government is still far more likely to take Aboriginal children into
foster care for reasons such as abuse than white children. Estimates
put the number of children taken since 1910 at 55,000.
(AP, 1/30/08)(Econ, 2/2/08, p.50)
1970 Leonard Casley, a wheat
farmer in Western Australia, declared his property independent and
styled himself as Prince Leonard I.
(Econ, 12/24/05, p.85)
1970-1979 In the 1970s the Australian government took
over the Ghan rail line, running from Adelaide to Alice Springs, and
upgraded the tracks to standard gauge. The last Ghan steam engine was
replaced in 1982.
(SFEC, 10/10/99, p.T9)
1971 Jun 13, The Broderick
nonuplets were born in Sydney, Australia. None of the five boys (two
stillborn) and four girls live for more than six days.
(www.twinstuff.com/thisdate.htm)
1971 Jul 18, New Zealand and
Australia announced they would pull their troops out of Vietnam.
(HN, 7/18/98)
1971 Australia joined with New
Zealand and 14 independent of self-governing island nations to form the
South Pacific Forum. The name was changed in 2000 to Pacific Islands
Forum. Member states include: Australia, the Cook Islands, the
Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, Kiribati, the Marshall Islands,
Nauru, New Zealand, Niue, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, the Solomon
Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, and Vanuatu. Since 2006, associate members
territories are New Caledonia and French Polynesia.
(Econ, 10/20/07,
p.61)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Islands_Forum)
1971 Hunting crocodiles, aka
"salties," was banned in the Northern Territory.
(WSJ, 1/24/00, p.A1)
1972 Dec 2, In Australia Neville
Bonner (1922-1999) became the first Aborigine to be elected to the
federal Parliament. In 1971 he became the first Aboriginal person to
sit in the Commonwealth parliament when he was chosen to fill a vacancy
in the Senate caused by the resignation of a Liberal senator for
Queensland.
(SFC, 2/6/99,
p.A21)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_federal_election,_1972)
1972 Dec 5, Gough Whitlam, labor
leader, became prime minister of Australia. He served to Nov 11, 1975.
(http://tinyurl.com/cr24r)
1972 Dec 15, The Commonwealth of
Australia ordered equal pay for women.
(HN, 12/15/98)(http://tinyurl.com/5ry8re)
1973 May 12, In Australia the
northeast town of Nimbin was on the verge of closing when a group of
university students held the Aquarius hippy festival in a nearby
paddock. Many hippies put down roots and build an alternate culture. By
2007 Nimbin's marijuana smoking reputation had become global with
busloads of young foreign tourists.
(Reuters,
4/19/07)(www.milesago.com/Festivals/aquarius73.htm)
1973 Sep 18, Australia abolished
the death penalty.
(SFC, 1/9/02, p.A8)(http://tinyurl.com/6bbah5)
1973 Sep 21, The painting "Blue
Poles" by Jackson Pollock (1912-1956) sold for $2,000,000 to the
Australian National Gallery.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_in_Australia)
1973 Oct 20, Queen Elizabeth II
opened the Sydney Opera House built on Bennelong Point. It was designed
by Danish architect Joern Utzon and cost 102 million Australian
dollars, 14 times the original estimate. Utzon left the project in
1966. In 2000 Utzon was named consulting architect and in 2003 was
called back to redo the interiors.
(SFEC, 1/4/98, p.T4)(SFEC, 9/10/00, p.T12)(WSJ,
10/2/03, p.D10)(Econ, 7/15/06, p.83)
1973 Oct, Tony and Maureen
Wheeler produced the first Lonely Planet travel book, "Across Asia on
the Cheep," from a kitchen table in Australia. By 2002 it had 600
titles in print.
(SFEC, 8/29/99, p.T2)(SSFC, 1/18/04, p.C3)
1973 In Australia the government
eliminated its White Australia Policy, an immigration policy which
favored applicants from certain countries.
(SFC, 5/9/97,
p.E3)(www.multiculturalaustralia.edu.au/hotwords/hottext.php?id=78)
1974 May 20, Ian Fairweather
(b.1891), Scotland-born Australian artist, died. He lived for much of
his life as a recluse on Bribie Island, north of Brisbane. In Murray
Bail authored “Fairweather,” a biography with color reproductions. The
book was expanded in 2009.
(Econ, 4/18/09,
p.91)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Fairweather)
1974 Dec 25, The category 4
Cyclone Tracy reduced 90% of Darwin, Australia, to rubble. 65 people
died including 49 in the city and 16 at sea.
(SFEC, 9/10/00,
p.T10)(www.emergency-management.net/cyclone.htm)
1975 Jun 21, The West Indies,
captained by Clive Lloyd won the first World Cup Cricket series,
beating Australia by 17 runs at Lords.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Cricket_World_Cup)
1975 Oct 16, In East Timor five
Australian journalists were killed when Indonesian troops overran the
border town of Balibo. A 6th died weeks later when Jakarta launched a
full-scale assault on Dili. In 2009 the film “Balibo,” by Australian
director Rob Connolly, depicted the killings.
(AP,
7/22/09)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balibo_Five)
1975 Nov 11, Sir John Kerr,
Australia’s governor-general, fired PM Edward Gough Whitlam. He was the
1st elected PM removed in 200 years.
(SFC, 11/2/99, p.A14)(http://whitlamdismissal.com/)
1975 The mystery film "Picnic at
Hanging Rock" starred Rachel Roberts and Dominic Guard and was directed
by Peter Weir. It was set in 1900 in Australia.
(SFC, 7/1/98, p.E4)
1976 May 4, Australian PM Malcolm
Fraser announced that "Waltzing Matilda" would serve as his country's
national anthem at the upcoming Olympic Games.
(AP, 5/4/06)
1976 Australia’s federal
government passed legislation granting Aboriginal ownership to large
parts of the Northern Territory, kicking off a new movement to reclaim
traditional lands.
(AP, 1/30/08)
1976 Australian athletes won 5
medals, none of them gold, in the Montreal Olympics.
(WSJ, 9/21/00, p.A8)
1976 Dorothy Schiff (1903-1989)
sold the New York Post, founded in 1801, to Rupert Murdoch, Australian
media tycoon, for $30 million.
(WSJ, 4/7/07, p.P10)(www.ketupa.net/murdoch2.htm)
1977 Dec 18, Cyril Ritchard
(b.1897), Australia-born actor, died. He was awarded a Tony in 1955 for
Supporting Actor in the musical “Peter Pan.”
(www.imdb.com/name/nm0728509/bio)
1977 The rock band INXS was formed
in Perth. Lead singer Michael Hutchence committed suicide in 1997 at a
Sydney hotel.
(SFC,11/24/97, p.A21)
1978 Control of the Cocos Islands
was ceded to Australia by a descendent of the Clunies-Ross family,
which settled the Indian Ocean coral atolls in 1827.
(Econ, 12/24/05, p.84)
1979 Jul 11, The abandoned 78-ton
US space station Skylab made a spectacular return to Earth, burning up
in the atmosphere and showering debris over the Indian Ocean and
Western Australia. Solar storms were blamed for Skylab’s premature fall
back.
(AP, 7/11/97)(SFC, 6/3/00, p.A6)(SFC, 3/7/06, p.A5)
1979 The Australian film "Breaker
Morant" was directed by Bruce Beresford.
(SFEC,12/21/97, DB p.51)
1979 The Australian film "Mad Max"
starred Mel Gibson and was directed by George Miller. It was filmed
near Broken Hill in New South Wales.
(Hem., 2/97, p.91)(SFEC, 9/24/00, DBp.59)
1979 The Australian film "My
Brilliant Career" starred Judy Davis and Sam Neill. It was directed by
Gillian Armstrong.
(SFEC, 5/10/98, Par p.18)(SFEC, 9/24/00, DBp.59)
1979 Dr. J. Robert Warren first
observed an apparent bacterium in the lower part of stomach biopsies.
In 1982 Dr. Barry Marshall managed to grow the slow-growing
Helicobacter pylori bacterium in a culture. In 2005 the Australian
researchers won a Nobel Prize for their work.
(SFC, 8/7/97, p.A11)
1980 Aug 17, Lindy Chamberlain
claimed that her baby, Azaria, was dragged away from a family campsite
on Fraser Island, Australia, by a dingo. The body was never found and
Chamberlain was convicted of murder. She was released after 4 years and
the Meryl Streep film "A Cry in the Dark" was based on her story.
(SFC, 4/10/98, p.A14)(AFP, 10/6/04)
1981 The Australian film
"Gallipoli" was directed by Peter Weir (b.1944).
(SFEC,12/21/97, DB p.51)
1981 The film "Mad Max II" with
Mel Gibson was filmed near Broken Hill in New South Wales, Australia.
(Hem., 2/97, p.91)
1982 Australian Thomas Keneally
authored "Schindler's List." He received his information from Leopold
Page (d.2001 at 87), No. 173 on Schindler’s list. "Schindler's List,"
Steven Spielberg's drama about the Holocaust, won Golden Globes for
best dramatic picture and best director in 1994.
(AP, 1/22/99)(SFC, 3/14/01, p.C2)
c1982 Two Australian doctors,
Barry Marshall and Robin Warren, discovered Helicobacter pylori, a
bacterium that was later shone to cause stomach ulcers.
(SFC, 8/7/97, p.A11)
1983 Jul, The Tuna Task Force
(TTF) issued a draft plan of management. It contained 14
recommendations, the most important of which include the use of
catch-quotas, minimum limits on fish-size, limited-entry and further
limits on purse-seine operations. It was proposed that the plan should
come into effect at the beginning of the 1983-84 fishing season (on 1
October 1993). Because of difficulties in reaching agreement on all
aspects, this target was not achieved. Australia, New Zealand and
Iceland pioneered Individual Transferable Quotas (ITQs) for commercial
fisheries.
(http://www.fao.org/DOCREP/005/Y2684E/y2684e20.htm)(Econ, 9/20/08, p.97)
1983 Oct, In Australia Edwina
Boyle disappeared from her Melbourne suburb home. Her husband Frederick
William Boyle (35) of Carrum Downs, dismembered her, and hid her body
in a 44-gallon drum. In 2006 his son-in-law opened the drum a found her
remains. A post-mortem showed she died of a bullet wound to the head.
In 2008 Boyle was convicted of murder.
(AFP, 1/31/08)(Reuters, 2/9/08)
1983 Dec 12, Australia allowed its
dollar to float.
(http://intl.econ.cuhk.edu.hk/exchange_rate_regime/index.php?cid=28)
1983 The Liberty lost the America
Cup to the Australia II. In 1851 the Schooner America outraced the
Aurora off the English coast to win a trophy that became known as the
America’s Cup. For 132 years the New York Yacht Club had defeated all
challengers to retain the prestigious America’s Cup, the record for the
longest winning streak in sports history.
(AP, 8/22/97)(SFEC, 10/1/00, p.T4)(HNQ, 1/1/03)
1983 Dame Roma Mitchell, retired
from the South Australia state Supreme Court after serving 18 years.
(SFC, 3/6/00, p.A23)
1983 Pastor Brian Houston founded
his Hillsong congregation in Sidney, Australia. The 45-member
congregation grew to 15,000 in 2005. Houston was the author of the book
“You Need More Money.”
(Econ, 5/7/05, Survey p.11)
1984 Mar 28, Zoe, the 1st
frozen-embryo child, was born in Melbourne, Australia. Scientists
reported the birth 2 weeks later.
(www.breedingbetterdogs.com/aging.html)
1984 Jul, In Australia Margaret
Tapp was strangled and her daughter Seana raped and later killed. In
2008 Melbourne police withdrew charges against Russell John Gesah,
accused in the murders, after DNA evidence used against him was found
to have been taken elsewhere and mistakenly tested with samples from
the Tapp murder scene.
(Reuters, 8/7/08)
1985 Apr 12, In Australia the
charred remains of Sandra White (34) were found in rural Victoria. In
2009 Steven Hutton (54) was later accused of strangling her and setting
her on fire. He is alleged to have confessed to the killing after being
detained in a London psychiatric hospital following a road accident in
1990. In 2009 he was set to be extradited from Britain.
(AFP, 3/20/09)
1985 Oct 15, Shelley Taylor of
Australia made the fastest swim ever around Manhattan Island, doing it
in 6 hours 12 minutes 29 seconds.
(www.scopesys.com/cgi-bin/today2.cgi?askmonth=10&askday=15)
1986 In Australia the
left-of-center Labor government began to implement an innovative
retirement system. It was based primarily on mandatory private savings
in plans called "superannuation funds."
(WSJ, 12/31/97,
p.A10)(www.heritage.org/Research/SocialSecurity/BG1149.cfm)
1987 Jul 11, Australian Prime
Minister Bob Hawke won a third consecutive term, becoming the first
Labor Party leader in the country's history to be elected to three
straight terms in office.
(AP, 7/11/97)
1987 Nov 11, Vincent Van Gogh’s
painting "Irises" was bought from the estate of Joan Whitney Payson by
Alan Bond, an Australian businessman, for $53.9 million at Sotheby’s in
New York.
(HN, 11/11/98)(Econ, 11/18/06, p.79)
1987 Queensland, Australia, began
using a random placement system of cameras to help control traffic.
(Econ, 6/2/07, p.62)
1988 Jan 26, Australians
celebrated the 200th anniversary of their country as a grand parade of
tall ships sailed in Sydney Harbor, re-enacting the voyage of the first
European settlers.
(AP, 1/26/98)
1988 Apr 30, World Exposition,
Expo 88 opened in Brisbane, Australia.
(http://expomuseum.com/1988/)
1988 The Australian film “The
Dunera Boys” was based on the story of 2,000 Jews who fled to England
from Austria Germany in 1940 and were put on the passenger ship Dunera
bound for Australia, where they were interned in camps until 1942.
(SFC, 10/8/05, p.B5)
1988 The film "Outback Bound" was
made near Broken Hill in New South Wales, Australia.
(Hem., 2/97, p.92)
1988 The Australian Capital
Territory (ACT), a region comprising Canberra, gained self-government.
(Econ, 6/17/06, p.50)
1988 Australia pioneered the use
of plastic money.
(Econ, 2/5/05, p.71)
1988 In Australia the
Murray-Darling Basin Commission was established to regulate water use
in the river system. In 2003 the mouth at Adelaide dried up for a 2nd
time since European settlement.
(Econ, 7/12/03, p.38)
1989 Aug 13, In Australia 2
hot-air balloons crashed at Alice Springs. 13 people were killed.
(www.guinnessworldrecords.com/content_pages/record.asp?recordid=52449)
1989 Nov 6, The Asia Pacific
Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum, initiated by Australia, began as an
informal Ministerial-level dialogue group with 12 members: Australia,
Brunei, Canada, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Philippines,
Singapore, South Korea, Thailand, United States.
(SFEC,11/23/97,
p.A21)(www.apec.org/apec/member_economies.html)
1989 The Australian film "Dead
Calm" was directed by Philip Noyce.
(SFEC,12/21/97, DB p.51)
1989 In Australia ATSIC was
established by Bob Hawke's Labor government through the Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander Commission Act 1989 (the ATSIC Act). It took
effect on 5 March 1990. It provided a means of self-determination for
indigenous people.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aboriginal_and_Torres_Strait_Islander_Commission)(SFC,
4/20/04,
p.F1)
1989 Pernod Ricard SA acquired the
Australian wine brand Jacob’s Creek.
(WSJ, 9/7/05, p.B2)
1990 The Australian firm Thomas
Hardy & Sons, a family firm that had made wine for 160 years,
entered the market in Europe with an investment in Domaine de la Baume
in Languedoc, France.
(WSJ, 5/30/03, p.A3)
1990-1999 In the 1990s a movement began to establish
the Australian bilby, an long-eared, endangered marsupial of the
bandicoot family, as a symbol for an Australian Easter.
(WSJ, 3/25/05, p.A1)
1991 May 29, Coral Browne (77)
Australian actress, (Dreamchild, Ruling Class), died of cancer.
(www.imdb.com/name/nm0114982/)
1991 Aug 19, Yankel Rosenbaum
(29), an Australian Hasidic scholar, was killed in rioting that erupted
in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn following the traffic death of
a black child. Earlier in the day Gavin Cato (7) had been hit and
killed by a car in a Rabbi’s motorcade. On Oct 29, 1992, a New York
City jury acquitted 17-year-old Lemrick Nelson of Rosenbaum’s murder.
In February 1997, a jury convicted Nelson and Charles Price of
violating Rosenbaum's civil rights. In 1998 Lemrick Nelson Jr. was
sentenced to 19 and 1/2 years in prison. In 1998 the city settled a
suit for $1.35 million brought by Jews who accused City Hall of
insufficient protection during the riots. In 2002 Lemrick Nelson and
Charles Price had their verdicts thrown out and a new trial scheduled.
In 2005 NYC agreed to pay $1.25 million to settle a suit brought by the
Rosenbaum family.
(SFC, 4/1/98, p.A2)(SFC, 4/3/98, p.A2)(SFC, 1/8/02,
p.A3)(SSFC, 6/19/05, p.A3)
1991 Dec 31, President Bush
arrived in Australia as part of a 12-day Pacific trip.
(AP, 12/31/01)
1991 Dame Roma Mitchell, founder
of the Australian Human Rights Commission, became governor of South
Australia state.
(SFC, 3/6/00, p.A23)
1991 A toxic algae bloom choked a
1,000km stretch of Australia’s Darling River.
(Econ, 4/28/07, p.82)
1992 Mar 27, Lang Hancock
(b.1909), pioneer Pilbara tycoon, died. He was famous for discovering
the world's largest iron ore deposit in 1952 and becoming one of the
richest men in Australia,
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lang_Hancock)(Econ,
4/19/08, p.53)
1992 The Australian film "Proof"
was directed by Jocelyn Moorhouse.
(SFEC,12/21/97, DB p.51)
1992 The Australian film "Romper
Stomper" was directed by Geoffrey Wright.
(SFEC, 9/24/00, DBp.59)
1992 The Australian film "Strictly
Ballroom" was directed by Bazz Luhrmann.
(SFEC,12/21/97, DB p.51)
1992 Australia passed a law
requiring workers to set aside big chunks of their income for
retirement. This began to create a huge national retirement pool.
(WSJ, 12/6/05, p.A1)
1992 Australia’s High Court
accepted the concept of “native title,” which struck down the doctrine
of British settlers that the land they found was terra nullius
(belonging to no one). The landmark decision resulted in legislative
recognition of native title rights over some government-owned lands and
years of acrimonious debate about the issue.
(Econ, 5/7/05, Survey p.15)(AP, 1/30/08)
1992 Australia’s High Court made
the sterilization of retarded girls illegal if not medically required,
unless a court or tribunal approved it.
(SFC,12/16/97, p.B3)
1992 The Australian wine firm
Thomas Hardy & Sons merged with a rival to create BRL Hardy.
(WSJ, 5/30/03, p.A3)
1992 In Yemen 2 hotel bombs
directed at US servicemen killed 2 Australians. The bombing was later
linked to Osama bin Laden, the scion of a wealthy Saudi family. He was
stripped of his Saudi citizenship in 1994.
(SFC, 8/14/96, p.A10,12)
1993 Sep 23, Sydney, Australia,
was selected to host the 2000 Summer Olympics, beating Beijing by 2
votes. It was later revealed that 2 African members of the IOC had been
bribed the night before the vote.
(AP, 9/23/98)(SFC, 1/23/99, p.A1)
1993 China curbed satellite dish
sales and ownership after Rupert Murdoch, who had just bought Star TV,
said that satellite broadcasting threatened totalitarian regimes by
enabling viewers to bypass state controlled media.
(WSJ, 3/26/96, p.A-15)(SFC, 5/8/99, p.C1)(Econ,
9/24/05, p.80)
1993 In Australia the Daintree Eco
Lodge and Spa opened in the rain forest of North Queensland.
(SSFC, 6/9/02, p.C7)
1993 In Australia, a developer
bought a 260-acre site in Cardwell, Queensland, across from Hichinbrook
Island, the world’s largest island national park. His $100 million
plans to develop the site faced major opposition in 1998 even after 12
million was invested.
(SFC, 1/16/98, p.B4)
1993 In Australia Jeffrey Gilham
(23) stabbed his father, mother and brother to death in their Sydney
home, but told police he killed his sibling in a fit of rage after
discovering he had murdered their parents. He pleaded guilty in 1995 to
the manslaughter of his brother (25), escaping with a five-year good
behavior bond. Gilham was eventually charged with the killings in
February 2006 after 13 years of campaigning by his paternal uncles. In
2009 Jeffrey Gilham was sentenced to life in prison.
(AFP, 3/11/09)
1994 Australia’s Labor government
passed native title laws.
(SFC,12/18/97, p.C9)
1994 Australia’s foreign minister,
Gareth Evans, accused "freelance military personal and business spivs"
(shady dealers) in Thailand of providing refuge for Khmer Rouge leaders
and helping them get gems and timber out of Cambodia. The statement was
made after 2 Australians were murdered by the Khmer Rouge.
(SFC, 6/7/96, p.A12)
1994 Fires in Sydney, Australia,
killed 4 people and destroyed 1.9 million acres of forest.
(SFC, 12/4/97, p.A18)
1994 The Hendra virus was first
discovered and named for the Australian suburb where it was found in an
outbreak that killed a horse trainer and 13 horses. It causes flulike
symptoms that can lead to pneumonia or encephalitis. It is believed to
originate in fruit bats in Australia and mainly infects horses.
(AP, 9/2/09)
1995 Mar 5, An Australian yacht
broke in two and sank in heavy wind and fierce winds off the Southern
California coast, the first sinking in the history of America's Cup
racing; all 17 crew members were rescued.
(AP, 3/5/00)
1995 Australia’s Macquarie Bank
won a tender to build the M2 toll road in Sydney by floating a company
that would own the road.
(Econ, 10/15/05, p.81)
1996 Mar 2, The first conservative
government in 13 years was elected in a landslide victory. John Howard
with a pro-business coalition defeated the reformist labor party of
Paul Keating.
(WSJ, 3/4/96, p. A-1)(SFC, 11/27/98, p.A16)
1996 Mar 11, In Australia John
Howard was sworn in as prime minister.
(Econ, 3/11/06, p.40)
1996 Apr 23, Pamela Lyndon Travers
(96), Australia born writer (Mary Poppins), died in London.
(www.maryborough.qld.gov.au/index.aspx?page=678&mid=1)
1996 Apr 28, A lone gunman, Martin
Bryant, killed 35 tourists visiting a colonial prison on the Australian
island of Tasmania. He was later sentenced to 35 life terms in prison.
(WSJ, 4/29/96, p.A-1)(SFC, 11/22/96, p.A22)
1996 Jun 8, China set off an
underground nuclear test blast. The Australian Seismological Center
reported a nuclear test by China having a body wave magnitude of 5.7, a
middle range explosion, in the Lop Nor area of Xinjiang Province. This
was the 44th test since 1964.
(SFC, 6/8/96, p.A11)(AP, 6/8/06)
1996 Jul 1, The world’s first
voluntary suicide law was scheduled to go into effect in Australia. The
Rights of the Terminally Ill Act originated in Darwin. The world’s
first law making it legal for doctors to assist in the suicides of
terminally patients was passed by the Northern Territories Parliament.
The national parliament overturned the laws a year later.
(WSJ, 6/27/96, p.A18)(SFC, 1/14/98, p.C3)(Reuters,
7/27/05)
1996 Jul 7, The average cost of a
Big Mac in Australia was $1.97.
(SFC, 7/7/96, Parade, p.17)
1996 Jul, In Sydney Ivan Milat
(b.1944), Australian outdoorsman, was jailed for life for murdering
seven backpackers. Milat killed three Germans, two Britons and two
Australians between 1989 and 1992. Their bodies were later found in
shallow graves in a remote forest southwest of Sydney.
(http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Ivan-Milat)(AP, 1/27/09)
1996 Aug 19, In Canberra,
Australia, protestors stormed the parliament in opposition to changes
in labor laws and proposed budget cuts to reduce the nation’s debt.
(SFC, 8/20/96, p.A10)
1996 Aug 21, Rescuers worked to
save some 200 pilot whales on the southwestern coast near Dunsborough.
Most were herded to sea but 14 died.
(SFC, 8/22/96, p.E3)
1996 Sep 22, In Australia Bob Dent
became the first person to kill himself legally under the world’s only
voluntary euthanasia law.
(SFC, 9/27/96, p.A13)
1996 Oct 16, It was reported that
fossilized footprints of a stegosaurus dinosaur were discovered stolen
last week from Aboriginal grounds near Broome.
(SFC, 10/16/96, p.A10)
1996 Oct 16, The Australian Senate
called for self-determination in East Timor and supported independence
from Jakarta. The government had earlier recognized the incorporation
of East Timor into Indonesia.
(SFC, 10/17/96, A11)
1996 Oct, The rabbit calcivirus
was released. It quickly cut the rabbit population and forced eagles to
concentrate on road kill. Increased incidents of vehicle collisions
with eagles was reported.
(SFC, 1/18/96, p.A16)
1996 Nov 22, Martin Bryant, who
gunned down 35 people on Apr 28 at Port Arthur, Australia, was
sentenced to life behind bars with no chance for parole.
(AP, 11/22/97)
1996 The Australian film "Angel
Baby" by Michael Rymer won all the top Australian awards. It starred
John Lynch, Jacqueline McKenzie and Colin Friels.
(SFC, 1/31/97, p.D3)
1996 The Australian film "Floating
Life" starred Annette Shun Wah and Annie Yip. It was directed by Clara
Law. It was about a Hong Kong family that moves to Australia.
(SFC, 8/4/99, p.E3)
1996 The Australian film "Shine"
was produced. It rated a 5th place in the 1996 top 10 by one reviewer.
It was based on the life of pianist David Helfgott. Geoffrey Rush won
the 1997 Academy Award for best actor. A 1998 book by Margaret Helfgott
showed how the film twisted and perverted the facts of Helfgott’s life.
(SFC, 12/29/96, DB p.31)(WSJ, 7/27/98, p.A12)
1996 Australia granted full
independence to its central bank.
(Econ, 5/7/05, Survey p.4)
1997 Feb 4, The parliament voted
to begin the process of becoming a republic. A constitutional
convention was planned for the fall and delegates would decide on how
to put the issue to the electorate.
(WSJ, 2/5/97, p.A1)
1997 Mar 2, The Australian film
"Children of the Revolution" was released in the US.
(SFEC, 3/2/97, DB p.48)
1997 Mar 7, It was disclosed that
the reputed Aboriginal painter Eddie Burrup was actually 82-year-old
Elizabeth Durack.
(SFC, 3/8/96, p.A11)
1997 Mar 13, It was revealed that
the 1995 award-winning autobiography of an Aboriginal woman, "My Own
Sweet Time, " was actually written by a 47-year-old white man in Sydney
named Leon Carmen.
(SFC, 3/14/97, p.A16)
1997 Mar 24, The Australian Senate
struck down the law passed by the Northern Territory’s Parliament that
allowed doctor-assisted suicide for the terminally ill. The law might
be reinstated in 2000 if the territory is granted proposed statehood
because under the constitution the national Parliament cannot override
state laws. A growing interest soon developed in travel to Mexico to
buy liquid pentobarbital (Nembutol), which causes a painless death. The
Australian government later banned Philip Nitschke's book, "The
Peaceful Pill Handbook" (2006) which gives tips on everything from
carbon monoxide to buying pentobarbital in Mexico.
(SFC, 3/25/97, p.A12)(SFC, 1/14/98, p.C3)(Reuters,
6/3/08)
1997 Apr, Pauline Hanson published
her book "Pauline Hanson: The Truth." In it she warned that Australia’s
president in 2050 will be "Poona Li Hung," a "lesbian of Indian and
Chinese background...a part machine...produced by a joint
Korean-Indian-Chinese research team."
(SFC, 5/9/97, p.E3)
1997 Apr, The Australian comedy
film "Love Serenade" was shown at the SF Film Festival.
(SFC, 4/23/97, p.D3)
1997 Apr, The Australian film "The
Quiet Room" was released in the US.
(WSJ, 4/25/97, p.A12)
1997 May, The Cadbury Schweppes
company launched Yowies, miniature plastic bush animals covered in
chocolate with names such as Boof, Rumble and Ditty that quickly became
the champion in pester power.
(WSJ, 8/21/98, p.B1)
1997 Jul 4, It was reported that
Australia had sold 167 tons of gold over the last 6 months in order to
put the money into more productive assets.
(SFC, 7/4/97, p.C1)
1997 Aug 18, Burnum Burnum (b.1936
as Henry James Penrith), Aboriginal activist, died at age 61. He had
been a member of the "stolen generation," Aborigine children taken from
their families into government welfare.
(SFC, 8/19/97, p.A20)
1997 Oct 11, A photograph titled
"Piss Christ" at the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne by
Andres Serrano (47) was damaged when an attacker wrenched it from the
wall. The photograph depicted Jesus immersed in urine. The next day an
18-year-old attacked the work with a hammer while a companion diverted
attention by pulling other pieces off the wall.
(SFC, 10/14/97, p.B5)
1997 Nov 22, Michael Hutchence
(b.1960), lead singer for the Australian rock band INXS, committed
suicide at a Sydney hotel.
(SFC,11/24/97,
p.A21)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Hutchence)
1997 Dec 3, Fires in the southeast
destroyed 38 houses and killed 2 firefighters. Up to 150 fires were
raging in New South Wales.
(SFC, 12/4/97, p.A18)
1997 Dec 15, A government report
said that at least 1,045 retarded women and girls have been sterilized
since a 1992 law that made it illegal without special approval.
(SFC,12/16/97, p.B3)
1997 The Australian film "The
Castle" was directed by Rob Sitch.
(SFEC, 9/24/00, DBp.59)
1997 In Australia a national
inquiry said policies removing Aboriginal children from their parents
caused massive trauma to 100,000 children and their families, and
recommended the "stolen generation" be compensated. The final report,
"Bringing Them Home - Report of the National Inquiry into the
Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their
Families" was released. PM John Howard refused an official apology.
(AP, 1/31/08)
1997 Australia’s Macquarie Island,
located about halfway between Australia and Antarctica, was designated
a World Heritage site as the world's only island composed entirely of
oceanic crust. It is known for its wind-swept landscape, and about 3.5
million seabirds and 80,000 elephant seals migrate there each year to
breed. In 2009 researchers said a 1995 decision to eradicate cats from
Macquarie island allowed the rabbit population to explode and, in turn,
destroy much of its fragile vegetation that birds depend on for cover.
(AP, 1/13/09)
1998 Jan 13, A federal court
upheld the armed forces’ right to expel HIV-positive soldiers.
(SFC, 1/14/98, p.C3)
1998 Feb 7, Over 1000 defense
force personnel were called to help clean up parts of the Northern
Territory where the worst floods in 40 years resulted from the
overflowing Katherine River.
(SFC, 2/7/98, p.A5)
1998 May 26, In Australia the
first National Sorry Day was held, to acknowledge the wrong that had
been done to indigenous families and to allow healing process to begin.
Sorry Day is also in remembrance of mistreatment of the Aboriginal
people and not only to the children involved in the Stolen Generation.
The day was held annually until 2004. It was renamed National Day of
Healing from 2005, however, in September, 2005, the name reverted when
the National Sorry Day Committee decided to restore the name Sorry Day.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Sorry_Day)
1998 Jul 7, The Senate passed a
law that scaled back Aboriginal land rights under threat by Prime
Minister John Howard to dissolve both houses and call for new elections.
(SFC, 7/8/98, p.A12)
1998 Jul 11, It was reported that
dingoes from Mount Archer National park near the central Queensland
coast were stalking neighborhoods for food.
(SFC, 7/11/98, p.A8)
1998 Jul 29-1998 Jul 30, In
Australia giardia and cryptosporidium were found throughout the water
supply of Sydney. PM John Howard called the crises an international
embarrassment.
(SFC, 8/1/98, p.A11)
1998 Aug 5, It was reported that
Ian Murphy, founder of the Freedom Scouts, believed that a million
Indonesians planned to invade the country within 5 years. His
organization trained as a guerrilla force to hit and run and protect
Australia from attack.
(SFC, 8/5/98, p.A8)
1998 Oct 3, In Australia
parliamentary elections were scheduled. The conservative coalition of
John Howard won re-election by a narrow margin.
(WSJ, 10/1/98, p.A1)(SFEC, 10/4/98, p.A17)
1998 Nov, Burger King, a unit of
Diageo PLC, opened its 10,000th restaurant in Australia.
(WSJ, 5/13/99, p.B13)
1998 Dec, A brushfire in Queens
that started near Linton killed 5 volunteer fire-fighters.
(SFC, 12/5/98, p.A5)
1998 Dec 28, At least 6 sailors
were feared dead from a gale that struck off Australia during the
Sydney-to-Hobart yacht race. Oracle CEO Larry Ellison skippered the
Sayonara to victory.
(SFC, 12/29/98, p.A1)'
1998 Mandy Sayer of Australia
published her novel "Dreamtime Alice." It was about her years
performing as a tap dancer on the streets of Manhattan and New Orleans
with her father, a drummer, in the 1960s.
(WSJ, 5/20/98, p.A12)
1998 Aden Ridgeway became the 2nd
Australian Aborigine to be elected to the federal Parliament.
(SFC, 2/6/99, p.A21)
1998 In Australia’s waterfront war
Chris Corrigan, head of the cargo-handling Patrick Corp., took on the
“wharfies” and smashed their union’s control of the docks.
(Econ, 10/30/04, p.70)
1998 Alphonse Gangitano, Melbourne
drug lord, was shot dead in his home. Retaliatory killings followed.
(Econ, 6/18/05, p.39)
1998 Saudi Arabia, in response to
a massive outbreak of rift-valley fever, imposed a trade ban to prevent
nomadic herders from selling sheep and goats for sacrifice during the
hajj pilgrimage to Mecca. The government opted to buy more expensive
Australian livestock instead.
(Econ, 2/3/07, p.80)
1999 Apr 19, One of the annual
Goldman Environmental Prizes went to: Jacqui Katona and Yvonne
Margarula, Australian aboriginal women, who have led a fight against
the mining of a uranium deposit by Kakadu National Park on lands owned
by the Mirrar people.
(SFC, 4/19/99, p.A2)
1999 May 17, US authorities
charged Jean-Philippe Wispelaere of Australia for trying to sell
classified American defense documents. Wispelaere had worked in
Canberra for the Australian Defense Intelligence Organization.
(SFC, 5/18/99, p.A3)
1999 Jul 27, In Switzerland 19
people were killed as they tried to "canyon" down a narrow gorge
on the Saxeten River off Lake Brienz. Two people were still missing and
13 were identified as Australians.
(SFC, 7/28/99, p.A1)(SFC, 7/29/99, p.A10)
1999 Aug 26, The Parliament
recognized 200 years of injustice to its indigenous people.
(SFC, 8/27/99, p.D3)
1999 Sep 6, Jiang Zemin arrived in
Australia, the first visit there by a Chinese president.
(WSJ, 9/7/99, p.A1)
1999 Sep 15, The UN authorized an
int'l. peacekeeping force in East Timor led by Australia with some
8,000 troops from a number of nations.
(SFC, 9/15/99, p.A15)(WSJ, 9/16/99, p.A1)
1999 Oct 10, Morris West, thriller
writer, died at age 83. His 27 novels included "The Devil's Advocate,"
"Children of the Sun," and "Shoes of a Fisherman."
(SFC, 10/11/99, p.A24)
1999 Oct 23, Albert Tucker, hailed
as Australia's most influential 20th century painter, died at age 84.
His work was the 1st Australian art to be purchased by New York's MOMA.
(SFC, 10/25/99, p.A24)
1999 Oct 31, Jesse Martin of
Australia became the youngest person to circumnavigate the globe,
sailing solo, non-stop and unsupported. He sailed from Melbourne,
Australia, on December 8, 1998 aged 18 years 104 days and returned on
October 31 1999, taking 327 days 12 hours 52 minutes.
(AP, 8/27/09)
1999 Nov 6, In Australia elections
to decide on severance of ties with the royal family were scheduled.
54.5% voted against a republic in which the head of state would be
elected by Parliament.
(SFC, 11/2/99, p.A12)(SFEC, 11/7/99, p.A21)
1999 Dec 2, In Australian a rail
collision outside Sydney killed 7 passengers and injured over 50. A
commuter train with 450 people slammed into the back of the
transcontinental Indian Pacific with 159 passengers.
(SFC, 12/3/99, p.D4)
1999 Dec, Victoria and New South
Wales planned to open heroin injecting rooms for addicts. A UN
narcotics board considered sanctions against Australia if the plan went
into effect. At stake was $100 million in export revenues for opium
used by pharmaceuticals.
(SFC, 12/22/99, p.A19)
1999 The Australian film "The
Castle" stared Michael Caton and Tiriel Mora. It was directed by Rob
Sitch.
(WSJ, 5/7/99, p.W6)
1999 The Australian film "Head On"
starred Alex Dinitriades and Paul Capsis. It was directed by Ana
Kokkinos and told an intimate story of male sexual confusion.
(SFC, 11/8/99, p.D3)(SFC, 11/11/99, p.B3)
1999 The Australian film "The
Well" starred Pamela Rabe and Miranda Otto. It was directed by Samantha
Lang.
(SFC, 4/16/99, p.C6)
1999 Rupert Murdoch (68),
Australian born media mogul, married Wendi Deng (31), Chinese-born
junior TV executive.
(http://tinyurl.com/7tlen)
1999 Natasha Ryan (14) disappeared
in Queensland. Leonard John Fraser, an alleged serial killer, was
charged with her murder. In 2003 she was found hiding at the home of a
boyfriend.
(AP, 4/11/03)
1999 Australia started pumping
from the Laminaria-Corallina oil field in the Timor Sea.
(Econ, 6/5/04, p.40)
1999 Australia withdrew from the
Int’l. Court of Justice’s jurisdiction on maritime boundary questions
shortly before East Timor’s independence.
(Econ, 6/5/04, p.40)
1999 A 2006 report by East Timor's
Truth and Reconciliation Commission found that Australia actively
lobbied to delay East Timor's independence vote in 1999 and prevent its
separation from Indonesia.
(AFP, 2/2/06)
1999 The Guinness Book of Records
described Australia’s Palm Island as the most violent place on Earth
outside a combat zone.
(AFP, 1/26/07)
1999-2003 The US Volcker report of 2005 said that
Australia's wheat exporter, AWB Ltd., paid over $221 million during
this period to the Jordanian company, Alia, and that some of the money
was for the benefit of the Iraqi government. During this period AWB
sold over $2.3 billion in wheat to Iraq. In 2006 11 former executives
faced prosecution for illegal kickbacks from Iraq.
(Econ, 1/28/06, p.41)(Econ, 12/2/06, p.46)
2000 Feb, The Australian film "The
Wog Boy" opened with Steve Karamitsis.
(SFC, 5/9/00, p.A10)
2000 Mar 5, Dame Roma Mitchell,
founder of the Australian Human Rights Commission, died at age 86. She
was Australia's first female Supreme Court Judge and state governor.
(SFC, 3/6/00, p.A23)
2000 May, Some 100 billion locusts
threatened the states of New South Wales, Queensland and South
Australia. It was the worst infestation in over a decade.
(SFC, 5/6/00, p.B8)
2000 May, A mining company
discovered a huge underground water reservoir in Western Australia that
covered an area 435 by 25 miles.
(SFC, 5/20/00, p.D8)
2000 May 27, In Australia the
"Declaration of Reconciliation" was presented by prime Minister John
Howard to help heal the history of government racism toward the native
aborigines. Howard removed a phrase of apology in one passage and
substituted regret.
(SFC, 5/26/00, p.A14)
2000 Jun 23, In Australia a fire
at a hostel in Childers, 130 miles north of Brisbane, killed at least
15 foreign backpackers.
(SFC, 6/23/00, p.D3)
2000 Jul 1, Australia adopted the
Goods and Services Tax (GST).
(SMH, 7/1/00)
2000 Jul 14, In Australia John
Roche contacted the Australian intelligence agency, known as ASIO to
discuss information regarding his contacts with al-Qaeda.
(LAT, 6/7/04)
2000 Jul 14, Mark Oliphant, a
physicist who helped split the atom in 1932, died at age 98. He founded
the Australian Academy of Science and was appointed as the governor of
South Australia state (1971-1976).
(SFC, 7/18/00, p.A22)
2000 Aug 28, Foster’s Brewing of
Australia reported a deal to buy the California Beringer winery for
some $1.5 billion.
(SFC, 8/29/00, p.A1)
2000 Sep 5, A Beechcraft King Air
200 plane crashed near Mount Isa after flying for 6 hours on autopilot.
8 people were killed and believed to have blacked out after loss of
cabin pressure following takeoff from Perth.
(SFC, 9/6/00, p.A11)
2000 Sep 11, Some 5,000 protestors
rallied against the Asia-Pacific Economic Summit 2000 in Melbourne.
(SFC, 9/11/00, p.A14)
2000 Sep 12, A series of clashes
between police and protesters marred a generally peaceful second day of
the three-day Asia-Pacific Economic Summit in Melbourne, Australia.
(AP, 9/12/01)
2000 Sep 15, The XXVII Olympic
Games opened in Sydney. The 2000 Summer Olympics opened with a
seemingly endless parade of athletes and coaches and a spectacular
display that included wild fantasy, blazing color, and booming cheers;
Aborigine runner Cathy Freeman ignited an Olympic ring of fire.
(SFC, 9/16/00, p.A1)(AP, 9/15/01)
2000 Sep 15-2000 Oct 1, The 2000
Summer Olympics were held in Sydney, Australia.
(WSJ, 8/8/95, p. B-1)(USAT, 5/7/98, p.6E)
2000 Sep 17, In Sydney swimmer Tom
Dolan of the United States won the 400-meter individual medley.
(AP, 9/17/01)
2000 Sep 30, In Sydney, Australia,
Marion Jones won Olympic gold in the U.S. women's 1,600-meter relay and
bronze with the 400-meter squad, making her the only woman to win five
track medals at one Olympics. In 2007 the IOC stripped Jones of her 5
medals due to use of steroids.
(AP, 9/30/01)(WSJ, 12/13/07, p.A1)
2000 Oct 1, In Sydney, Australia,
the 2000 summer Olympics ended with a big party. The US (97), Russia
(88) and China (59) topped the medal count.
(SFC, 10/2/00, p.A1)(WSJ, 10/2/00, p.A1)
2000 Nov, In New South Wales the
worst flooding in 40 years stretched across a third of the state.
(SFC, 11/25/00, p.D8)
2000 The Northern Territories
proposal for statehood was due for action.
(SFC, 1/14/98, p.C3)
2000 The Solar Sailor, a prototype
solar-powered ferry, began operating in Sydney harbor.
(SFC, 2/6/01, p.A14)
2001 Jan 12, Johnny Warangkula,
Papunya Tula school Aborigine artist, died at age 75. His dot paintings
included "Water Dreaming at Kalipinypa, 1972."
(SFC, 2/17/01, p.A24)
2001 Feb 17, In Queensland state
elections the opposition Labor Party won at least 60 of 89 seats. Many
traditional conservatives switched to the right-wing One Nation group
headed by Pauline Hanson.
(SFC, 2/19/01, p.A10)
2001 Apr 15, Australia indicated
that it would not ratify the Kyoto treaty to reduce carbon-dioxide
emissions and said the treaty is probably defunct now that the US has
repudiated it.
(WSJ, 4/16/01, p.A1)
2001 Jul 4, Australia’s interim
cabinet approved East Timor’s demands for 90% of the revenues from oil
and gas reserves in the Timor Sea.
(SFC, 7/5/01, p.A8)
2001 Jul 14, In Australia British
backpacker Peter Falconio (28) was murdered and his girlfriend, Joanne
Lees. Murdoch was assaulted while they backpacking in the Outback. In
2005 Bradley John Murdoch (47), was convicted and given a mandatory
life sentence.
(AP, 12/13/05)
2001 Aug 4, Steve Fossett launched
his 5th bid to circle the globe in an unpressurized gondola from
Australia. He set a duration record on Aug 16 over Argentina.
(SFC, 8/17/01, p.D1)
2001 Aug 17, Balloonist Steve
Fossett was forced down by bad weather in Brazil after traveling 12,695
miles.
(SFC, 8/18/01, p.A8)
2001 Aug 27, Australia denied
access to the Tampa, a Norwegian cargo ship carrying some 433 refugees,
mostly from Afghanistan, who had been rescued from a sinking Indonesian
ferry.
(SFC, 8/29/01, p.A8)(Econ, 5/7/05, Survey p.13)
2001 Aug 29, Australian commandos
seized the Norway cargo ship carrying 438 rescued refugees after the
captain defied orders not to enter Australian waters.
(SFC, 8/30/01, p.A12)
2001 Aug 31, Ministers of New
Zealand and Nauru announced that they would take the Afghanistan asylum
seekers stranded in Australian waters.
(SFC, 9/1/01, p.A6)
2001 Sep 7, Australia intercepted
a boat with 200 migrants and put them on the same ship taking 433
Afghans to Papua New Guinea.
(SSFC, 9/9/01, p.A15)
2001 Sep 13, An Indonesian boat
with 129 people, mostly from Iraq, refused to change course and landed
at Australia’s Ashmore Reef. The UN issued Australia a warning that it
could be breaching its int’l. obligations toward refugees by mounting a
blockade.
(SFC, 9/14/01, p.A32)
2001 Oct 17, Peter Carey won his
2nd Booker Prize for his novel "True History of the Kelly Gang," a
fictional account of the 19th century Australian outlaw.
(SFC, 10/18/01, p.B3)
2001 Oct 19, A refugee ship,
enroute from Indonesia to Australia, carrying some 353 emigrants from
Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Palestine and Algeria, sank off the island of
Java. 44 people survived.
(SFC, 10/23/01, p.C1)(AP, 2/3/06)(Econ, 4/25/09,
p.49)
2001 Oct, A plague of bush rats
was reported to have destroyed half of Queensland’s surviving wheat
crop, already decimated by drought. The rats were accompanied by an
explosion in the population of feral cats.
(SFC, 10/13/01, p.C10)
2001 Nov 10, In Australia
conservative PM Howard faced Labor’s Kim Beazley in elections. Howard
and his conservative government won a 3rd term. Howard’s Liberal Party
won 68 seats of the 150 in the lower house. The coalition National
Party won 12 seats. Labor won 67 and independents won 3.
(WSJ, 11/9/01, p.A1)(SSFC, 11/11/01, p.A15)
2001 Dec 11, Australia reported
that an Australian citizen, David Hicks (26), who had trained with the
al Qaeda, had been captured in Afghanistan.
(SFC, 12/12/01, p.A19)(SFC, 12/15/01, p.A16)
2001 Dec 28, Bush fires reached
within 12 miles of Sydney. Some 150 home were already destroyed by over
100 fires across new South Wales. 80% of the Royal National Park had
burned. A number of blazes were due to arson, and 3 teenagers and 2 men
had been arrested.
(SFC, 12/29/01, p.A3)
2002 Jan 2, Fires continued near
Sydney and almost 160 houses were lost. 21 arson suspects had been
arrested since the fires began Christmas eve. Arson bombs were found in
Sydney’s northern suburbs.
(SFC, 1/3/02, p.A4)
2002 Jan 3, Fires continued for
the 11th straight day. At least 40 were fires were started by
arsonists. Over 100 fires covered 1,250 square miles.
(SFC, 1/4/02, p.A14)
2002 Jan 7, Rain began to fall
over the charred 1.2 million acres west of Sydney.
(SFC, 1/7/02, p.A5)
2002 Jan 24, Some 200 mainly
Afghan asylum seekers continued their hunger strike for a 10th day in
Woomera. Some had sewn their lips together. Australia resumed
processing asylum applications following a mass suicide attempt.
(SFC, 1/25/02, p.A15)(WSJ, 1/25/02, p.A1)
2002 Jan 30, Woomera asylum
seekers said they would end their hunger strike and continue
negotiations with the government. At Camp Curtin about 100 immigrants
refused to eat for a 3rd day.
(SFC, 1/31/02, p.A9)
2002 Mar 31, On Australia’s
Norfolk Island Glenn McNeill (24) of New Zealand hit Janelle Patton
(29) with his car and later stabbed her "just to make sure she was
dead." McNeill was arrested in 2006 based on DNA evidence. Patton
suffered 64 separate injuries including a fractured skull and numerous
stab wounds in the attack In 2007 McNeill told police he had been
smoking cannabis when he hit Patton. On Mar 9 a jury convicted McNeill
of murder. On July 25 he was sentenced to 24 years in jail.
(AP, 8/12/02)(Econ, 7/10/04, p.38)(Reuters,
3/9/07)(AFP, 7/25/07)
2002 Apr 10, In Australia Caroline
Stuttle (19) was pushed to her death from a bridge in the north-eastern
city of Bundaberg. In 2004 Douglas Previte (32), a drug-addicted
drifter, was found guilty for the murder and robbery that netted him 73
pence ($1.80) in change.
(AP, 10/15/04)
2002 Apr 14, Glenn Murcutt,
Australian architect, was selected as the winner of the Pritzker
Architectural Prize.
(SFC, 4/16/02, p.D5)
2002 May 20, East Timor, with a
population at about 800,000, celebrated independence. A legal battle
loomed with Australia over the disputed Greater Sunrise natural gas
field in the Timor Sea. The filed lay 95 miles south of East Timor and
250 miles north of Australia.
(SFC, 5/20/02, p.A6)(WSJ, 5/20/02, p.A19)(WSJ,
6/10/04, p.A1)
2002 Jun 5, In Australia PM John
Howard used World Environment Day to reject calls for his government to
ratify the Kyoto Protocol on global warming.
(AP, 6/6/02)
2002 Jun 17, Australian scientists
said they had successfully "teleported" a laser beam encoded with data,
breaking it up and reconstructing an exact replica a yard away.
(AP, 6/17/02)
2002 Jun 19, American adventurer
Steve Fossett launched his latest solo round-the-world balloon trip
from Australia, his silver balloon rising over this western farming
town after a long delay caused by surface winds.
(AP, 6/19/02)
2002 Jun 22, An aboriginal artist,
famed for his paintings of the Northern Territory’s Western Desert,
died at age 70 in Alice Springs. His name was kept anonymous in respect
of Aborigine belief that the dead not be identified.
(SSFC, 6/23/02, p.A2)
2002 Jul 2, Steve Fossett became
the 1st person to fly a balloon solo around the world. On his 6th
attempt he completed the journey in 13 days, 12 hours, 16 minutes and
13 seconds. He departed from Australia Jun 19 and covered an estimated
19,428 miles.
(SFC, 7/3/02, p.A3)
2002 Jul 3, Over Australia
balloonist Steve Fossett was forced to spend an extra night in the air
as the winds that helped him become the first person to fly solo around
the world bedeviled the final stage of his voyage.
(Reuters, 7/3/02)
2002 Jul 4, In Australia Steve
Fossett launched Independence Day celebrations early when his Spirit of
Freedom balloon ended its record-breaking flight around the world.
(AP, 7/4/02)
2002 Jul 19, Evdokia Petrov (88),
former Soviet Union spy, died in Melbourne. She lived under the name
Maria Anna Allyson. Her husband Vladimir Petrov (1991) was the third
secretary at the Soviet embassy in Australia and also covertly served
as a KGB spy. They defected in 1954.
(AP, 7/26/02)
2002 Jul 23, Leo McKern (82),
Australian actor, died in Bath, England. He played the barrister in the
TV show "Rumpole of the Bailey."
(SFC, 7/24/02, p.A1)
2002 Jul 27, Nearly 60 false
killer whales stranded on an Australian beach died or were euthanized
after failed attempts to return them to the water.
(AP, 7/27/02)
2002 Jul, Alexander Downer,
Australia’s foreign minister, accused Saddam Hussein of developing
weapons of mass destruction. Iraq soon after announced that it would
cut its wheat purchases from Australia. Directors of AWB, Australia's
wheat exporter, flew to Iraq and struck a new deal for wheat shipments.
(Econ, 1/28/06, p.42)
2002 Aug 2, Australia and Malaysia
signed a counter-terrorism pact which pledged them to work together to
fight suspected Islamic militants in the region.
(Reuters, 8/2/02)
2002 Aug 8, Australia's highest
court ruled that Aborigines do not have rights to oil or minerals found
under tribal land now being used by mining companies.
(AP, 8/8/02)
2002 Aug 8, The Chinese government
awarded an Australian consortium a 25-year natural gas supply contract
in Australia's biggest-ever foreign trade deal.
(AP, 8/8/02)
2002 Sep 27, In Australia a
federal judge formally gave control of a remote chunk of the northwest
slightly bigger than Greece to an Aboriginal tribe, marking the end of
six years of negotiations.
(AP, 9/27/02)
2002 Oct 12, In Indonesia a car
bomb ripped through the Sari Club at the Kuta Beach resort packed with
foreign tourists on the island of Bali, sparking a blaze that killed
202 people and injured 300 others. It was the worst terrorist act in
Indonesia's history. Authorities said a second bomb exploded near the
island's U.S. consular office. An estimated 100 victims were from
Australia. Imam Samudra was later charged with engineering the blast.
In 2004 Samudra (34) published a jailhouse autobiography “Me Against
the Terrorist,” in which he called for fellow Muslim radicals to take
the holy war to cyberspace. In 2005 Sally Neighbour authored “In the
Shadow of Swords: How Islamic Terrorists Declared War on Australia.”
(AP, 10/13/02)(SSFC, 10/12/02, p.A1)(SFC, 12/17/04,
p.W1)(Econ, 12/17/05, p.83)
2002 Oct 21, In Australia Xiang
Huan Yun (36) opened fire at Monash University in Melbourne in, killing
two people and seriously wounding 5 others. Yun was soon charged with
two counts of murder and five counts of attempted murder.
(AP, 10/21/02)(AP, 10/22/02)
2002 Oct 24, In southern Australia
a train and a school bus collided, killing six people.
(AP, 10/24/02)
2002 Oct 25, Australia's prime
minister promised to give the world's 50 poorest countries better
access to his nation's markets and called on other rich nations to do
the same.
(AP, 10/26/02)
2002 Oct 27, The Australian
government listed the militant Islamic network Jemaah Islamiyah as a
terrorist group.
(AP, 10/30/02)
2002 Nov 14, Australia added four
more Islamic groups to its list of banned "terrorist" organizations and
said that anyone linked to the groups and living in Australia would be
targeted by police and security forces.
(Reuters, 11/14/02)
2002 Nov 14, In Sydney, Australia,
some 1,000 protesters demonstrated against globalization and a possible
war with Iraq, and blocked downtown intersections in defiance of a ban
on mass street gatherings imposed for a two-day mini-summit of the
World Trade Organization.
(AP, 11/13/02)
2002 Nov 21, In Australia speaker
Jonathan Hunt ruled that "knitting is permitted in the house but is not
permitted from the minister's chair." Retired lawmaker Marilyn Waring
admitted to knitting 32 garments during 9 years in Parliament. She said
in her autobiography it was the only productive thing she had
accomplished in the debating chamber.
(AP, 11/23/02)
2002 Dec 7, In Australia wildfires
raging across Sydney's northern fringe blackened 250,000 acres.
(AP, 12/7/02)
2002 Dec 12, Australia's highest
court dismissed one of the nation's longest running tribal land claims.
The Yorta Yorta tribe began the battle in 1994 for a special property
right known as native title in 800 square miles of land around the
Murray River in eastern Australia. The area is now occupied by farmers.
(AP, 12/12/02)
2002 Dec 13, In Australia an
attacker poured hydrochloric acid on the face and down the throat of
Dominic Li, a Sydney suburban accountant. Li went into a coma and died
three weeks later. In 2006 a man who helped arrange Li’s murder was
sentenced to up to 18 years in jail.
(Reuters, 2/17/06)
2002 Dec 16, It was reported that
a severe drought ravaging most of Australia's rural sector will slash
farm exports by 13 percent this fiscal year. Triggered by abnormal sea
temperatures, El Nino was blamed for severe drought in Australia, which
slashed crops and caused a liquidation of the nation's livestock. The
drought continued thru 2005.
(AP, 12/16/02)(AP, 5/24/05)
2002 Dec 20, Grote Reber
(90), a pioneer of radio astronomy died in Tasmania. He followed up
Karl Jansky's 1933 announcement of the discovery of radio waves from
space and in his spare time in 1937 built a 30-foot antenna dish, the
1st radio telescope, in his back yard in Wheaton, Ill., and managed to
pick up signals two years later.
(AP, 12/25/02)
2002 Dec 31, Australia's asylum
seeker detention centers were in turmoil following an attempted mass
breakout and riot in a Sydney centre, an armed stand off at another and
fires burning in two.
(Reuters, 12/31/02)
2003 Jan 10, An Australian
euthanasia campaigner complained that customs officials seized a
machine he designed to help people kill themselves as he prepared to
board a flight to the United States.
(AP, 1/10/03)
2003 Jan 18, Heavy bush fires hit
Canberra, Australia, killing 4 people. At least 388 homes were
destroyed.
(AP, 1/19/03)
2003 Jan 31, In Australia a
commuter train derailed south of Sydney and 9 people were killed.
(AP, 1/31/03)
2003 Feb 2, Australia's first
cloned sheep, Matilda (b. Apr, 2000) died unexpectedly of unknown
causes.
(AP, 2/7/03)
2003 Feb 8, In Australia 750 nude
women formed a heart around the words 'No War' near the town of Byron
Bay to protest possible war with Iraq.
(AP, 2/8/03)
2003 Feb 15, Tens of
thousands of people gathered in downtown Sydney and around Australia to
protest possible war with Iraq and their country’s involvement.
(AP, 2/16/03)
2003 Feb 16, In Australia
PM John Howard said he respects the views of hundreds of thousands of
citizens who took part in peace protests over the weekend but would not
be swayed by their opposition to war with Iraq.
(AP, 2/17/03)
2003 Mar 11, A top
Australian intelligence adviser resigned to protest the government’s
hardline policy on Iraq. Andrew Wilkie, one of its senior intelligence
analysts argued that, based on U.S. and other intelligence information
he has seen, there is currently no justification for a war on Iraq.
(IPS, 3/12/03)
2003 Mar 18, In Australia PM
John Howard said his government would commit 2,000 military personnel
to any U.S.-led strike aimed at disarming Iraq.
(AP, 3/19/03)
2003 Apr 17, Sir William Gunn
(89), a sheep farmer who took over his family's flock as a teenager and
rose to become one of the most powerful men in Australian agriculture,
died.
(AP, 4/18/03)
2003 Apr 20, An Australian navy
vessel boarded a North Korean ship off Sydney and charged it with
involvement in a $48 million heroin shipment to Victoria.
(WSJ, 4/22/03, A1)
2003 May 1, The Australian stock
market began trade in Australia's first-ever listed brothel, The Daily
Planet. Shares began trading at 31 cents. Heidi Fleiss was on hand to
promote the enterprise and her new book, "Pandering."
(AP, 5/1/03)
2003 Jun 25, An Australian
military spokesman said the army will kill as many as 15,000 kangaroos
to keep a southeastern army base from being overgrazed.
(AP, 6/25/03)
2003 Jul 2, The film "Ken Parks"
by Larry Clark and Edward Lachman received an illegal public screening
in Balmain, a suburb of Sydney, Australia. The film was about the
dysfunctional lives of skateboarders in the suburbs of Visalia, Ca.,
and was banned due to its explicit sex and violence.
(SFC, 7/7/03, p.D2)
2003 Jul 17, The leaders of an
Australian Christian church voted to allow homosexuals to become
priests, drawing protest from within the congregation.
(AP, 7/17/03)
2003 Jul 23, In "Operation Helpem
Fren" an Australian-led peacekeeping force poured into the Solomon
Islands to keep the island chain from slipping deeper into anarchy.
(AP, 7/24/03)(Econ, 8/9/03, p.34)
2003 Aug 1, Australia’s island
state of Tasmania reported that a deadly facial cancer was killing
Tasmanian devils, a carnivorous marsupial the size of a small dog.
(http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s915506.htm)
2003 Aug 7, An Australian patrol
boat spotted the Viarsa, a Spain-based fishing vessel, near Heard
Island, half way between Australia and South Africa. The Viarsa with 96
tons of Chilean Sea Bass fled south and was chased for 3 weeks until
cornered with help by ships from Britain and South Africa. In 2006 G.
Bruce Knecht authored “Hooked: Pirates, Poaching and the Perfect Fish,”
an account of the chase and the Chilean Sea Bass.
(WSJ, 5/4/06, p.B1)
2003 Aug 20, In Australia Pauline
Hanson, the right-wing firebrand known for her anti-immigration
rhetoric, was sentenced to three years in jail for fraudulently setting
up her One Nation political party and illegally using electoral funds.
(AP, 8/20/03)
2003 Sep 14, A Saudi importer
of some 58,000 Australian sheep was reported to be trying to give
them away for free. The sheep had been stranded for five weeks on
the ship, the Cormo Express, due to a 6% infection rate for scabby
mouth disease. Australia in 2002 had imposed tougher rules on ships
exporting livestock to the Persian Gulf after it was revealed that
14,500 sheep had died from heat stress in one month. Some 5,700 sheep
aboard the Cormo Express died before Eritrea accepted the animals.
(AP, 9/14/03)(Econ, 12/2/06, p.88)
2003 Sep 19, Slim Dusty (76),
Australian country music singer born as David Gordon Kirkpatrick, died
while recording his 106th album. His career took off in 1958 with the
song "A Pub With No Beer."
(SFC, 9/20/03, p.A21)
2003 Oct 22, In southern Australia
the fossil of a 2.56-inch fishlike animal from the Flinders Ranges was
believed to be at least 560 million years old, 30 million years older
than the previous record.
(AP, 10/23/03)
2003 Oct 22, Christina Mae Watson
died as she and her new husband dove off the tropical coast of
Queensland. In 2009 David Gabriel Watson, of Birmingham, Alabama,
pleaded guilty to manslaughter. He was expected to serve just one year
of the four-and-a-half-year sentence in the death of his wife of 11
days. The suspended sentence was not unusual in such crimes in
Queensland.
(AP, 6/5/09)
2003 Oct 23, Pres. Bush, was
heckled inside and outside Australia's Parliament. He said that the war
in Iraq was right and inevitable, but that Americans and Australians
"still have decisive days ahead" and that the broader war on terror
could be long and drawn out.
(AP, 10/23/03)
2003 Oct 24, Chinese President Hu
Jintao became the first Asian leader to address Australia's parliament.
(AP, 10/24/03)
2003 Oct 28, Australia and New
Zealand they will start withdrawing troops from the Solomon Islands,
claiming success in a mission to restore law and order.
(AP, 10/28/03)
2003 Nov 4, The Minasa Bone, an
Indonesian fishing boat with 14 Kurds aboard, sought asylum on Melville
Island, Australia. The government quickly moved to separate Melville
Island from Australia for migratory purposes and forced the boat back
to Indonesia.
(Econ, 11/22/03, p.41)
2003 Dec 4, The Australian
government said it will join a U.S. program to build a missile defense
system, calling the threat of ballistic missiles too grave to ignore.
(AP, 12/4/03)
2003 Dec, Australia launched an
enhanced cooperation program for Papua New Guinea.
(Econ, 5/7/05, Survey p.11)
2003 Mark Latham (42) became head
of Australia’s Labor party.
(Econ, 9/24/05, p.53)
2003 Jim Bacon, head of the Labor
Party government of Tasmania, appointed Richard Butler, former UN arms
inspector, as governor.
(Econ, 1/17/04, p.37)
2003 Andrew Forrest, a former
stockbroker, founded Fortescue to mine iron ore in the Pilbara region
of Western Australia. The company’s first shipment to China went out in
May, 2008.
(Econ, 11/15/08, p.50)
2003 In New South Wales,
Australia, the lower reaches of the Great Anabranch of the Darling
River ran dry following a 10-year drought.
(Econ, 5/7/05, Survey p.15)
2004 Feb 1, The first passenger
train to cross Australia from south to north set off on its three-day
journey, marking a new era of rail travel through the vast Outback.
Regular train service from Adelaide to Darwin would take 43 hours.
Plans for the Transcontinental line had begun in 1911.
(SSFC, 10/26/03, p.A1)(AP, 2/1/04)
2004 Feb 16, In Australia rioters
set fire to a train station and pelted police with gasoline bombs in an
Aboriginal ghetto in Sydney during a nine-hour street battle that began
after a teenager died, allegedly while being chased by officer.
(AP, 2/16/04)
2004 Mar 17, It was reported that
locusts have swarmed through the Australian Outback, devastating crops
just as farmers had begun recovering from a two-year drought.
(AP, 3/17/04)
2004 Mar 20, Thousands of
protesters marched in Australia to mark the first anniversary of the
Iraq war. Protests extended across Asia with some 30,000 marching in
Japan.
(AP, 3/20/04)
2004 Mar 20, The Economist
reported that a Goldman Sachs study found consumers in Australia and
Spain to be the most vulnerable, of 19 countries, to higher interest
rates or recession.
(Econ, 3/20/04, p.85)
2004 Mar 24, Australia's
parliament passed a law making the Great Barrier Reef the most
protected reef system on earth. A fishing ban on a third of the World
Heritage site would begin in July.
(AP, 3/24/04)
2004 Apr, Australian police,
trying to break a large drug syndicate, supplied information that led
to the arrest of the nine Australians on Indonesian resort island of
Bali. The nine were allegedly carrying 11.2 kilograms (24.7 pounds) of
heroin at the time and faced the death penalty on drugs charges.
(AP, 10/26/05)
2004 May 4, In Australia 800
delegates of the Country Women's Association of New South Wales voted
to drop the singing of "God Save the Queen" altogether and only permit
renditions of "Advance Australia Fair", the national anthem.
(AFP, 5/4/04)
2004 May 14, In Copenhagen,
Denmark, Australian Mary Donaldson married Danish Crown Prince
Frederik, becoming Crown Princess Mary.
(AP, 5/14/04)
2004 May 18, Australia and the US
signed a bilateral free trade agreement.
(WSJ, 5/19/04, p.A16)
2004 May 27, Australia's
conservative government introduced legislation to ban same-sex
marriages and wants immigration rules to stop gays and lesbians from
adopting foreign children. The government has also announced that
same-sex partners will be recognized for the first time by federal
authorities as dependents.
(AP, 5/27/04)
2004 May 27, In Australia
British-born Jack Roche changed his plea from innocent to guilty,
acknowledging his role in an al-Qaida plot to blow up the Israeli
Embassy in Canberra. On June 1 Roche was sentenced to 9 years in prison.
(AP, 5/28/04)(AP, 6/1/04)
2004 May 30, Australians have been
warned they face an environmental crisis unless they stop squandering
scarce water resources in the world's most arid inhabited continent.
(AFP, 5/30/04)
2004 Jun 25, Australia's
government decided to cover most of the outside of cigarette packages
with graphic images showing the physical damage caused by smoking.
(AFP, 6/25/04)
2004 Jun 25, The Council of
Australian Governments (COAG) agreed to and signed the National Water
Initiative (NWI) to improve water management across the country.
(www.pmc.gov.au/nwi/index.cfm)
2004 Jul 4, Australia and Thailand
signed a free-trade agreement that officials believe will boost the
economies of both countries by billions of dollars over the next two
decades.
(AP, 7/5/04)
2004 Jul 24, An online statement
by a group representing itself as al-Qaida's European branch threatened
to turn Australia into "pools of blood" if it doesn't withdraw its
troops from Iraq.
(AP, 7/25/04)
2004 Jul 30, A new Austrian
postage stamp featuring a likeness of California Gov. Arnold
Schwarzenegger went on sale on his birthday.
(AP, 7/30/04)
2004 Aug 5, David Hicks,
Australian terror suspect held at the Guantanamo Bay base in Cuba,
signed an affidavit stating: "Interrogators once offered me the
services of a prostitute for 15 minutes if I would spy on other
detainees.” Hicks documented a number of physical abuses.
(Reuters, 12/9/04)
2004 Aug 12, It was reported that
a huge ant colony measuring 100 kilometers (62 miles) across had been
found under the southern Australian city of Melbourne. The ants were a
mutant variety of Argentine ants.
(AP, 8/12/04)
2004 Aug 13, Australia's
parliament approved a free trade pact with the United States.
(AP, 8/13/04)
2004 Aug 25, David Hicks, an
Australian cowboy who'd converted to Islam and allegedly fought for the
Taliban in Afghanistan, pleaded innocent to war crimes charges before a
U.S. military commission. He was detained by the U.S. Government in
Guantanamo Bay until 2007 when he became the first to be tried and
convicted under the U.S. Military Commissions Act of 2006. He was
extradited to Australia to serve the remainder of his sentence. Hicks
served his nine month term in Adelaide's Yatala Labor Prison and was
released under control order on December 29, 2007.
(AP,
8/25/05)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hicks)
2004 Aug 26, Australia announced a
cruise missile program to give it the region's "most lethal" air combat
capacity, a move that further strained awkward relations with Indonesia.
(AP, 8/26/04)
2004 Sep 5, Australian Prime
Minister John Howard defended his country's controversial refusal to
ratify the Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse gases as he launched the 19th
World Energy Congress in Sydney.
(AP, 9/5/04)
2004 Sep 9, In Indonesia a car
bomb exploded outside the gates of the Australian Embassy in Jakarta,
killing eight people and wounding more than 160.
(AP, 9/9/04)(Econ, 9/11/04, p.39)
2004 Oct 9, Prime Minister John
Howard scored a convincing victory in Australia's federal election,
winning a historic fourth term.
(AP, 10/9/04)
2004 Oct 21, Australian police
arrested 3 Chinese men in Sydney after they uncovered $74 million worth
of crystal methamphetamine hidden in hollowed-out candles from China.
(AP, 10/22/04)
2004 Oct, Congo’s government
quelled an uprising near a mine owned by Australia’s Anvil Mining Ltd.
The UN later accused Anvil of providing the government with vehicles
and planes in the operation that killed scores of villagers. In 2007 a
military court jailed two Congolese army officers for life for the 2004
massacre of civilians. The verdict cleared three Canadian mining
company employees of complicity.
(WSJ, 3/20/07, p.A13)(AFP, 6/29/07)
2004 Nov 13, Australian police
arrested two men and seized three million ecstasy tablets that the pair
is accused of importing from Poland hidden inside a bakery oven.
(AP, 11/13/04)
2004 Nov 16, In northeast
Australia a speeding high-speed passenger train derailed, injuring
nearly all 163 people on board.
(AP, 11/17/04)
2004 Nov 28, On southern
Australia’s King Island about 80 whales and dolphins died after
beaching, and about 50 more were still at risk.
(AP, 11/29/04)
2004 Nov, Cameron Doomadgee died
on Australia’s Palm Island soon after he was arrested by Senior
Sergeant Chris Hurley for public drunkenness. A first autopsy put the
cause of death down to a fall, leading to a riot that saw the island's
police station, barracks and watchhouse destroyed. In 2007 officer
Hurley was charged for Doomadgee’s death.
(AFP, 1/26/07)
2004 Dec 24, The world's biggest
earthquake in almost four years, measuring 8.1 on the Richter scale,
struck off the coast of Australia's southern island state of Tasmania,
but caused no damage or injury.
(AP, 12/24/04)
2004 Australia’s Macquarie Bank
organized a deal to take over Chicago’s Skyway toll road under a
99-year lease for $1.8 billion.
(WSJ, 12/6/05, p.A1)
2004 Australia’s housing market
peaked after more than 2 years of 15% or greater annual growth.
(WSJ, 7/14/05, p.A1)
2005 Jan 1, Australia was forecast
for 3.4% annual GDP growth with a population at 20.3 million and GDP
per head at $30,630.
(Econ, 1/8/05, p.90)
2005 Jan 1, Australia’s free
trade agreement with the US became effective.
(Econ, 5/7/05, Survey p.10)
2005 Jan 5, Australian PM John
Howard pledged $765 million over five years to Indonesian tsunami
reconstruction and development due to the Dec 26 disaster.
(AP, 1/6/05)(Econ, 1/15/05, p.38)
2005 Jan 11, At least eight people
were killed in a wildfire that raced through southern Australia’s Eyre
Peninsula, forcing terrified residents to leap into the sea to avoid
the flames.
(AP, 1/11/05)
2005 Jan 12, Firefighters brought
Australia's deadliest bushfires in 20 years under control after 9
people died in the blazes in the Eyre Peninsula.
(AP, 1/12/05)
2005 Jan 16, Australian born and
bred Charlie Bell (44), the first non-American to head the McDonald's
chain of 30,000 burger restaurants in 119 countries, died in Sydney
from cancer.
(AP, 1/17/05)
2005 Jan, Mark Latham, head of
Australia’s Labor Party, resigned.
(www.mup.unimelb.edu.au/catalogue/0-522-85215-7.html)
2005 Feb 7, Australia's central
bank warned that interest rates, stable at 5.25 percent since December
2003, may be raised within months amid signs of renewed inflationary
pressures.
(AP, 2/7/05)
2005 Feb 21, In Sierra Leone an
Australian investigator for a U.N.-backed war-crimes tribunal was
convicted of sexually assaulting a 13-year-old girl who sought a job as
a nanny in his household.
(AP, 2/21/05)
2005 Feb 22, PM John Howard said
Australia will send an extra 450 troops to Iraq to help protect a
Japanese humanitarian mission and bolster the country's transition to
democracy.
(AP, 2/22/05)
2005 Feb 24, Australian PM John
Howard dismissed as "alarmist" a warning by his government's chief
economic adviser that the US was heading for a financial crash that
could ravage the global economy.
(AP, 2/25/05)
2005 Mar 2, Australia’s central
bank raised interest rates to 5.5% from 5.25%. The 2004 annual growth
rate was reported to be 1.5%.
(WSJ, 3/3/05, p.A11)
2005 Mar 16, Tropical Cyclone
Ingrid flattened Faraway Resort, a tourist resort built to showcase the
beauty of northern Australia.
(AP, 3/16/05)
2005 Mar, Australia’s current
account deficit hit 7.1% of GDP.
(Econ, 5/7/05, Survey p.4)
2005 Apr 1, Australia and NATO
signed an agreement to cooperate in the fight against international
terrorism, weapons proliferation and other global military threats.
(AP, 4/1/05)
2005 Apr 2, An Australian navy
helicopter crashed on the earthquake-devastated Indonesian island of
Nias. Media reported that nine people were killed and two were rescued.
(AP, 4/2/05)
2005 Apr 4, The leaders of
Australia and Indonesia signed a partnership agreement that they said
would lead to new security pact between their countries.
(AP, 4/4/05)
2005 Apr 7, Australia’s PM John
Howard and Malaysia’s Abdullah Ahmad Badawi announced plans to
negotiate a free trade agreement but refused to concede ground on key
differences regarding Canberra's role in the region.
(AP, 4/7/05)
2005 Apr 8, The Wiggles, 4
Australian performers, topped BRW Magazine's list of Australia's 50
richest performers in 2004 with an estimated gross income of $34.5
million, up from $10.7 million in the previous year.
(AP, 4/8/05)
2005 Apr 13, Australia’s Mining
giant BHP Billiton said it had won a 71.5% rise in iron ore prices with
a number of its steel customers.
(AP, 4/13/05)
2005 Apr 14, Amanda Vanstone,
Australia’s immigration minister, said Australia would take in 140,000
immigrants in 2005-06, the biggest number for 35 years.
(Econ, 4/30/05, p.40)
2005 Apr 14, Australian
authorities seized some 5 million ecstasy tablets and arrested 4 men in
what they said was the biggest ever haul of the party drug anywhere in
the world.
(AFP, 4/15/05)
2005 Apr 17, In Indonesia
authorities arrested 9 young Australians, the Bali Nine, for trying to
smuggle 8 kilograms of heroin to Australia. In Feb, 2006, 2 of the 9
were sentenced to death and the rest to life in prison. An appeal by 4
sentenced to prison led to a change in their sentences to death. In
2008 3 of the convicted Australians had their death sentences reduced
to life imprisonment.
(Econ, 9/16/06,
p.52)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bali_Nine)(AFP, 3/6/08)
2005 Apr 18, Australia and China
agreed to start talks on a free trade pact. Visiting PM John Howard
also announcing Canberra's recognition of China as free market economy.
(AP, 4/18/05)
2005 Apr 21, Police in Melbourne
seized 18 million dollars (14 million US) worth of the party drug
ecstasy a week after announcing a world-record haul of the substance.
(AFP, 4/22/05)
2005 Apr 26, In Australia, a state
official said thousands of wild camels will be shot in the Outback from
helicopters in an effort to reduce their numbers.
(AP, 4/26/05)
2005 Apr, Australia’s unemployment
rate fell to 5.1%.
(Econ, 5/7/05, Survey p.5)
2005 May 7, In northeastern
Australia a commuter airplane carrying 15 people slammed into a
hillside and everyone on board was feared killed.
(AP, 5/7/05)
2005 May 10, Peter Costello,
Australia’s finance minister, proposed his 10th budget that included
income tax cuts worth almost $17 billion.
(Econ, 5/14/05, p.44)
2005 May 12, Australian police
arrested five men after seizing more than 115 kgs (253 pounds) of
heroin, with a street value of more than A$60 million (US$46 million),
hidden in containers of plastic chairs from China.
(AP, 5/13/05)
2005 May 13, East Timor finished
talks in Sydney, Australia, that managed to overcome 2 main sticking
points on their maritime border and revenue from the Greater Sunrise
gasfield. They agreed to defer the boundary issue for 50 years along
with a 50% revenue split.
(Econ, 5/21/05, p.46)
2005 May 20, Australia stepped up
diplomatic efforts to stop Japan from increasing its whale hunt, saying
up to 35 countries were opposed to the plan.
(Reuters, 5/20/05)
2005 May 26, It was reported that
Jayant "Jay" Patel (56), an America surgeon born and trained in India
and linked to the deaths of at least 87 patients in Australia over two
years (2003-2005, had been given glowing references by six colleagues
in the United States despite having been cited for negligence there
earlier. In 2006 a court issued warrants for Patel’s arrest on three
charges of manslaughter and five charges of causing grievous bodily
harm to patients at Bundaberg Base Hospital in Queensland. Patel was
hired at Bundaberg without disclosing that he had been disciplined for
negligence by medical boards in Oregon and New York. In 2008 Patel was
arrested by FBI agents in Oregon.
(AP, 5/26/05)(AP, 11/22/06)(AFP, 3/12/08)
2005 May 27, Schapelle Corby (27),
an Australian woman, was convicted and sentenced to 20 years in prison
for smuggling nine pounds of marijuana onto Indonesia's Bali island.
(AP, 5/27/05)
2005 Jun 2, Australia led 15
countries including Britain, France and Germany in a protest on against
Japan's plans to expand its annual whale hunt.
(AP, 6/2/05)
2005 Jun 2, On Australia's
southwest coast up to 160 whales became stranded on 2 beaches after 2
pods beached themselves.
(AP, 6/2/05)
2005 Jun 4, Australian officials
said a senior Chinese diplomat has sought Australian government
protection for himself and his family, claiming he faces persecution if
he goes home. Analysts said Chen Yonglin's defection could muddy
Canberra's relations with Beijing.
(AP, 6/4/05)
2005 Jun 6, It was reported that
the rate of rural suicide in Australia is among the highest in the
world as farmers battle the stress of years of drought, failed crops,
mounting debt and slowly decaying towns.
(Reuters, 6/6/05)
2005 Jun 7, In Australia 2 Chinese
defectors, one of them a diplomat who walked away from his post, claim
that China is running a spy network in Australia and other Western
countries.
(AP, 6/8/05)
2005 Jun 11, Australian farmers
danced in the rain as downpours delivered the first soaking falls in
over four years to large parts of drought-ridden eastern Australia.
(AP, 6/11/05)
2005 Jun 13, Australia and
Pakistan signed a new counter-terrorism pact during a visit by
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf.
(AP, 6/13/05)
2005 Jun 13, Australia handed East
Timor the base at Moleana, a tiny town near the border with Indonesia,
signaling the end of a six-year mission that heralded a controversial
new era of regional intervention in East Timor.
(AP, 6/12/05)
2005 Jun 15, Iraqi troops, backed
by US forces, freed an Australian hostage after six weeks in captivity.
The release came as a suicide bomber dressed in an Iraqi army uniform
blew himself up in a mess hall north of Baghdad, killing at least 25
Iraqi soldiers and injuring 27. A suicide car bomber slammed into 3
police cars on patrol in eastern Baghdad, killing 8 officers.
(AP, 6/15/05)
2005 Jun 16, Australian scientists
said they have found a way to make blood cells in volume out of human
master cells, which could eventually lead to production of safe blood
cells for transfusions and organ transplants.
(Reuters, 6/16/05)
2005 Jun 17, Australia pledged to
ease a controversial policy of locking up refugees.
(AFP, 6/18/05)
2005 Jun 18, In Australia more
than a dozen Chinese nationals detained for immigration violations
slashed their wrists and body parts in attempted suicide fearing they
will be deported.
(AFP, 6/18/05)
2005 Jun 21, In Australia PM John
Howard introduced new legislation on the detention of illegal
immigrants.
(Econ, 6/25/05, p.42)
2005 Jun 23, Australia's Deputy
Prime Minister John Anderson resigned because of health concerns.
(AP, 6/23/05)
2005 Jun 30, In Australia a
clinical audit of cases handled by surgeon Dr. Jayant Patel nicknamed
"Dr. Death" by his former colleagues, has found he contributed to eight
patient deaths during his two years at a Queensland hospital, far fewer
than earlier reported.
(AP, 6/30/05)
2005 Jun 30, Storms lashed
Australia's east coast in a violent end to one of the country's worst
droughts on record.
(AP, 6/30/05)
2005 Jul 3, One of Australia's 12
Apostles has disappeared. One of nine limestone stacks that made up the
famous landmark off Australia's southern coast collapsed into the
Indian Ocean.
(AP, 7/4/05)
2005 Jul 8, Australia granted
fugitive former Chinese diplomat Chen Yonglin a permanent visa allowing
him to stay in the country indefinitely.
(AFP, 7/8/05)
2005 Jul 16, In Australia Sir
Ronald Wilson (82), a former World War II fighter pilot who became a
respected Australian judge and headed a national inquiry into the
"stolen generations" of Aboriginal children, died.
(AP, 7/17/05)
2005 Jul 21, In Indonesia the
first suspect to face charges in the 2004 bombing of the Australian
Embassy was sentenced to 3 ½ years in prison for assisting the
attack's perpetrators, but was cleared of more serious charges.
(AP, 7/21/05)
2005 Jul 26, A
government-commissioned study said Australia will become warmer and
drier with average national temperatures rising as much as two degrees
Celsius and rainfall decreasing significantly by 2030.
(AFP, 7/26/05)
2005 Jul 27, Environment Minister
Ian Campbell said Australia and the US have been secretly negotiating a
new international pact on greenhouse gas emissions to replace the Kyoto
Protocol, which they refused to sign.
(AP, 7/27/05)
2005 Jul 27, In Australia Bob Carr
(57), premier of New South Wales, resigned. He was replaced by Morris
Lemma.
(Econ, 8/6/05, p.34)
2005 Jul 29, The ASEAN summit
concluded in Vientiane, Laos. Australia agreed to sign a non-aggression
pact with the group in exchange for an invitation to another summit,
where ASEAN hopes to start work on an East Asian free-trade area.
(Econ, 7/30/05, p.39)
2005 Jul 31, The HMAS Brisbane, a
decommissioned U.S.-built Australian naval destroyer (1966-2001), was
scuttled with explosives off the coast of Queensland. The vessel sank
evenly to its resting point about 115 feet beneath the surface to
become an artificial reef and a major diving attraction.
(AP, 7/31/05)
2005 Aug 9, Australia’s Foreign
Minister Alexander Downer said Australia and China are negotiating an
agreement to allow Australia to export uranium to China for peaceful
purposes.
(AP, 8/9/05)
2005 Aug 16, It was reported that
scientists in Australia's tropical north are collecting blood from
crocodiles in the hope of developing a powerful antimicrobial drugs for
humans, after tests showed that the reptile's immune system kills HIV.
(Reuters, 8/16/05)
2005 Aug 17, Australian scientists
said that cyclone Ingrid, which lashed northeastern Australia in March,
inflicted damage on 10 per cent of the Great Barrier Reef.
(AP, 8/17/05)
2005 Aug 23, Australians who take
drugs into Asia are stupid and should not expect to be bailed out by
the Australian government, PM John Howard said after another two
Australians were detained in Indonesia over drugs.
(Reuters, 8/23/05)
2005 Aug 23, Australia’s
government and moderate Muslim leaders pledged to join forces in the
fight against terrorism and blend Australian values with Islamic
teachings at mosques and schools.
(AP, 8/23/05)
2005 Aug 30, In Australia
protesters demanding an end to the Iraq war and a cut in Third World
debt broke through a steel fence around the Sydney Opera House at the
start of the Forbes Global CEO Conference.
(AP, 8/30/05)
2005 Aug 30, Australia and New
Zealand lobbied the United Nations Security Council to indict
Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe and his government in the
International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity.
(AP, 8/30/05)
2005 Sep 6, Australia staged a
high seas arrest of a Cambodian-flagged ship with an international crew
suspected of fishing illegally in sub-Antarctic waters.
(AFP, 9/10/05)
2005 Sep 14, In Australia the
CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization)
Total Wellbeing Diet book was reported to have already sold 370,000
copies. Publishers targeted sales of one million to the country of just
20 million people.
(AP, 9/14/05)
2005 Sep 19, Mark Latham, former
head of Australia’s Labor Party, published “The Latham Diaries,” the
story of the Labor Party from 1996-2005, and a sobering account of the
state of Australian democracy 100 years after Federation.
(www.mup.unimelb.edu.au/catalogue/0-522-85215-7.html)
2005 Sep 25, In Australia 20
high-tech solar-powered cars from 10 countries set off on a 3,000
kilometer (1,860 mile) race across the vast outback in the 8th World
Solar Challenge. The Nuna team of the Delft University of Technology
from the Netherlands scored a hat-trick with their third victory in a
row; their Nuna 3 won with a record average speed of 103 km/h.
(AP,
9/25/05)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Solar_Challenge)
2005 Sep 27, Australian PM John
Howard won unanimous support from state premiers for tough new
counter-terrorism laws, including detention without charge and
electronic tagging of suspects.
(AP, 9/27/05)
2005 Sep 28, In Australia a team
from Holland, known more for its windmills than its sunshine, won a
four-day, 1,860 mile, international solar-powered car race across
deserts, notching up their third straight victory. The "Challenge," to
design and build a car capable of crossing Australia on the power of
daylight, was launched in 1987 and teams and individuals from
corporations and universities throughout the world take part.
(AP, 9/29/05)
2005 Sep 29, Officials announced
that Rupert Murdoch's Asian broadcast business is buying a 20 percent
stake in the Indonesian television network ANTV.
(AP, 9/30/05)
2005 Oct 3, Australians Barry J.
Marshall and Robin Warren won the 2005 Nobel Prize in medicine for
showing that bacterial infection, not stress, was to blame for painful
ulcers in the stomach and intestine.
(AP, 10/3/05)
2005 Oct 10, Japan's space agency
conducted a test flight of a supersonic jet prototype in the Australian
Outback.
(AP, 10/10/05)
2005 Oct 25-2005 Oct 26, Over 130
whales died in a mass stranding on a remote beach in Australia’s
southern island state of Tasmania.
(AP, 10/25/05)
2005 Oct, Australia’s government
announced a deal with the Labor government of the Northern Territories
to shake up communal management of aboriginal land by introducing
market-driven incentives.
(Econ, 11/19/05, p.46)
2005 Nov 8, Police in Australia
arrested 17 terror suspects, including a prominent radical Muslim
cleric, in a string of raids and said they had foiled a major terror
attack.
(AP, 11/7/05)
2005 Nov 15, Hundreds of thousands
of workers staged what unionists called the biggest protest in
Australia's history against PM John Howard's proposed labor reforms.
(AP, 11/15/05)
2005 Nov 17, Australian
researchers confirmed they have scrapped 10 years of research into
genetically modified peas because the altered version caused lung
inflammation in mice.
(AFP, 11/18/05)
2005 Nov 17, It was reported that
Syria had detained 4 Australian-Iraqi women at the Damascus airport for
allegedly trying to take gun parts hidden in a child's toy onto a plane
bound for Australia.
(AFP, 11/17/05)
2005 Nov 23, Australia's PM John
Howard visited Pakistan's devastated earthquake zone and announced a
further 37 million dollars in aid for victims of the disaster.
(AP, 11/23/05)
2005 Dec 1, Reserve Bank of
Australia (RBA) board member Robert Gerard announced his resignation, a
week after revelations about his disputes with the tax office.
(AFP, 12/01/05
2005 Dec 1, Australia and East
Timor finalized a revenue-sharing pact covering the $5 billion Sunrise
natural-gas project.
(WSJ, 12/2/05, p.A8)
2005 Dec 2, Singapore executed
25-year-old Australian Nguyen Tuong Van for drug trafficking, after he
had a "beautiful last visit" with his family. Australia's leader
protested the sentence, saying it would damage ties.
(AP, 12/02/05)
2005 Dec 2, Peter Menegazzo, one
of Australia's main cattle barons, was among four people killed in a
light plane crash in the Outback.
(AP, 12/03/05)
2005 Dec 7, Australia’s Treasurer
Peter Costello unveiled details of the nation’s Future Fund with seed
capital of $13.56 billion to cover public service pension liabilities.
(WSJ, 12/8/05, p.A14)
2005 Dec 8, In the first visit to
Australia by a Turkish leader, PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan criticized
military solutions to the so-called "war on terror", saying the US-led
invasion of Iraq had transformed the country into a training ground for
extremists.
(AFP, 12/08/05)
2005 Dec 11, In Australia racial
tension erupted into violence on a Sydney beach when around 5,000
people, some yelling racist chants, attacked youths of a Middle Eastern
background. White youths were angered by reports that youths of
Lebanese descent had assaulted two lifeguards. Young men of Arab
descent retaliated in several Sydney suburbs, fighting with police and
smashing cars.
(AP, 12/11/05)(AP, 12/11/06)
2005 Dec 12, Young people riding
in vehicles smashed cars and store windows in suburban Sydney, a day
after thousands of drunken white youths attacked people they believed
were of Arab descent at a beach in the same area in one of Australia's
worst outbursts of racial violence. About 50 cars had swept into the
area, disgorging men of Middle Eastern appearance who began trashing
every car in sight with baseball bats.
(AFP, 12/12/05)
2005 Dec 13, In Australia a jury
convicted Bradley John Murdoch (47), a mechanic, in the July 14, 2001,
Outback death of British backpacker Peter Falconio (28). He also was
convicted of assaulting and abducting Falconio's girlfriend, Joanne
Lees. Murdoch was given a mandatory life sentence by Northern Territory
Supreme Court Justice Brian Martin.
(AP, 12/13/05)
2005 Dec 15, An emergency sitting
of Australia’s parliament passed special laws allowing Sydney police to
"lockdown" parts of Sidney to stop racial unrest. The New South Wales
(NSW) state parliament also increased the penalty for rioting from 10
to 15 years and doubled the sentence for affray to 10 years.
(Reuters, 12/15/05)
2005 Dec 15, Australia announced a
major program to expand and upgrade its military forces to cope with
increasing commitments at home and abroad.
(AP, 12/15/05)
2005 Dec 20, One in three
Australians believe too many immigrants are allowed into the country
and 16 percent oppose multiculturalism, according to a survey after the
country's worst racial violence in decades.
(AFP, 12/20/05)
2005 Dec 26, Kerry Packer (68),
Australian media mogul, died in his Sydney home. He built his empire on
the Nine Network television station and the Australian Consolidated
Press magazine publishing business but in recent years had concentrated
his efforts more in the gaming industry.
(SFC, 12/27/05, p.B4)(Econ, 1/7/06, p.77)
2005 Dec 28, Australian investment
bank Macquarie Bank Ltd. said it had bought an 81 percent interest in
two Canadian healthcare projects, nine months after acquiring a
Canadian aged care housing provider.
(Reuters, 12/28/05)
2005 Dec 30, Across southeast
Australia firefighters battled to contain scores of wildfires in
scorching, tinder-dry conditions and were bracing for more blazes in
the days ahead.
(AP, 12/30/05)
2006 Jan 1, Raging bushfires have
destroyed at least 10 homes and threatened scores more in southeast
Australia as a scorching heat wave hit Sydney with its hottest New
Year's Day on record.
(AFP, 1/1/06)
2006 Jan 2, In eastern Australia 5
people were killed when a plane carrying a group of skydivers plunged
into a dam near Brisbane.
(AP, 1/2/06)
2006 Jan 7, In eastern Australia a
21-year-old woman died after a shark attack near North Stradbroke
Island. A camper on a nearby beach said the woman had been scuba diving
in waist-deep water at the time of the attack.
(AP, 1/7/06)
2006 Jan 10, Australia said it
will send an extra 110 troops to Afghanistan to bolster the fight
against Islamist militants, increasing its presence in the country to
about 300.
(AP, 1/10/06)
2006 Jan 11, The Asia Pacific
Partnership on Clean Development and Climate opened in Sidney. It
brought together senior ministers from the US, Australia, Japan, China,
South Korea and India, along with executives from energy and resource
firms. The US and Australia insisted at the opening of a two-day
climate change conference that industry leaders can be relied upon to
voluntarily slash emissions blamed for heating the earth's atmosphere.
(AP, 1/11/06)
2006 Jan 11, In Egypt a tour bus
carrying Australian tourists overturned on a wet highway, killing six
people and injuring at least 24.
(AP, 1/11/06)
2006 Jan 12, Australia and East
Timor agreed to equally share revenue from the Greater Sunrise natural
gas project in the Timor Sea.
(WSJ, 1/13/06, p.A8)
2006 Jan 16, A lawyer told a
government inquiry that Australia's wheat exporter, AWB Ltd., knowingly
provided hundreds of millions of dollars in kickbacks to Saddam
Hussein's regime and deceived the United Nations about the payments
under the oil-for-food program.
(AP, 1/16/06)
2006 Jan 19, Dragan Vasiljkovic, a
Serbian-Australian man accused of ordering the torture of Croats during
the bloody breakup of the former Yugoslavia, was arrested in Sydney.
Authorities said Vasiljkovic trained and commanded a unit of the
Croatian Serb special forces known as the "Kninjas." At the time, the
rebels were engaged in a major campaign of ethnic cleansing, forcing
tens of thousands of local Croats to flee their homes.
(Reuters, 1/20/06)
2006 Jan 23, In Australia
commercial fishing was banned in Sydney's harbor due to dangerous
levels of poisonous dioxin being found in prawns and fish. Prawn
fishing had already been banned a month earlier. Greenpeace said some
of the pollution originated in Homebush Bay on the Parramatta River,
some 12 kilometers (7.5 miles) from Sydney Harbor Bridge. From 1957 to
1976 Union Carbide made chlorinated herbicides there, including
2,4,5,-T a component of the infamous Agent Orange used during the
Vietnam War.
(AP, 1/24/06)
2006 Jan 23, Wildfires raged
across southern Australia. A firefighter was killed as a fire truck
overturned speeding to a blaze. Distraught ranchers shot cattle injured
by the flames.
(AP, 1/23/06)
2006 Jan 25, In Australia
emergency crews rushed to clean up 10,000 liters of fuel oil that
fouled mangroves off Gladstone City near the Great Barrier Reef after
two vessels collided.
(AP, 1/25/06)
2006 Jan 28, Warren Mundine,
previously an advisor on Aboriginal issues to the conservative
government of PM John Howard, took over the role of Australian Labor
Party president. The first Aborigine to be elected president of an
Australian political party, Mundine said that he wanted to enter
parliament after his term finishes.
(AFP, 1/28/06)
2006 Jan 28, A 20-million US
dollar FA-18 Hornet strike fighter jet was lost when it crashed during
a training exercise off the Queensland coast.
(AFP, 1/30/06)
2006 Jan 30, Australian Gas Light
Company (AGL) announced that it would build the country's largest wind
farm as part of efforts to meet its legal obligation to invest in
renewable energy. The 95 megawatt facility would cost 236 million
dollars (177 million US dollars) and use 45 wind turbines over an area
of 14 square kilometers (5.6 square miles) near the town of Hallett in
South Australia.
(AFP, 1/30/06)
2006 Feb 6, Police investigating
the deaths of 13 hospital patients in eastern Australia on Monday
recommended charging Dr. Jayant Patel, an Indian-born American surgeon,
with four counts of manslaughter and six counts of grievous bodily harm.
(AP, 2/6/06)
2006 Feb 6, Australian police
arrested three men over a shipment of almost 46 kilograms (101 pounds)
of crystal methamphetamine hidden in a speedboat imported from Canada.
(AFP, 2/7/06)
2006 Feb 7, Mario Condello (53),
an Australian underworld figure due to face court on incitement to
murder charges, was shot dead in his driveway overnight, bringing the
toll in a gangland war to 28. Melbourne's gang war began in 1998 when
self-styled "Godfather" Alphonse Gangitano, 40, was shot dead in his
laundry.
(Reuters, 2/7/06)
2006 Feb 8, Australia and New
Zealand vowed to work to build a single economic market on the back of
strengthening trade ties, but stopped short of endorsing a single
currency.
(AP, 2/8/06)
2006 Feb 9, Australian senators
voted to remove an effective ban on abortion drug RU-486.
(AP, 2/9/06)
2006 Feb 9, An Australian inquiry
into alleged kickbacks paid to Iraq under the UN oil-for-food program
claimed its first scalp with the resignation of Andrew Lindberg, the
chief executive of wheat exporter AWB.
(AFP, 2/9/06)
2006 Feb 13, In Indonesia 2
Australians were sentenced to life in prison for trying to smuggle
heroin from the Indonesian resort island of Bali to their homeland.
(AP, 2/13/06)
2006 Feb 14, Two Australians were
sentenced to death by firing squad for leading a drug smuggling ring on
Indonesia's resort island of Bali, verdicts that could strain ties
between the countries. Andrew Chan (22) and Myuran Sukumaran (24) had
masterminded the trafficking of 18 pounds of heroin to their homeland.
(AP, 2/14/06)
2006 Feb 15, An Australian
television network broadcast photographs and video clips that it said
were previously unpublished images of the abuse of Iraqis held in US
military custody at Abu Ghraib prison in 2003. Many of the images
broadcast were more graphic than those previously published, showing
what appear to be dead bodies, as well as wounded people and prisoners
performing sex acts.
(AP, 2/15/06)
2006 Feb 16, Australia's
parliament stripped regulatory control of an abortion drug from the
country's health minister, a staunch Roman Catholic who once warned of
an "epidemic" of abortion in Australia.
(AP, 2/16/06)
2006 Feb 22, Former US President
Bill Clinton and Australia announced plans to combat AIDS in China,
Vietnam and Papua New Guinea, warning that 40 percent of all new
infections could be in the Asia-Pacific region by 2010.
(AP, 2/22/06)
2006 Feb 26, In Australia Joseph
Terrence Thomas (32), a former taxi driver known as "Jihad Jack" and
alleged by prosecutors to be an agent for Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda
network, was convicted of receiving funds from the group but acquitted
on more serious terrorism charges.
(AFP, 2/26/06)
2006 Mar 2, Vietnam announced it
has commuted the death sentence of Nguyen Van Chinh (45), a convicted
Australian drug trafficker, to life imprisonment after heavy lobbying
by the Australian government.
(AP, 3/2/06)
2006 Mar 6, PM John Howard in New
Delhi said Australia will consider selling uranium to India if it is
convinced about New Delhi's commitment to follow global nuclear
safeguards for its civilian atomic reactors.
(AP, 3/6/06)
2006 Mar 12, Queen Elizabeth II
arrived in Australia for a five-day state visit that has reignited the
simmering debate over whether she should remain the country's head of
state.
(AP, 3/12/06)
2006 Mar 15, Britain's Queen
Elizabeth II was greeted with protests, as well as pomp, when she
arrived in the southern Australian city Melbourne to open the
Commonwealth Games.
(AP, 3/15/06)
2006 Mar 18, Anti-war protesters
marched in Australia, Asia, Turkey and Europe in demonstrations that
marked the third anniversary of the US-led invasion of Iraq with a
demand that coalition troops pull out.
(AP, 3/18/06)
2006 Mar 19, Australian Prime
Minister John Howard's Liberal Party was defeated at the weekend in two
state elections where Labor governments held on to power.
(AP, 3/19/06)
2006 Mar 20, The most powerful
storm to hit Australia in three decades laid waste to its northeastern
coast, mowing down sugar and banana plantations with 180 mph winds but
causing no deaths or serious injuries.
(AP, 3/20/06)
2006 Mar 21, Troops began
delivering aid to an estimated 7,000 people who lost their homes to the
cyclone that battered Australia's northeastern coast.
(AP, 3/21/06)
2006 Mar 23, The Australian air
force sank a North Korean cargo ship for target practice. It had been
seized in 2003 after being used to smuggle heroin into Australia.
(AP, 3/23/06)
2006 Mar 24, Indonesia recalled
its ambassador in Australia in response to the granting of temporary
asylum to 42 of 43 Papuans who landed in northern Australia by boat in
January. The asylum request from the 43rd Papuan is still being
considered.
(AFP, 3/26/06)
2006 Mar 25, Researchers said a
prototype scramjet engine, that could ultimately lead to two-hour jet
flights from Australia to Britain, was launched in the South Australian
outback.
(AFP, 3/25/06)
2006 Mar 30, Researchers in
Australia's Outback launched a test flight of a supersonic jet designed
to fly 10 times faster than conventional airplanes.
(AP, 3/30/06)
2006 Mar 30, Australia's remote
northwest shore was lashed by 80 mph winds as Cyclone Glenda made
landfall. There were no immediate reports of substantial damage.
(AP, 3/30/06)
2006 Mar 31, Australian police
arrested and charged three men with alleged links with a terrorist
organization after counter-terrorism teams swooped on Melbourne's
northern suburbs.
(Reuters, 3/31/06)
2006 Apr 1, Chinese Premier Wen
Jiabao arrived in Australia for a visit aimed at finalizing a uranium
supply deal and speeding up free trade negotiations between the two
nations.
(AFP, 4/1/06)
2006 Apr 3, Australia agreed to
sell China uranium for nuclear power stations despite concerns that
Beijing could divert the material to atomic weapons.
(AP, 4/3/06)
2006 Apr 7, Australian PM John
Howard moved to ease Indonesian outrage over a decision to grant visas
to asylum-seekers from Papua, saying his government would review the
process.
(AP, 4/7/06)
2006 Apr 10, Mark Vaile,
Australia's trade minister, said he did not read a string of diplomatic
cables warning that the country's monopoly wheat exporter allegedly was
paying multimillion-dollar kickbacks to Saddam Hussein's regime.
(AP, 4/10/06)
2006 Apr 10, Australian scientists
reported the discovery of an "anti-freeze gene" that allows Antarctic
grass to survive at minus 30°C, saying it could prevent
multi-million-dollar crop losses from frost.
(www.techimo.com/newsapp/index.pl?photo=16314)
2006 Apr 18, Australia said it
will send up to 110 troops to the Solomon Islands to help restore calm
after the election of a new prime minister sparked rioting.
(AP, 4/18/06)
2006 Apr 21, Australia became debt
free as it paid off the last of its government borrowing.
(WSJ, 4/21/06, p.A7)
2006 Apr 30, In Australia rescuers
made voice contact with two miners trapped a half mile beneath the
earth for nearly a week. Todd Russell (34) and Brant Webb (37) were
trapped April 25 when a small earthquake caused a rock collapse at the
Beaconsfield Gold Mine. One of their co-workers was killed in the quake.
(AP, 5/1/06)
2006 May 3, Australia raised its
benchmark interest rate by a quarter point to 5.75%. This sent its
currency to a seven-month peak against the US dollar.
(www.indiainfoline.com/news/news.asp?dat=77648)
2006 May 9, Australia's government
unveiled a big-spending "boom budget" that will use a projected 10
billion dollar (7.7 billion US) surplus to finance across-the-board tax
cuts and build up the military and national security agencies.
(AP, 5/9/06)
2006 May 9, In Beaconsfield,
Australia, Brant Webb and Todd Russell were rescued from a mine more
than a half mile underground. A small earthquake on April 25 trapped
Webb and Russell in the 4-foot-tall safety cage they were working in
under tons of rock. Mourners gathered to bury, Larry Knight, who died
in the same rock collapse.
(AP, 5/9/06)
2006 May 11, In Australia the
local assembly of the Australian Capital Territory (ACT), which
encompasses the national capital Canberra, adopted controversial
legislation in a late night vote providing for civil unions between
same-sex couples, the first such law in Australia.
(AFP, 5/12/06)
2006 May 12, It was announced that
"King Kong" star and Oscar nominee Naomi Watts of Australia has agreed
to serve as special representative for the Joint United Nations Program
on AIDS (UNAIDS).
(AFP, 5/12/06)
2006 May 17, In Australia
widespread evidence of child abuse in Aboriginal communities has
sparked calls for the Australian government to take greater action to
protect children at risk.
(AFP, 5/17/06)
2006 May 18, In Australia
officials released a 2005 statement in which Australia's national wheat
exporter admitted paying money to Saddam Hussein's regime.
(AFP, 5/18/06)
2006 May 18, A Canadian citizen
and two US navy sailors were handed lengthy prison sentences for
attempting to smuggle methamphetamine into Australia stashed in the
radar dome of a visiting warship.
(AP, 5/18/06)
2006 May 18, Australian PM John
Howard, during his first official visit to Ottawa, urged Canada to work
with his country on climate change, much to the horror of
environmentalists. Australia did not ratify the Kyoto Protocol.
(AFP, 5/18/06)
2006 May 20, Australian Aborigines
rejected calls for military peacekeepers to protect indigenous women
and children from violence, as a new report revealed high levels of
sexual abuse of young indigenous males.
(AFP, 5/20/06)
2006 May 24, International
peacekeepers and troops from Australia and New Zealand were headed to
East Timor to help restore order after gunbattles between disgruntled
ex-soldiers and the military killed two people and wounded nine.
(AP, 5/24/06)
2006 May 25, PM John Howard
increased Australia’s contingent to Timor-Leste to some 1,300 troops.
500 Malaysians and troops from New Zealand and Portugal were also
deployed.
(Econ, 6/3/06, p.15)
2006 Jun 13, Conservative PM John
Howard's federal government has invoked special powers to invalidate a
territory's law that had been the first in Australia giving legal
recognition to same-sex relationships. On May 11 the Australian Capital
Territory, which includes the national capital Canberra, became the
first of Australia's six states and two territories to legally
recognize gay and lesbian relationships.
(AP, 6/13/06)
2006 Jun 19, Faheem Khalid Lodhi
(36), a Pakistani-born architect was convicted of plotting a terrorist
attack in Australia. He was arrested in April 2004 at his home in
suburban Sydney. The jury convicted Lodhi of charges relating to maps,
chemical inquiries and bombmaking instructions. On August 23 he was
sentenced to 20 years in prison.
(AP, 6/19/06)(AP, 8/23/06)
2006 Jun 21, Australian soldiers
in Baghdad mistakenly opened fire on Iraqi Trade Minister Abdul Falah
al-Sudany's bodyguards, killing one and wounding three people. The
Australian government apologized the next day.
(AP, 6/22/06)
2006 Jun 22, In Australia a
176-year-old giant tortoise, believed to have been studied by famed
English naturalist Charles Darwin, died after a short illness. Harriet
was originally named Harry, as she was mistakenly identified as male,
an error which was not rectified for more than a century.
(AFP, 6/23/06)
2006 Jun 25, Actress Nicole Kidman
married country music star Keith Urban in Sydney, Australia.
(AP, 6/25/07)
2006 Jun 28, Australia's PM Howard
hailed his country's record liquid natural gas export contract with
China as a symbol of blossoming trade between the countries during an
inaugural ceremony with Premier Wen Jiabao at the Chinese gas terminal
in Shenzen.
(AP, 6/28/06)
2006 Jul 4, Two former currency
dealers for Australia's biggest bank were jailed for their part in a
260 million US dollar rogue trading scandal. Vince Ficarra (27) and
David Bullen (34) made a raft of fictitious trades for the National
Australia Bank (NAB) between September 2003 and January 2004 to mask
massive losses. Bullen was sentenced to 44 months in prison and Ficarra
to 28 months.
(AFP, 7/4/06)
2006 Jul 6, An Australian
consortium led by Macquarie Bank said it has agreed to a friendly 1.59
billion US dollar takeover of US utility Duquesne Light Holdings.
(AP, 7/6/06)
2006 Jul 31, Australian PM John
Howard said he would seek a fifth straight term, ending his ambitious
deputy's leadership hopes and cementing his place as one of the world's
most successful conservative leaders.
(Reuters, 7/31/06)
2006 Aug 2, Australia's central
bank raised interest rates by 25 basis points to a six-year high of
6.0% in an effort to head off inflationary pressures in a booming
economy.
(AFP, 8/2/06)
2006 Aug 2, The Australian
government said it had started reducing troop numbers in East Timor as
security in the tiny nation was steadily improving.
(AP, 8/3/06)
2006 Aug 7, Robert McNaught of the
Siding Spring Observatory in Australia made the 1st sighting of a comet
that came to be called Comet McNaught.
(Econ, 1/20/07, p.89)
2006 Aug 14, Australian PM John
Howard ditched plans for a tough new immigration law, conceding he did
not have sufficient support in parliament.
(AFP, 8/14/06)
2006 Aug 18, Anglo-Australian
resources giant BHP Billiton closed its operations at the world's
biggest copper mine in Chile and ended negotiations with striking
workers. The strike began on August 7 at the Escondida Mine, majority
owned by BHP. The Chilean government has signaled it was ready to
intervene.
(AP, 8/18/06)
2006 Aug 25, The UN established a
new mission in East Timor but left Australian-led troops in place
following a dispute over whether they should remain independent or be
part of a UN force.
(Reuters, 8/25/06)
2006 Aug 28, Don Chipp (81), an
Australian politician famed for his pledge to "keep the bastards
honest," died after a long battle with Parkinson's disease.
(AFP, 8/29/06)
2006 Aug 30, Canadian miner
Uranium One said it had approved Australia's fourth uranium mine, the
Honeymoon project in the South Australian outback.
(AP, 8/30/06)
2006 Sep 4, Steve Irwin (44),
world-famous Australian "crocodile hunter" and television
environmentalist, was killed by a stingray blow to the chest while
filming a documentary on the Great Barrier Reef. His "Crocodile Hunter"
show, in which the adventurer appeared in his trademark khaki shorts
and shirt, was first broadcast in 1992 and has been shown around the
world on the Discovery cable network ever since.
(AFP, 9/4/06)
2006 Sep 6, An Indonesian appeals
court sentenced four Australian members of a drug smuggling ring to
death, prompting a protest from the Australian government. Scott Rush,
Tan Duc Than Nguyen, Si Yi Chen and Matthew Norman had originally
received life terms for trying to take home more than 18 pounds of
heroin from Indonesia's resort island of Bali last year.
(AP, 9/6/06)
2006 Sep 19, In Australia Judge
Murray Wilcox granted Aborigines a title claim over Perth, the capital
of Western Australia.
(AFP, 9/20/06)
2006 Sep 19, Australia and Japan
imposed financial sanctions on 11 North Korean companies, a Swiss
company and its president, based on allegations they helped the
communist nation's weapons programs.
(AP, 9/19/06)
2006 Sep 20, In Australia arrested
5 Canadian men after cocaine worth A$35 million ($26 million) was found
hidden inside computer monitors. This was believed to be Australia's
fifth-largest illegal drugs seizure.
(Reuters, 9/21/06)
2006 Oct 9, Cambodian PM Hun Sen
began a six-day official visit to Australia that will focus on security
and trade.
(AFP, 10/9/06)
2006 Oct 12, More than 100
wildfires raged across Australia, sending firefighters scrambling to
protect homes and farmland.
(AP, 10/12/06)
2006 Oct 15, Foreign Minister
Alexander Downer said Australia would cut ministerial contacts with its
northern neighbor until an investigation was held into the escape from
Papua New Guinea of a Solomon Islands official wanted on child sex
charges. Julian Moti, now in custody in the Solomons and facing charges
of illegal entry, was wanted in Australia on child sex charges
involving a 13-year-old girl in Vanuatu in 1997.
(AFP, 10/15/06)(Econ, 10/28/06, p.51)
2006 Oct 16, Australia said it
will ban North Korean ships from entering its ports, toughening its
response to the North's reported nuclear test.
(AP, 10/16/06)
2006 Oct 17, Australia's worsening
drought was driving farmers to suicide. Scientists and politicians said
government funds should be used to help them leave increasingly
unviable land.
(AFP, 10/17/06)
2006 Oct 18, Australia’s Tasmania
state unveiled an historic five million dollar (3.8 million dollars US)
compensation package for Aborigines forcibly taken from their families
as children.
(AFP, 10/18/06)
2006 Oct 22, PM John Howard
announced that Australia is to launch a 500-million-dollar drive to
tackle global warming, as the country battles its worst drought in more
than a century.
(AFP, 10/22/06)
2006 Oct 23, An Australian
scientist said Global warming will force changes to Australia's A$4.8
billion ($3.6 billion) wine export industry, threatening the very
existence of some varieties as temperatures rise.
(AP, 10/23/06)
2006 Oct 24, The environmental
group WWF said Australians soak up more scarce resources than almost
any other nation and produce so much waste on average that their mark
on the world's ecology exceeds China.
(http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20061024/wl_nm/environment_australia_dc)
2006 Oct 27, Australia gave the
green light to the southern hemisphere's largest wind farm, the
country's 2nd major project aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions
announced this week.
(AFP, 10/27/06)
2006 Oct 31, Australia pointed an
accusing finger at China and India as major polluters as it refused to
ratify the Kyoto Protocol on climate change despite a major new report
warning of impending catastrophe.
(AFP, 10/31/06)
2006 Nov 5, Fiji's military,
locked in a standoff with the government, accused Australia on of
breaching its sovereignty by sending an unspecified number of police it
described as mercenaries into the country.
(AP, 11/5/06)
2006 Nov 7, Australia's Senate
narrowly voted to lift the country's ban on cloning human embryos for
stem cell research. A leading expert at a crisis summit said Australia,
already the world's driest inhabited continent, is in the grip of its
worst drought in 1,000 years.
(AP, 11/7/06)(AFP, 11/7/06)
2006 Nov 10, Chevron Corp.
unveiled the Clio field, one of Australia’s biggest natural gas
discoveries.
(WSJ, 11/11/06, p.A4)
2006 Nov 12, The Australian
government denied that a new security pact with Indonesia means that it
would be party to the suppression of Indonesian separatists. The new
agreement was to be signed Nov 13 on the Indonesian resort island of
Lombok.
(AP, 11/12/06)
2006 Nov 18, In Australia police
on horseback and wielding batons clashed with rock- and bottle-throwing
demonstrators outside a G-20 meeting of some the world's top financial
officials, turning what had been promised as a peaceful rally against
poverty into running street skirmishes.
(AP, 11/18/06)
2006 Nov 21, An Australian
government report said Australia should use its uranium to fuel its own
nuclear power industry and curb greenhouse gas emissions. Australia
held 38% of the world’s low cost uranium reserves.
(Econ, 11/25/06, p.59)
2006 Nov 27, An official inquiry
into the corruption that riddled the UN oil-for-food program in Iraq
cleared the Australian government but cited 12 top executives for
bribing Saddam Hussein's regime.
(AFP, 11/27/06)
2006 Nov 30, Tens of thousands of
Australians rallied against controversial industrial relations laws,
temporarily bringing parts of the country's major cities to a halt.
Critics said the laws passed 12 months ago strip power from unions and
erode job security, wages and conditions.
(AFP, 11/30/06)
2006 Dec 4, Insurance Australia
Group (IAG) announced it will buy British motor insurer Equity
Insurance Group for 570 million pounds.
(AFP, 12/4/06)
2006 Dec 6, Australia's Parliament
lifted a four-year ban on cloning human embryos for stem cell research
despite opposition from the prime minister and other party leaders.
(AP, 12/6/06)
2006 Dec 8, Thousands of
firefighters rushed to contain more than a dozen wildfires burning
across southern Australia amid fears that high temperatures and gusty
winds forecast this weekend could further stoke the blazes, threatening
farms and towns.
(AP, 12/8/06)
2006 Dec 10, More than 3,000
firefighters battled some of Australia's worst wildfires in 70 years,
as flames fanned by strong winds and searing temperatures destroyed one
home and threatened dozens more.
(AP, 12/10/06)
2006 Dec 14, Australian flag
carrier and national icon Qantas accepted an increased
11.1-billion-dollar (8.7 billion US) offer from a private equity group,
a day after rejecting a lower bid.
(AP, 12/14/06)
2006 Dec 14, Australia and France
signed an agreement on military cooperation designed to enhance their
ability to work together.
(AFP, 12/14/06)
2006 Dec 18, An Australian court
ruled that providing Web links to copyright-protected music is enough
to make a site legally liable. The case created legal uncertainty for
search engines around the world. The full bench of the Federal Court
upheld a lower court ruling that Stephen Cooper, the operator of the
Web site in question, as well as Comcen, the Internet service provider
that hosted it, were guilty under Australian copyright law.
(AP, 12/21/06)
2006 Dec 20, The USDA for the 1st
time released a database that included the recipients of about $56
billion in subsidies. The USDA also suspended Australia’s state wheat
export monopoly, AWB Ltd., for its dealings with the former Saddam
Hussein regime in Iraq.
(AP, 12/19/06)(WSJ, 12/20/06, p.A8)
2006 Dec, Australia’s PM John
Howard stripped the country’s wheat board of its monopoly following a
bribery scandal.
(Econ, 1/13/07, p.36)
2007 Jan 2, An Australian
Aborigine tribe was granted joint management rights over several state
and national parks under a deal that recognizes its traditional
ownership of the land.
(AP, 1/2/07)
2007 Jan 5, Australia’s Foreign
Minister Alexander Downer said Australia and China have ratified a
nuclear agreement clearing the way for the export of uranium to feed
Beijing's giant nuclear power program.
(AFP, 1/5/07)
2007 Jan 9, An Australian zoo put
a group of humans on display to raise awareness about primate
conservation, with the proviso that they don't get up to any monkey
business.
(Reuters, 1/9/07)
2007 Jan 13, It was reported that
thousands of birds had dropped dead over the past 3 weeks in Western
Australia.
(SFC, 1/13/07, p.B8)
2007 Jan 14, Australia's
Environment Minister Ian Campbell told national radio that Japanese
whaling ships on their annual hunt in the Antarctic are banned from
docking in Australia and should use restraint in looming clashes with
protesters.
(AFP, 1/15/07)
2007 Jan 17, In southern Australia
firefighters battled to contain a wildfire that razed a number of homes
amid soaring temperatures and warnings that the worst was yet to come.
(AP, 1/17/07)
2007 Jan 25, Australia’s PM John
Howard announced multibillion-dollar water reforms aimed at easing
Australia's record drought.
(AP, 1/25/07)
2007 Jan 29, Australia’s
Queensland state planned to introduce recycled sewage to its drinking
water as a record drought threatens water supplies around the nation.
(AP, 1/29/07)
2007 Feb 15, The Australian
government said it was negotiating with the US on a plan to build a
military satellite communications facility in Perth. Defense Minister
Brendan Nelson said the two nations had negotiated for two years to
build a number of ground-based communications systems around Australia.
(AP, 2/15/07)
2007 Feb 20, Claiming a world
first for a national government, Australia’s Environment Minister
Malcolm Turnbull said incandescent lightbulbs would be phased out by
2010 in favor of the more fuel-efficient compact fluorescent bulbs.
(AFP, 2/20/07)
2007 Feb 22, Police clashed with
demonstrators protesting the visit of Vice President Dick Cheney hours
before he arrived in Australia to thank one of Washington's staunchest
supporters in the increasingly unpopular war in Iraq.
(AP, 2/22/07)
2007 Feb 23, An Australian soldier
opened fire on a group of East Timorese attacking him with steel
arrows, killing one of the youths and critically wounding two.
(AP, 2/23/07)
2007 Mar 8, In Malawi Garnet
Halliday (50), a senior Australian mining executive in charge of
the development of a new uranium mine, died with his pilot when his
chartered light aircraft crashed.
(AP, 3/8/07)
2007 Mar 8, At least two people
were killed when a cyclone slammed into Australia's northwest coast,
paralyzing mining operations and leaving a trail of destruction in its
wake.
(AFP, 3/9/07)
2007 Mar 12, Australia's Muslims
announced plans to form a political party to fight what they call
growing Islamophobia spawned by the so-called war on terror.
(AP, 3/12/07)
2007 Mar 12, In outback Australia
floodwaters flowed into the world's largest ephemeral lake, triggering
a once-in-a-decade explosion of bird and fish life in place of arid
salt flats. The Lake Eyre basin itself covers an area bigger than
France, Germany and Italy. The basin last topped its maximum five meter
depth in 1974.
(Reuters, 3/12/07)
2007 Mar 13, Australia and Japan
signed a groundbreaking defense pact in Tokyo that the leaders of both
countries stressed was not aimed at reining in China, but the road
ahead for a two-way trade deal looked rougher.
(AP, 3/13/07)
2007 Mar 14, Cricket’s World Cup
began with the 1st match between Australia and Scotland on St. Kitts in
the Caribbean. The ICC Cricket World Cup was hosted by the West Indies
from March 13 to April 28, 2007.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Cricket_World_Cup#Venues)
2007 Mar 14, It was reported that
wild camels in drought-stricken Australia were in plague proportions,
damaging the environment and property. Australia claimed the world's
largest wild camel population. An estimated one million feral camels,
whose numbers double every eight years, competed for food and water
with native animals and livestock.
(Reuters, 3/14/07)
2007 Mar 23, Australia called on
South Africa to pressure Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe to quit,
saying the 83-year-old leader was a disaster for his country. South
Africa defended its policy on Zimbabwe as the only way to approach
Mugabe's authoritarian government and said African nations might
convene a summit to deal with the crisis.
(AFP, 3/23/07)(Reuters, 3/23/07)
2007 Mar 26, David Hicks, a
31-year-old former kangaroo skinner, entered a surprise guilty plea at
the first session of the tribunals set up after the US Supreme Court
struck down the Pentagon's previous efforts to try Guantanamo prisoners.
(AP, 3/27/07)
2007 Mar 28, In Australia a
passenger ferry plowed into a pleasure boat under Sydney's iconic
Harbor Bridge, killing at least 3 people, including two professional
figure skating judges.
(AP, 3/29/07)
2007 Mar 30, A military judge at
Guantanamo Bay said the prison sentence of David Hicks (31), an
Australian detainee who pleaded guilty to providing material support
for terrorism. would be limited to seven years under terms of a plea
bargain. Marine Corps Judge Col. Ralph Kohlmann said all but nine
months would be suspended. The deal required his silence about alleged
abuse.
(AP, 3/30/07)(AP, 3/31/07)
2007 Mar 30, Leaked extracts of a
UN report said Australia will suffer more droughts, fires, floods and
storms due to global warming and its famous Great Barrier Reef will be
devastated by 2030.
(AFP, 3/30/07)
2007 Apr 5, Australian police
charged two men, including an army captain, with stealing military
rocket launchers, some of which ended up in the hands of a suspected
terrorist.
(AFP, 4/5/07)
2007 Apr 13, Australia’s PM John
Howard said that people with HIV should not be allowed to migrate to
Australia, and that the government was investigating whether it could
tighten existing restrictions.
(AP, 4/13/07)
2007 Apr 17, Australian officials
said that the US and Australia signed an agreement last week to
exchange a few hundred refugees held at island detention camps in an
effort by both governments to discourage future asylum seekers.
(Reuters, 4/17/07)
2007 Apr 18, A catamaran was
discovered deserted off Australia’s Great Barrier Reef with the sails
up, engine running and food on the table. Its crew of 3 was last seen
April 15.
(AP, 4/21/07)
2007 Apr 28, Australia's
centre-left Labor Party scrapped its 25-year ban on new uranium mines
in a move miners said would encourage new investment and growth in the
industry.
(AP, 4/28/07)
2007 Apr 28, In Jamaica the
7-week, 1st Cricket World Cup ended with Australia defeating Sri Lanka.
(Econ, 5/5/07, p.48)
2007 Apr 30, Miles Hilton-Barber
(58), A blind British adventurer, touched down in Sydney Monday to end
an epic 13,500-mile flight by microlight aircraft from London. His
54-day journey was performed under the supervision of sighted co-pilot
Richard Meredith-Hardy.
(AP, 4/30/07)
2007 May 1, Australian police
arrested two men accused of raising money for Sri Lanka's Tamil Tiger
rebels on the pretext of collecting donations for victims of the
devastating 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.
(AP, 5/1/07)
2007 May 3, Australia signed the
first in a series of contracts that will see its air force buy 24
Boeing F/A-18F Super Hornet fighter-bombers from the US Navy.
(AP, 5/3/07)
2007 May 7, Australian gangster
Carl Williams was sentenced to 35 years in jail for murdering three
underworld rivals in a gangland war which lasted almost 10 years and
killed 28 people.
(AP, 5/7/07)
2007 May 8, It was reported that
groups of elderly Australians are setting up backyard laboratories to
manufacture an illegal euthanasia drug so they can kill themselves when
they have had enough of life.
(AFP, 5/8/07)
2007 May 10, EnGeneIC, an
Australian biotechnology firm, said it had developed a means of
delivering anti-cancer drugs directly to cancer cells, which aims to
avoid the debilitating toxicity associated with chemotherapy.
(AP, 5/10/07)
2007 May 13, Australia’s PM John
Howard said the Australian government has banned the country's cricket
team from touring Zimbabwe in September because he does not want to
support the regime of a "grubby dictator."
(AP, 5/13/07)
2007 May 14, An Australian
teenager was awarded record damages including a lifetime income after a
court found that his life had been ruined by bullying at primary
school. Australian authorities said they want to shoot more than 3,000
kangaroos on the fringes of Canberra, noting the animals were growing
in population and eating through the grassy habitats of endangered
species.
(AFP, 5/14/07)(AP, 5/14/07)
2007 May 20, Confessed Australian
al-Qaida supporter David Hicks was transferred to a maximum security
prison in his hometown after spending more than five years at the US
military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
(AP, 5/20/07)
2007 May 21, Mining giant Rio
Tinto and energy powerhouse BP announced plans for a $1.5 billion
coal-fired power project in Australia which would capture carbon
dioxide to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
(AP, 5/21/07)
2007 May 23, Australian PM John
Howard and his Greek counterpart Kostas Karamanlis sealed a deal which
concluded a decades-long debate over pensions for one of the world's
largest expatriate Greek communities.
(AFP, 5/23/07)
2007 May 29, President Bush's
environmental adviser said the US rejects the EU's all-encompassing
target on reduction of carbon emissions. The US and Australia ruled out
a regional carbon trading scheme before the meeting officially opened
in the northern city of Darwin, saying it was too early to impose
uniform targets on APEC nations. APEC members already account for 60%
of global energy demand and their needs are expected to almost double
by 2030. Fidel Castro lambasted President Bush for opposing the EU's
goal for an agreement on carbon emissions at next week's Group of Eight
summit.
(AFP, 5/29/07)(AP, 5/30/07)
2007 May 31, Australia and the
Philippines agreed to expand counter-terrorism cooperation, with elite
Australian troops to train their Philippine counterparts in the restive
south.
(AFP, 5/31/07)
2007 May, Australia’s Victorian
state civil and administrative tribunal ruled that the Peel Hotel in
the southern city of Melbourne could exclude patrons based on their
sexuality.
(Reuters, 5/28/07)
2007 May, In Australia the Slater
& Gordon law firm went public and used the proceeds to go on an
acquisition spree, swallowing 6 smaller rivals within a year.
(Econ, 8/23/08, p.55)
2007 Jun 3, Australia’s PM John
Howard ditched his opposition to a greenhouse gas reduction target for
Australia with a pledge to set a national pollution limit next year.
(AP, 6/3/07)
2007 Jun 5, A passenger train and
truck collided at a rail crossing in southern Australia, killing 11
people and injuring up to 50.
(AP, 6/5/07)(AP, 6/6/07)
2007 Jun 5, Tony Mokbel (42), a
top Australian fugitive, was arrested in Greece. The next day he
accused Australia's authorities of saddling him with a bogus murder
charge to secure his extradition. Mokbel had fled overseas in 2006
while on bail for importing cocaine.
(AFP, 6/6/07)
2007 Jun 8, A wild storm lashed
Australia's east coast, killing at least five people. The Pasha Bulker,
massive coal ship, was pushed onto a sand bank off the port city of
Newcastle, some 90 miles north of Sydney.
(AP, 6/9/07)
2007 Jun 12, Australian PM John
Howard agreed to meet the Dalai Lama after opponents charged he was
afraid of offending China, drawing an immediate rebuke from Beijing.
The Dalai Lama warned major nations not to try to contain China's
economic and military rise, and urged countries like Australia to use
their trading clout to pressure Beijing on human rights.
(AP, 6/12/07)(Reuters, 6/12/07)
2007 Jun 12, In Australia outraged
victims in the Hunter and Central Coast areas north of Sydney said
looters raided abandoned houses, businesses and cars during four days
of violent storms, stealing everything from iPods to alcohol and
cigarettes.
(AP, 6/12/07)
2007 Jun 14, In Australia New
Zealand PM Helen Clark met briefly with the Dalai Lama as they both
toured Australia, where the Tibetan spiritual leader's visit has drawn
fire from China.
(AFP, 6/14/07)
2007 Jun 15, Australian PM John
Howard met the Dalai Lama triggering an angry reaction from China who
accused the premier of turning a "deaf ear" to its concerns. A
government report said child sex abuse is rampant among Aborigines in
remote northern Australia, blaming widespread drunkenness and the
breakdown of traditional societies as among the root causes.
(AP, 6/15/07)
2007 Jun 18, In Australia a good
Samaritan who tried to rescue a woman being dragged by her hair on a
busy Melbourne street was shot dead and two other people were wounded
when her attacker opened fire. On June 20 a Hells Angel biker was
charged with the murder after surrendering to authorities.
(AFP, 6/18/07)(AFP, 6/20/07)
2007 Jun 20, Australia announced
that it will spend 9.3 billion US dollars on five Spanish-designed
warships to boost its capacity to face military threats in the region.
(AP, 6/20/07)
2007 Jun 21, Australia's PM John
Howard announced plans for the federal government to take control of 60
aboriginal communities in the Northern Territories. Plans also included
a ban on pornography and alcohol for Aborigines in the northern areas
and tightened control over their welfare benefits to fight child sex
abuse among them.
(AP, 6/21/07)(Econ, 6/30/07, p.50)
2007 Jun 25, Police and soldiers
began deploying to outback Australia as part of a radical plan to end
child sex abuse in Aboriginal communities which has been criticized as
a return to the nation's paternalistic past.
(AP, 6/25/07)
2007 Jun 28, Dramatic flooding
replaced relentless drought in parts of eastern Australia, as PM John
Howard expressed hopes that the country's worst drought in a century
may be coming to an end.
(AP, 6/28/07)
2007 Jul 1, Australian media
reported that PM John Howard is secretly planning to begin withdrawing
Australian troops from Iraq by February 2008. Howard denied the report,
saying the idea was "absurd."
(AFP, 7/1/07)
2007 Jul 2, Police in Australia
arrested a 27-year-old Indian doctor over the foiled terror attacks in
London and Glasgow, and were interviewing a second doctor in the case.
(AP, 7/3/07)
2007 Jul 2, Australia's second
largest retailer Coles said it had agreed to a 22 billion dollar (18.7
billion US) buyout offer from conglomerate Wesfarmers, the largest
corporate deal in Australian history.
(AP, 7/2/07)
2007 Jul 6, Australia kicked off a
round-the-world series of Live Earth music concerts designed to
highlight climate change with a traditional Aboriginal welcome
ceremony. Former US vice-president Al Gore appeared on video screens to
launch the worldwide initiative.
(AFP, 7/6/07)
2007 Jul 12, Anglo-Australian
miner Rio Tinto launched a 38.1-billion-dollar offer for Canada's
Alcan, trumping US rival Alcoa in a mammoth bid to create the world's
largest aluminium company.
(AP, 7/12/07)
2007 Jul 14, In London an Indian
doctor arrested the same day his brother allegedly drove a Jeep
Cherokee loaded with gas bombs into Glasgow's main airport was charged
with a terrorism offense. A distant cousin in Australia was also
charged in the failed attacks in London and Glasgow.
(AP, 7/14/07)
2007 Jul 15, Antun Gudelj (59), a
Croatian man charged with killing three police officials in the early
days of the 1991 Serb-Croat war, was extradited from Australia to
Croatia to face a new trial after an earlier pardon.
(AP, 7/15/07)
2007 Jul 26, East Timor's
President Jose Ramos-Horta asked visiting Australian PM John Howard to
keep Australian peacekeepers in the young nation until the end of 2008.
(AFP, 7/26/07)
2007 Jul 27, Mohamed Haneef (27),
an Indian doctor, was freed from custody after Australia's chief
prosecutor said that a charge linking him to failed terrorist bombings
in Britain was a mistake.
(AP, 7/27/07)
2007 Aug 1, The South Australian
Supreme Court ordered its own state government to pay Bruce Trevorrow
$448,000 for damages caused when he was taken from his parents without
their knowledge 50 years ago.
(AP, 8/2/07)
2007 Aug 8, Australia's central
bank hiked interest rates 0.25 points to a decade-high 6.5 percent in
an unprecedented pre-election move that the government admitted creates
a political headache.
(AFP, 8/8/07)
2007 Aug 14, A new study said
nearly every Australian city will have to find new water supplies over
the next decade as climate change and population growth stretch the
nation's already limited water resources.
(AP, 8/14/07)
2007 Aug 16, Australia’s PM John
Howard said he would lift a ban on selling uranium to India, subject to
strict conditions.
(Econ, 8/25/07, p.40)
2007 Aug 21, An Australian court
ruled that the country's immigration minister wrongly revoked a work
visa for an Indian doctor who was briefly accused of links with a
failed British car bomb plot in June.
(AP, 8/21/07)
2007 Aug 22, A distributor said
Chinese-made blankets containing high levels of formaldehyde have been
recalled across Australia and New Zealand, amid rising global concern
over the safety of products from China.
(AP, 8/22/07)
2007 Aug 25, Australia's
multi-billion dollar racing industry was plunged into turmoil on after
an outbreak of equine influenza triggered a national lockdown.
(Reuters, 8/25/07)
2007 Aug 26, Australia released a
new draft citizenship test. The 40-page document outlining citizenship
application procedures said migrants who want to become Australian
citizens will have to be able to correctly identify the country's prime
minister and national flower.
(AFP, 8/26/07)
2007 Aug 30, A major new study
said nearly 10 percent of Australians are living in poverty despite a
booming economy, but its findings were disputed by PM John Howard.
(AP, 8/30/07)
2007 Aug 31, Australia and India
agreed to study the possibility of a free trade agreement. Trade
Minister Warren Truss said it was a natural result of New Delhi's
rising economic power.
(AP, 8/31/07)
2007 Sep 3, Climate change
activists staged a break-in at an Australian power station as a pattern
of guerrilla-style raids emerged ahead of a summit of Asia-Pacific
leaders in Sydney.
(AFP, 9/3/07)
2007 Sep 4, In Australia 2
Indonesians were jailed over a people-smuggling operation to bring 83
Sri Lankans into Australia. The two pleaded guilty to smuggling 83 Sri
Lankans into Australian waters in February near Christmas Island in the
Indian Ocean.
(AFP, 9/4/07)
2007 Sep 4, US President George W.
Bush arrived in Sydney for a regional summit with the city locked down
in the biggest security operation in Australian history.
(AP, 9/4/07)
2007 Sep 4, 5-nation war games
began in the Bay of Bengal. Indian and US aircraft carriers launched
fighter jets into the air as American submarines cruised below
Japanese, Australian and Singaporean warships.
(AP, 9/6/07)
2007 Sep 5, In Australia President
Bush urged Pacific Rim nations to band together on tackling global
warming, saying all major polluters must be part of any solution.
(AP, 9/5/07)
2007 Sep 6, Australian PM John
Howard said he would tell Russian President Vladimir Putin that he
would not approve the sale of uranium to Moscow if there was any
possibility it could be resold to Iran or Syria.
(Reuters, 9/6/07)
2007 Sep 6, In Australia Pacific
Rim nations agreed that climate change was of "vital interest," but
officials squabbled over whether their leaders should include energy
efficiency targets in a statement at their annual summit. China’s
President Hu Jintao, on the defensive over recalls of tainted
toothpaste, pet food and toys, told President Bush that Beijing was
stepping up product safety inspections.
(AP, 9/6/07)
2007 Sep 7, Leaders of Australia
and Russia signed a deal to export Australian uranium to fuel Russian
nuclear reactors, but promised it would not be transferred to Iran's
disputed atomic program.
(AP, 9/7/07)
2007 Sep 7, In Australia Pacific
Rim negotiators agreed on a joint statement on global warming that
would ask developing nations to commit to energy efficiency targets and
acknowledge that wealthy countries have greater responsibility for the
problem.
(AP, 9/7/07)
2007 Sep 8, Asia Pacific leaders
overcame differences on climate change to agree to take action against
greenhouse gases at a key summit protected by the tightest security in
Australian history.
(AP, 9/8/07)
2007 Sep 14, Australian police
confirmed that corrupt police officers were linked with a bloody
gangland war which raged for years in the country's second largest
city. Melbourne's criminal war began in the late 1990s and claimed 29
lives.
(AFP, 9/14/07)
2007 Sep 19, New Zealand police
found the body of Anan Liu (27), a young Asian woman in a car outside
the home of a three-year old toddler, Qian Xun Xue, nicknamed
"Pumpkin," who was abandoned at a train station in Australia. The
father Nai Zin Xue (54), a martial arts expert and magazine publisher,
caught a flight to Los Angeles after abandoning the toddler. US
authorities launched a manhunt for Xue, who was captured nearly five
months later by six Chinese Americans near Atlanta, Georgia. In 2009 a
New Zealand jury found him guilty of his wife's murder.
(Reuters, 9/19/07)(AP, 6/19/09)
2007 Sep 21, Australia’s
ex-senator Bob Collins (b.1946), who served as a minister in the early
1990s, died, days before he was due to face a hearing on 21 charges of
child sex abuse dating back three decades.
(AFP, 9/26/07)
2007 Sep 24, An Australian man was
conscious and spoke to his medical team during life-saving brain
surgery in what doctors are claiming as a world-first procedure with
cutting-edge technology.
(AP, 9/24/07)
2007 Sep 28, Australia's Anglican
Church said women can be appointed bishops for the first time, drawing
immediate criticism from conservatives.
(AFP, 9/28/07)
2007 Sep 29, Lois Maxwell
(b.1927), the woman James Bond never seduced, died in Western
Australia. The Canadian-born actress, born as Lois Ruth Hooker, took on
the Miss Moneypenny role in 1962 alongside Sean Connery in "Dr No," and
continued for 14 Bond films. Her films also included "Bedtime For
Bonzo" with Ronald Reagan.
(AFP, 10/1/07)
2007 Oct 2, Australia’s
Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews said that over the past two years
the intake of Africans has been cut from 70% of the total of 13,000
refugees to just 30%.
(AFP, 10/2/07)
2007 Oct 3, PM John Howard
said Australia will not take any more refugees from Africa until at
least the middle of next year. He said Australia's 13,000-a-year
refugee intake was being "rebalanced" from Africa to the Middle East
and Asia where the need was more acute.
(AFP, 10/3/07)
2007 Oct 4, The Australian
government approved plans for a controversial multi-billion-dollar pulp
mill in Tasmania despite objections it could ruin one of the country's
most pristine environments.
(AFP, 10/4/07)
2007 Oct 8, Australia suffered its
first combat fatality in the war on terror when a soldier was killed in
a roadside bomb attack in Afghanistan.
(AP, 10/8/07)
2007 Oct 9, Australia's third
richest man, cardboard box billionaire Richard Pratt, apologized for
forming a price-fixing cartel with his main rival Amcor.
(AFP, 10/9/07)
2007 Oct 17, In Australia a group
of children playing in a suburban Sidney park opened a suitcase they
found floating in a pond and discovered the body of a youngster inside.
(AP, 10/17/07)
2007 Oct 21,
Australia's opposition Labor Party chief Kevin Rudd beat PM
Howard in an election debate marred by controversy when a national
television network's coverage was deliberately cut. Rudd had once
worked as a business consultant in China and spoke fluent Mandarin.
(AFP, 10/22/07)(Econ, 12/1/07, p.52)
2007 Oct 24, Anglo-Australian
mining giant Rio Tinto said all conditions on its $38.1 billion
takeover of Alcan Inc had been satisfied and most shareholders had
accepted its offer.
(AP, 10/24/07)
2007 Oct 30, An Indonesian court
dismissed a legal challenge to the death penalty brought by lawyers for
members of an Australian drugs gang on death row for heroin smuggling.
(AFP, 10/30/07)
2007 Nov 7, Australia's central
bank raised interest rates 0.25 points to an 11-year high of 6.75
percent in a move expected to hurt PM John Howard's re-election hopes.
(AFP, 11/7/07)
2007 Nov 11, Animal rights
activists attacked as inhumane an Australian state government's plans
to shoot more than 10,000 wild horses to protect the environment.
(AP, 11/11/07)
2007 Nov 12, Voters cast the first
ballots in Australia's elections as a new opinion poll showed
conservative PM John Howard heading for a landslide defeat.
(AP, 11/12/07)
2007 Nov 14, Labor party leader
Kevin Rudd, the man tipped to become Australia's next prime minister,
officially launched his pitch for office with pledges to withdraw
combat troops from Iraq and usher in an "education revolution."
(AFP, 11/14/07)
2007 Nov 15, Greenpeace protesters
stormed an Australian power plant after a US report condemned
Australian electricity plants as some of the biggest contributors to
greenhouse gases. 15 protesters were arrested after they chained
themselves to conveyor belts at the Munmorah power plant on the central
coast of New South Wales state.
(AFP, 11/15/07)
2007 Nov 16, A coroner urged the
Australian government to seek war crimes charges against former
Indonesian military officers over the 1975 killing of five Australian
newsmen during Indonesia's invasion of East Timor.
(AP, 11/16/07)
2007 Nov 18, Three members of
Iraq's Olympic soccer team and their assistant coach left the team
during a trip to Australia and are seeking asylum in the country.
(AP, 11/19/07)
2007 Nov 23, In Afghanistan
Taliban militants beheaded 7 police officers after overrunning their
checkpoints. An Australian commando (26) and 3 civilians were killed in
a clash with Taliban militia in Uruzgan province. In 2008 the
Australian military cleared its soldiers over the deaths of two women
and a baby during this battle but said all civilian casualties were
"highly regrettable."
(Reuters, 11/23/07)(SFC, 11/24/07, p.A3)(AFP,
5/12/08)
2007 Nov 24, In Australia
conservative PM John Howard suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands
of the left-leaning opposition. Labor Party leader Kevin Rudd has
promised to immediately sign the Kyoto Protocol on global warming and
withdraw Australia's combat troops from Iraq.
(AP, 11/24/07)
2007 Nov 25, Newly elected leader
Kevin Rudd moved quickly to bring Australia into international talks on
fighting global warming, and to head off potentially thorny relations
with the United States and key Asian neighbors.
(AP, 11/25/07)
2007 Nov 29, Australia’s PM-elect
Kevin Rudd named his Cabinet, choosing a woman as deputy leader for the
first time, a former rock singer as environment minister and a lawyer
from the Outback as foreign minister.
(AP, 11/29/07)
2007 Nov 30, Australian PM-elect
Kevin Rudd said he would pull the country's 550 combat troops out of
Iraq by the middle of next year.
(AP, 11/30/07)
2007 Nov 30, India's Tata Steel
signed a joint venture with Australia's Riversdale Mining to develop a
hard coking and thermal coal project in Mozambique.
(AP, 11/30/07)
2007 Dec 2, In Australia night
time thieves stole 17.6 tons of ham and bacon from a warehouse in
suburban Sidney and left behind a message saying “Thanks” and “Merry
Christmas.” The stolen meat was worth up to $88,000.
(AP, 12/3/07)
2007 Dec 3, Labor Party leader
Kevin Rudd became Australia's 26th prime minister and immediately began
dismantling the former government's policies by ratifying the Kyoto
Protocol on climate change.
(AP, 12/3/07)
2007 Dec 5, Australia’s PM Kevin
Rudd spoke at the state funeral for Bernie Banton (61), who died from
an asbestos-related disease he contracted while working for building
products company James Hardie. Banton's dogged campaign ultimately led
to the establishment of a 4 billion dollar (3.5 billion US)
compensation fund for victims of Hardie's asbestos products.
(AFP, 12/5/07)
2007 Dec 7, Australian police said
they had smashed an international cocaine smuggling ring spanning three
continents and operating out of the Netherlands, Thailand and Canada.
Of the total 40 people arrested, 14 Canadian and Australian nationals
of Chinese and Vietnamese descent were picked up in Sydney and
Melbourne over the past six months. Australian conman Peter Foster,
once linked to the "Cheriegate" scandal involving the wife of former
prime minister Tony Blair, was jailed for money laundering. Foster, who
pleaded guilty to a charge related to fraudulently obtaining 234,000 US
dollars from the Bank of the Federated States of Micronesia, was
sentenced to four-and-a-half years.
(AFP, 12/7/07)(AP, 12/13/07)
2007 Dec 10, Australia accepted
seven asylum seekers from Myanmar as refugees as the country's new
Labor government began unwinding tough immigration laws which force
boatpeople into detention on Pacific island nations.
(AP, 12/10/07)
2007 Dec 11, Australia's Deputy PM
Julia Gillard (46) took charge of government in the absence of the
prime minister, becoming the first woman to run the country in its 106
years as an independent nation. Gillard will lead the government for
just 60 hours while PM Kevin Rudd is in Bali for the United Nations
climate conference.
(Reuters, 12/11/07)
2007 Dec 11, Australian officials
conceded that the welfare system failed a girl who was removed from a
remote Aboriginal community after being sexually abused at age 7, then
gang raped in 2006 at age 10 when she was returned to live in the town.
(AP, 12/12/07)
2007 Dec 12, In Indonesia new
Australian PM Kevin Rudd completed ratification of the Kyoto Protocol
as he pressed for all nations, rich and poor, to commit to fighting
global warming.
(AP, 12/12/07)
2007 Dec 14, Australian PM Kevin
Rudd and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon jetted into East Timor to
lend support to the nation's efforts to stabilize and rebuild after
violence last year. Rudd pledged to support the nation's ongoing
security needs during the five-hour stop.
(AP, 12/14/07)(AFP, 12/14/07)
2007 Dec 16, Australian police
said they had broken up an alleged nationwide child porn ring with the
arrest of six men overnight, including a former policeman, a trainee
teacher and a swimming instructor.
(AFP, 12/16/07)
2007 Dec 18, An official said
Australian copper thieves have turned tomb raiders, pilfering plaques
and vases from cemeteries to sell the metal for scrap.
(AP, 12/18/07)
2007 Dec 21, New Australian PM
Kevin Rudd met with al-Maliki during a surprise visit to Baghdad. Rudd
said that after the troops withdraw in June, Australia will continue to
help train the Iraqi police force and army. A gunmen attacked a family
in Diyala province near Balad Ruz, killing two men and kidnapping a
third. Just east of Baqouba, the capital of Diyala, two men standing in
front of their house were killed by unknown armed men.
(AP, 12/21/07)
2007 Dec 29, In Australia David
Hicks, the only person convicted of terrorism charges at a US military
tribunal at Guantanamo Bay, walked free and said he did not want to do
"anything that might result in my return" to the prison in Cuba.
(AP, 12/29/07)
2007 The wine boom in Australia
went bust forcing many farmers to walk away from grapes and land they
could not sell.
(Econ, 3/29/08, p.84)
2008 Jan 5, Heavy rains caused
flooding across parts of eastern Australia, forcing the evacuation of
hundreds of people as rural towns throughout the area were put on flood
alert.
(AP, 1/5/08)
2008 Jan 7, Australians battled
both fires and some of the worst flooding in decades that stranded
residents in several communities after days of intense summer heat and
storms.
(AP, 1/8/08)
2008 Jan 8, Nauru’s foreign
minister said Australia's plans to close a much-criticized detention
center for asylum seekers on Nauru will devastate its economy.
(AFP, 1/8/08)
2008 Jan 11, A historic passenger
jet flight from Australia to Antarctica touched down smoothly on a blue
ice runway, launching the only regular airlink between the continents.
(AP, 1/11/08)
2008 Jan 13, Two young adventurers
completed a 62-day paddle of more than 2,000 miles to become the first
people to travel from Australia to New Zealand by kayak.
(AP, 1/13/08)
2008 Jan 15, Australia's new
government told an Indian envoy that it will not sell uranium to his
country while it is not a member of the global nonproliferation treaty.
(AP, 1/15/08)
2008 Jan 15, An Australian judge
banned the company that conducts Japan's whale hunt from killing the
animals in a large part of its regular hunting grounds off Antarctica.
Japanese whalers said they are holding captive two activists who
"illegally" boarded their vessel in the Southern Ocean, in a dramatic
escalation in the battle between the two sides.
(AP, 1/15/08)
2008 Jan 17, Australia said it
would send a ship to pick up two anti-whaling activists who jumped on a
Japanese harpoon vessel from a rubber boat in Antarctic waters,
offering a solution to a tense, two-day standoff on the high seas.
(AP, 1/17/08)
2008 Jan 18, Two activists who had
jumped on board a Japanese whaling boat were returned to their ship by
Australian officials.
(AP, 1/18/08)
2008 Jan 21, In northeastern
Australia surging floodwaters forced scores of people to evacuate their
homes. Farmers described the heavy rains as a mixed blessing after
years of drought.
(AP, 1/21/08)
2008 Jan 22, North Korea said it
will close its embassy in Australia because it can no longer afford it.
(AP, 1/22/08)
2008 Jan 22, Heath Ledger (28), an
Australian-born actor, was found dead at a Manhattan apartment. He
received an Oscar nomination for his role as a troubled gay cowboy in
the 2006 film, "Brokeback Mountain." The NYC medical examiner later
said Ledger died of an accidental overdose of painkillers, sleeping
pills, anti-anxiety medication and other prescription drugs.
(AP, 1/22/08)(AP, 2/6/08)
2008 Jan 23, In Australia the
final issue of The Bulletin magazine was published. It was launched in
1880 and became an institution in Australian publishing.
(AP, 1/24/08)
2008 Jan 24, Doctors said an
Australian girl spontaneously switched blood groups and adopted her
donor's immune system following a liver transplant in the first known
case of its type. Demi-Lee Brennan was aged nine and seriously ill with
liver failure when she received the transplant. Nine months later it
was discovered that she had changed blood types and her immune system
had switched over to that of the donor after stem cells from the new
liver migrated to her bone marrow. She was now a healthy 15-year-old.
(AFP, 1/24/08)
2008 Feb 1, An Australian
report said that Japanese harpoonists killed five whales in one day
after Greenpeace and Sea Shepherd ships, which had halted the hunt in
Antarctic waters, were forced to return to port to refuel.
(AFP, 2/1/08)
2008 Feb 3, Australian PM Kevin
Rudd announced a summit of 1,000 ordinary citizens to address long-term
challenges facing the nation, saying the best ideas could influence
government policy. He also scolded the country's opposition for
haggling over the exact content of a planned apology to Australia's
Aborigines, saying its meaning will be quite clear.
(AP, 2/3/08)
2008 Feb 7, A new security pact
between Australia and Indonesia came into force at a ceremony in Perth
attended by the foreign ministers of the at-times testy neighbors.
(AP, 2/7/08)
2008 Feb 8, Australia's widely
criticized "Pacific Solution" policy of holding asylum seekers on
remote islands ended when the last detainees flew out of Nauru to live
in Australia.
(AFP, 2/8/08)
2008 Feb 12, East Timor declared a
state of emergency. Australian troops and a warship arrived to boost
security after rebel attacks on the country's two top leaders left the
president in "extremely serious" condition with gunshot wounds.
(AP, 2/12/08)
2008 Feb 13, Australians watched a
live broadcast of their government apologizing for policies that
degraded its indigenous people. PM Rudd said Australians had reached a
time in their history when they must face up to their past to be able
to cope with the future. Aborigines numbered about 450,000 in
Australia's population of 21 million.
(AP, 2/13/08)
2008 Feb 15, Representatives for
Australian Aborigines confirmed plans to launch the first compensation
lawsuits since a landmark government apology earlier this week for past
abuses.
(AP, 2/15/08)
2008 Feb 21, Australia's new
government confirmed that it would withdraw its combat troops from Iraq
by mid-year but pledged strong ties with the United States ahead of
landmark talks this week.
(AP, 2/21/08)
2008 Mar 1, In Australia up to
300,000 people lined Sydney's streets to watch the Gay and Lesbian
Mardi Gras, as the largest gay pride march in the Asia Pacific region
marked its 30th anniversary.
(AP, 3/1/08)
2008 Mar 1, BHP Billiton,
Melbourne-based mining giant, said it plans to invest $975 million to
upgrade and expand its thermal coal mines in South Africa to sustain
coal exports amid soaring coal prices.
(Reuters, 3/3/08)
2008 Mar 4, The Reserve Bank of
Australia raised its official cash-rate target by a quarter point to
7.25% in an effort to tighten credit as inflation remained problematic.
(WSJ, 3/5/08, p.A2)
2008 Mar 4, An Australian
aquaculture company claimed a world first in artificially breeding
endangered southern bluefin tuna.
(AP, 3/4/08)
2008 Mar 5, Australia cancelled a
one billion dollar (930 million US) contract for US-made Seasprite
helicopters following a review of the troubled project.
(AFP, 3/5/08)
2008 Mar 7, Australian officials
said police have rescued 10 South Korean women who were forced to work
in a Sydney brothel by a sex slavery syndicate that lured them to
Australia with promises of legitimate jobs.
(AP, 3/7/08)
2008 Mar 7, Captain Paul Watson of
the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, a protest ship harassing
Japanese whalers in the Southern Ocean, said he was shot in a high-seas
clash and his crew members pelted with flash grenades, injuring one.
Australian Foreign Minister Stephen Smith and Japanese officials
insisted only warning devices were fired.
(AFP, 3/7/08)
2008 Mar 12, In Australia police
said a quarter-ton of cocaine with a street value of more than 80
million US dollars has been seized after being shipped in from
Southeast Asia.
(AFP, 3/12/08)
2008 Mar 14, In Australia Milton
Orkopoulos (50), a former New South Wales state minister, was convicted
on child sex and drugs charges after being described as a "sordid
genius" by prosecutors.
(AFP, 3/14/08)
2008 Mar 18, Protesters in
Australia burned Chinese flags, demanding freedom for Tibet, following
similar demonstrations in Europe and the US against Beijing's crackdown
on anti-government riots in the Himalayan region.
(AP, 3/18/08)
2008 Mar 29, Sydney's iconic Opera
House and Harbor Bridge went dark as the world's first major city
turned off its lights for this year's Earth Hour, a global campaign to
raise awareness of climate change.
(AP, 3/29/08)
2008 Apr 1, An Australian court
charged a Vietnam Airlines pilot with smuggling millions of dollars in
drug profits out of the country. Quoc Viet Lai (58,) faced 40 counts of
money laundering after allegedly taking 3.7 million dollars (3.4
million US) out of Australia between June 2005 and June 2006.
(AFP, 4/1/08)
2008 Apr 2, Australia began
pumping carbon dioxide underground to reduce greenhouse gas emissions,
using a technology that locks dangerous gases deep in the Earth.
(AP, 4/2/08)
2008 Apr 7, In Australia 5 teenage
boys armed with machetes and baseball bats invaded a Sydney high
school, smashing classrooms and injuring 18 students and a teacher.
(AFP, 4/7/08)
2008 Apr 8, An Australian man was
sentenced to nearly three years in jail for shining a laser pointer at
a police helicopter and temporarily blinding the pilot.
(AP, 4/8/08)
2008 Apr 10, Australia’s PM Kevin
Rudd met China's premier for talks expected to touch on what Rudd has
called significant human rights problems in Tibet. Rudd said Chinese
paramilitary police will not be allowed to run alongside the Olympic
torch in Australia, after their heavy-handed tactics drew criticism in
earlier legs of the relay.
(AP, 4/10/08)
2008 Apr 13, Australia’s PM Kevin
Rudd named Queensland governor Quentin Bryce as the next
governor-general, the first woman to act as the British queen's
representative in the country.
(AFP, 4/13/08)
2008 Apr 19,
In Australia PM Rudd opened a summit of the nation's top minds to
discuss fresh policy ideas for the future.
(Reuters, 4/19/08)
2008 Apr 21,
Resources Minister Martin Ferguson announced that Australia has
extended control of its continental shelf by nearly 1 million square
miles under an agreement with the UN.
(AP, 4/21/08)
2008 Apr 28, In Australia police
in Perth arrested Robert Agius (58) on charges of running a money
laundering scheme that helped clients avoid taxes by transferring $93
million through offshore bank accounts.
(AP, 4/28/08)
2008 Apr 29, Australia's
government promised to spend about $2.9 billion to buy river water from
farmers in a bid to address the country's worst drought in a century.
(AP, 4/29/08)
2008 Apr 30, Attorney General
Robert McClelland said Australian gay and lesbian couples will have the
same rights as heterosexuals under new laws but marriage will remain
off limits.
(AFP, 4/30/08)
2008 Apr 30, Western Australia
state police raided the Perth offices of the Sunday Times, which is
published by Australia's largest newspaper publisher, Rupert Murdoch's
News Limited. Staff said police were searching for the source of a leak
that led to a story alleging the state government planned to use 16
million dollars (14.9 million US) in taxpayer funds on an advertising
campaign to help its re-election.
(AFP, 5/1/08)
2008 May 1, In Australia 6 people
were killed in Sydney Harbor when a boat packed with revelers on a
nighttime joyride and a fishing trawler collided.
(Reuters, 5/1/08)(AP, 5/2/08)
2008 May 13, Two major Australian
banks agreed to a proposed merger which would create the nation's
biggest financial services group worth around 66 billion dollars (62
billion US). St George, the country's fifth-largest bank, said it had
agreed to an 18.6 billion dollar offer from Westpac Banking
Corporation, Australia's third-largest bank by market capitalization.
(AFP, 5/13/08)
2008 May 16, In Australia
protesting pensioners brought traffic to a stand still in Melbourne
when some stripped to demand more money from the government.
(AFP, 5/16/08)
2008 May 19, In Australia the
Tasmania state government said the Tasmanian devil will be listed as an
endangered species this week as a result of a deadly and disfiguring
cancer outbreak. Animal rights activists said Australian authorities
have started the controversial killing of about 400 kangaroos on the
outskirts of Australia's capital of Canberra.
(AFP, 5/19/08)(AP, 5/19/08)
2008 May 21, In Australia Milton
Orkopoulos (50), the former New South Wales state minister for
Aboriginal affairs, was jailed for nearly 14 years on child sex and
drugs charges.
(AFP, 5/21/08)
2008 May 27, An Australian town
council unanimously rejected a contentious proposal to build a
1,200-student Islamic school, citing infrastructure concerns. Mayor
Chris Patterson of Camden said the decision had nothing to do with
religion but was based on the impact on traffic and loss of
agricultural land.
(AP, 5/27/08)
2008 Jun 1, Australia, a staunch
US ally and one of the first countries to commit troops to the Iraq war
five years ago, ended combat operations there.
(AP, 6/1/08)
2008 Jun 2, In Australia Mark
Standen, an assistant director of the New South Wales state Crime
Commission, was arrested for conspiracy to import controlled substances
and supply prohibited drugs, and with perverting the course of justice.
He is alleged to have assisted a drug-trafficking syndicate in a plan
to bring to Australia 1,300 pounds of the chemical pseudoephedrine that
could be used to make $114 million worth of the methamphetamine known
as "ice." The masterminds of the syndicate were in the Netherlands,
where 12 people were arrested last week.
(AP, 6/3/08)
2008 Jun 5, Australian police said
70 men have been arrested in a global crackdown on Internet child
pornography and more will be detained.
(AFP, 6/5/08)
2008 Jun 13, The leaders of
Australia and Indonesia pledged to join forces to fight climate change
by saving forests and promoting carbon trading.
(AFP, 6/13/08)
2008 Jun 18, An Australian
government minister warned a drought crisis needed urgent attention or
a crucial river system could suffer permanent ecological damage by
October.
(AP, 6/18/08)
2008 Jun 20, Cambodian officials
said authorities working with Australian police had destroyed an
enormous stockpile of 33 tons of safrole-rich oil, a key ingredient
used in producing the synthetic drug Ecstasy. Cambodian authorities
have been working since 2002 to stem the distillation of the oil and
since then have succeeded in detecting and dismantling more than 50
clandestine laboratories capable of producing up to 15 gallons of oil a
day. Cambodian officials are trying to preserve the sassafras tree,
which is classified as a rare species that grows mainly in Cambodia's
Cardamom Mountains.
(AP, 6/20/08)
2008 Jun 23, Anglo-Australian
mining group Rio Tinto said that it had agreed to a near doubling of
the price of its iron ore sales to Chinese steel maker Baosteel.
(AFP, 6/23/08)
2008 Jun 30, In Hay, Australia,
John Walsh (69) was arrested hours after hacking his two grandchildren
and wife to death with an ax and badly wounding his daughter in Cowra.
(AP, 6/30/08)
2008 Jul 10, Officials said a
decade-long drought in Australia's most important crop-growing region
is worsening and there is little hope for relief from either saving
rains or a new government conservation plan.
(AP, 7/10/08)
2008 Jul 11, In Australia the
official program for the Catholic church's World Youth Day began, but
was partly overshadowed by the launch of an investigation into sexual
abuse allegations against a disgraced priest. Thousands of pilgrims
converged on Sydney as it braced for the weekend arrival of Pope
Benedict.
(AFP, 7/11/08)(AP, 7/11/08)
2008 Jul 12, Pope Benedict XVI
left Rome on a flight to Australia for a 10-day pilgrimage. The Pope
said he will use his visit to Australia to apologize for sexual abuse
by priests and to examine how the Church can "prevent, heal and
reconcile".
(AFP, 7/12/08)
2008 Jul 13, Pope Benedict XVI
arrived in Sydney, after a stop in Darwin, for one of the largest
Christian gatherings on Earth, starting a visit set to be marked by his
apology for sexual abuse by priests in Australia.
(AFP, 7/13/08)
2008 Jul 15, In Australia the
world's biggest Christian festival opened with a spectacular
harbor-side mass for up to 150,000 pilgrims taking part in World Youth
Day celebrations in Sydney headed by Pope Benedict XVI.
(AP, 7/15/08)
2008 Jul 17, In Sidney, Australia,
Pope Benedict XVI delivered a stinging attack on pop culture,
consumerism and "false idols" to 150,000 mainly teenaged Catholic
pilgrims gathered for World Youth Day.
(AFP, 7/17/08)
2008 Jul 18, In Australia Pope
Benedict XVI warned Christian leaders that the push to unite Christian
churches was at a "critical juncture" and called on people of all
religions to join together against violence.
(AFP, 7/18/08)
2008 Jul 18, In Singapore Peter
Lloyd (41), a TV reporter for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation
(ABC), was charged with trafficking about one gram of methamphetamine
to a Singaporean for 100 Singapore dollars (73.5 US) at a hotel early
this month.
(AFP, 7/18/08)
2008 Jul 19, In Sidney, Australia,
Pope Benedict apologized directly for the first time for sexual abuse
of minors by Catholic clergy, but victims groups said they wanted
action and not words.
(Reuters, 7/19/08)
2008 Jul 20, In Australia Pope
Benedict XVI said a "spiritual desert" was spreading throughout the
world and he challenged young people to shed the greed and cynicism of
their time to create a new age of hope for humankind.
(AP, 7/20/08)
2008 Jul 21, In Sidney Pope
Benedict XVI met privately with Australians who were sexually abused as
children by priests, ending a pilgrimage to the country with a gesture
of contrition and concern over a scandal that has rocked the Roman
Catholic church.
(AP, 7/21/08)
2008 Jul 23, Australia announced
an extra $29 million in aid for survivors of Myanmar's May cyclone, but
pressed its recalcitrant military junta to democratize quickly and
respect human rights.
(AP, 7/23/08)
2008 Jul 29, Starbucks said it
will close more than two-thirds of its 84 stores in Australia by the
end of the week under a cost-cutting plan that will put almost 700
people out of work.
(AP, 7/29/08)
2008 Jul 30, Aborigines won
traditional ownership rights over a large stretch of coastline in
northern Australia, in a landmark ruling lawyers said could set a
precedent in other parts of the country.
(AP, 7/30/08)
2008 Aug 1, Anglo-Australian
mining giant Rio Tinto said it received correspondence from Guinea
President Lansana Conte "purporting to rescind the Simandou Mining
Concession."
(AFP, 8/3/08)
2008 Aug 8, Australian Customs and
police said they had seized 4.4 tons of ecstasy tablets worth nearly
400 million dollars, describing it as the biggest haul of the illicit
drug anywhere in the world. Police said the seizure of the drugs, which
were concealed in tins of tomato shipped to Australia from Italy, had
resulted in the arrests of 21 people across the country beginning in
pre-dawn raids.
(AFP, 8/8/08)
2008 Aug 10, In southern Australia
some 5,000 people rallied to protest the dwindling water levels of the
Murray River, claiming the loss was causing an environmental disaster.
(AFP, 8/10/08)
2008 Aug 14, Australian police
arrested a Catholic priest (65) and charged him with 30 counts of
sexual assault related to abuse allegations dating back three decades.
(AP, 8/14/08)
2008 Sep 1, Australian actor
Michael Pate (b.1920) died of respiratory failure. He had appeared in
more than 50 films and was a regular guest star on American TV shows in
the 1950s and 60s.
(AP, 9/1/08)
2008 Sep 2, Australia's central
bank cut interest rates for the first time in over six-and-a-half
years, pushing them down 25 basis points to 7% amid signs of cooling
economic growth.
(AP, 9/2/08)
2008 Sep 2, In Australia Brian
Spillane, a 65-year-old ex-priest, was arrested and charged in Sydney
with 60 counts relating to alleged sexual assaults against eight
people. Spillane was originally charged in May with 33 child sex
offenses against five people as a result of a police investigation into
allegations of abuse in the 1980s at St. Stanislaus in the city of
Bathurst.
(AP, 9/3/08)
2008 Sep 2, In Afghanistan 22
Taliban were killed in a clash in Zabul province's Naw Bahar district.
7 Arab fighters were among the dead. Another 10 militants died in
clashes with Afghan and foreign troops in Nad Ali district of Helmand
province. NATO troops in Operation Oqab Tsuka (Eagle’s summit)
delivered a Chinese-built turbine for the power station at Kajaki.
Taliban insurgents opened fire on a patrol of Australian, US and Afghan
troops, as it returned to base. More than a dozen coalition troops were
wounded; none died. In 2009 Australian trooper Mark Donaldson was
awarded the Victoria Cross, the highest military honor in the British
Commonwealth, for his efforts to protect the wounded during the attack.
(AP, 9/3/08)(Econ, 9/6/08, p.64)(AP, 1/16/09)
2008 Sep 3, In Australia police
arrested a 66-year-old Catholic brother in connection with their probe
into St. Stanislaus and a 63-year-old former teacher of another
religious school in Bathurst that is also under investigation.
(AP, 9/3/08)
2008 Sep 5, Quentin Bryce was
sworn in as Australia's governor general, the first woman to act as the
British queen's representative Down Under. Morris Iemma (47), the
embattled premier of Australia's most populous state, New South Wales,
was forced to resign after his party withdrew support for him over a
dramatic reshuffle of his cabinet.
(AP, 9/5/08)(AFP, 9/5/08)
2008 Sep 7, The conservation group
WWF said Australian koalas are dying by the thousands as a result of
land clearing in the country's northeast, while millions of birds and
reptiles are also perishing. Queensland state last week revealed that
375,000 hectares of bush were cleared in 2005-06, a figure WWF said
would have resulted in the deaths of two million mammals.
(AP, 9/7/08)
2008 Sep 8, Australian Trade
Minister Simon Crean said Australia will not sell uranium to India
unless it signs a key non-proliferation pact, despite a decision by
nuclear supplier nations to end a ban on trading with New Delhi.
(AFP, 9/8/08)
2008 Sep 14, In Western
Australia's 4 people died in a helicopter crash in the Bungle Bungle
National Park of the remote Kimberly region.
(AFP, 9/14/08)
2008 Sep 15, An Australian jury
found Abdul Benbrika (48), a Muslim cleric, and five of his followers
guilty of planning to stage a "violent jihad" in Melbourne in 2005 to
force Australian troops out of Iraq. A 7th man was convicted the next
day. In 2009 Benbrika was sentenced to at least 12 years in prison.
(Reuters, 9/15/08)(AP, 9/16/08)(AP, 2/3/09)
2008 Sep 18, Australia’s PM Kevin
Rudd said the west's relations with Russia are at a turning point after
its intervention in Georgia and a pact to sell Australian uranium to
Moscow is in the balance.
(AP, 9/18/08)
2008 Sep 19, PM Kevin Rudd
announced that Australia will launch a multi-million dollar
international carbon capture and storage institute to fight global
warming.
(AP, 9/19/08)
2008 Sep 22, in Australia 400
sheep died in a road accident, prompting animal rights activists to
repeat their call for an end to the long distance transportation of
livestock for slaughter.
(AFP, 9/23/08)
2008 Sep 27, According to an
estimate by the Australian Crime Commission (ACC), up to A$12 billion
($10 billion) in illicit drug money could be flowing out of Australia
every year.
(Reuters, 9/27/08)
2008 Oct 1, In Australia a major
report to the government on global warming suggested that Australians
should eat kangaroos instead of cattle and sheep.
(AP, 10/1/08)
2008 Oct 1, In Australia a
7-year-old boy broke into the popular Alice Springs zoo, fed a string
of animals to the resident crocodile and bashed several lizards to
death with a rock. By the time he was done, 13 animals worth around
$5,500 had been killed, including a turtle, bearded dragons and thorny
devil lizards.
(AP, 10/3/08)
2008 Oct 8, Australian scientists
said hundreds of new marine species and previously uncharted undersea
mountains and canyons have been discovered in the depths of the
Southern Ocean.
(AP, 10/8/08)
2008 Oct 12, Australia and New
Zealand gave a blanket guarantee to all bank deposits in a move likely
to raise pressure on other economies to do the same, amid a crisis of
confidence in the global financial system.
(AP, 10/12/08)
2008 Oct 17, Two Indonesian
fishing crew picked up in Australian territorial waters with 14
refugees on their boat were charged with people smuggling.
(Reuters, 10/17/08)
2008 Oct 22, Defense Minister Joel
Fitzgibbon said Australia will reduce its troop deployment to East
Timor because of the improved security situation.
(AFP, 10/22/08)
2008 Oct 29, In Australia Joseph
Thomas (35), a Muslim convert dubbed "Jihad Jack" by the Australian
media, was sentenced to nine months in prison but freed because of time
already served. He spent time at an al-Qaida training camp and met
Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan.
(AP, 10/29/08)
2008 Oct 30, In Australia 4
teenagers were charged with attacking an almost blind greater flamingo
at Adelaide Zoo. The bird is believed to be the oldest of its kind in
the world.
(AFP, 10/30/08)
2008 Nov 1, In Australia the badly
decomposed body of Chen Liu (27) was found in Sydney, about two weeks
after a friend reported him missing. 34 nails were found during a
post-mortem examination of Liu's body, and were located mainly in his
skull. They were fired from an 85 mm nail gun at close range.
(AP, 4/24/09)
2008 Nov 12, A Sidney court
sentenced an Australian woman to 22 months periodic detention for
assisting in the suicide of her longtime partner, an Alzheimer's
sufferer who had been rejected for a legal euthanasia in Switzerland.
(AP, 11/12/08)
2008 Nov 17, Australia said it
will invest millions of dollars in non-lethal whale research to show
Japan that the animals do not need to be killed in order to be studied.
(AP, 11/17/08)
2008 Nov 20, The new Australian
Sex Party launched at Sexpo, an annual sex exhibition in Melbourne. It
has already gathered the required 500 members and plans to register
with the electoral commission next week.
(AP, 11/20/08)
2008 Nov 23, In southeastern
Australia rescuers returned 11 pilot whales to sea, a day after a pod
of 64 mothers and calves were found stranded on a beach.
(AP, 11/23/08)
2008 Nov 25, In Australia BHP
Billiton dropped its controversial hostile takeover bid for rival Rio
Tinto because of the global economic crisis.
(AFP, 11/25/08)
2008 Nov 29, Joern Utzon (b.1918),
the Danish architect who designed the iconic Sydney Opera House (1957),
died. In 2003 Utzon won the Pritzker prize.
(AP, 11/29/08)(Econ, 12/13/08, p.104)
2008 Nov 30, In southern Australia
a group of 150 whales that became stranded on a remote coastline were
battered to death on rocks before rescuers could save them.
(AP, 11/30/08)
2008 Dec 2, Australia cut its key
interest rate by one percentage point to 4.25%.
(WSJ, 12/3/08, p.A12)
2008 Dec 5, Australia's driest
state was forced to purchase water for the first time to ensure
adequate supplies in the midst of a drought. Karlene Maywald, state
water security minister, said South Australia has purchased 61 billion
gallons (231 gigaliters) of water so that Adelaide, the state capital,
will have enough water for 2009 even if the drought continues.
(AP, 12/5/08)
2008 Dec 10, Anglo-Australian
mining giant Rio Tinto said it will slash some 14,000 jobs globally to
cut its debt by 10 billion US dollars as it battles falling prices and
a global slowdown.
(AFP, 12/10/08)
2008 Dec 10, In Australia Taha
Abdul-Rahman of Sydney was jailed for 3½ years for buying seven
rocket launchers stolen from the military between 2001 and 2003, most
of which have never been recovered by authorities.
(AFP, 12/10/08)
2008 Dec 11, Australian police
said detectives have charged 22 men including a policeman, a senior
lawyer and a child care worker in connection with a child
pornography-sharing network spanning 70 countries. Brazilian
information, which was shared via the international policing network
Interpol, identified more than 200 suspects in 70 countries,
(AP, 12/11/08)
2008 Dec 12, A court in Australia
approved the use of Facebook, a popular social networking Web site, to
notify a couple that they lost their home after defaulting on a loan.
(AP, 12/16/08)
2008 Dec 13, Alex Bellini, an
Italian adventurer, was rescued a mere 65 nautical miles short of
his goal, Australia, after rough weather sapped him of his final shreds
of energy. He had spent 10 months rowing more than 9,500 nautical miles
(18,000 kilometers) across the Pacific.
(AP, 12/13/08)
2008 Dec 15, Australia pledged to
cut greenhouse gas emissions by at least five percent by 2020 to fight
climate change, but critics said the plan was a "global embarrassment"
and called for deeper reductions.
(AFP, 12/15/08)
2008 Dec 17, Australian Aborigines
won a court fight against Anglo-Swiss mining giant Xstrata's plans to
divert a river and expand one of the world's biggest zinc mines.
(AFP, 12/17/08)
2008 Dec 17, Two Australian women
were killed when their light aircraft slammed into a suburban house in
Sydney after a mid-air collision between two flying school planes.
(AFP, 12/18/08)
2008 Dec 24, In Egypt an
Australian teacher (61), who allegedly stuffed his luggage with
2,000-year old animal mummies and religious figurines wrapped as gifts,
was arrested and charged with smuggling antiquities.
(AP, 12/25/08)
2009 Jan 10, Australian police
said a Canadian man has been charged with trying to smuggle more than
two million dollars (1.4 million US) worth of cocaine inside forklift
battery cells into Australia from Mexico.
(AFP, 1/11/09)
2009 Jan 11, Australia's Defense
Ministry said its special forces in Afghanistan had killed Taliban
commander Mullah Abdul Rasheed, who had been involved in recruiting
suicide bombers and foreign fighters in Uruzgan province.
(AP, 1/11/09)
2009 Jan 13, Nancy Bird-Walton
(93), Australian aviation pioneer, died from natural causes. She was
the first woman in Australia to operate a commercial aircraft. Sir
Charles Kingsford-Smith, the first man to fly across the mid-Pacific,
taught Watson how to fly in 1933, when she was just 17 years old. Two
years later, she obtained a commercial pilot's license and began taking
paying passengers for joyrides around the country.
(AP, 1/13/09)
2009 Jan 16, Australia granted
asylum to 28 people from Afghanistan and Iran, in the first such move
since relaxing tough rules on asylum seekers.
(AFP, 1/17/09)
2009 Jan 18, Australia listed the
world's largest sea turtle, the leatherback, as endangered due to the
threats posed by overfishing and the unsustainable harvesting of its
eggs and meat.
(AFP, 1/18/09)
2009 Jan 19, In Thailand an
Australian writer was sentenced to three years in prison for insulting
Thailand's royal family in his novel, a rare conviction of a foreigner
amid a crackdown on people and Web sites deemed critical of the
monarchy. Bangkok's Criminal Court sentenced Harry Nicolaides (41) to
six years behind bars but reduced the term because he had entered a
guilty plea.
(AP, 1/19/09)
2009 Jan 15, Australia's tropical
Queensland state declared a flood disaster over an area the size of
France and Germany after recent monsoon storms. The floods are
eventually expected to move inland, helping fill lakes and relieving a
long-running drought in parts of Australia's desert interior and
tropical north.
(Reuters, 1/20/09)
2009 Jan 17, Two dehydrated men
from Myanmar were found bobbing in an ice box in the Torres Strait off
Australia. They told authorities they had spent 25 days adrift after
their fishing boat sank. There was no sign of 18 other crew members.
(AP, 1/20/09)
2009 Jan 19, In Thailand Harry
Nicolaides (41), an Australian writer, was sentenced to three years in
prison for insulting Thailand's royal family in his novel, a rare
conviction of a foreigner amid a crackdown on people and Web sites
deemed critical of the monarchy. Bangkok's Criminal Court sentenced
Nicolaides to six years behind bars but reduced the term because he had
entered a guilty plea. His 2005 book “Verisimilitude” had sold 7
copies. Nicolaides returned home on Feb 21, after he was granted a
royal pardon.
(AP, 1/19/09)(SFC, 1/20/09, p.A3)(AP, 2/21/09)
2009 Jan 23, In Australia rescuers
poured water on the parched skin of sperm whales beached on a remote
sand bank on Perkins Island to keep them alive until the next high
tide. All 45 whales died with 2 days.
(AP, 1/23/09)(AP, 1/24/09)(AP, 1/25/09)
2009 Jan 29, An Australian man
(36) was charged with murder after allegedly throwing his four-year-old
daughter from a Melbourne bridge into the Yarra River during peak hour
traffic.
(AFP, 1/29/09)
2009 Jan 30, Melbourne,
Australia's second-largest city, struggled to cope with a
once-in-a-century heatwave as temperatures hit 109 degrees. The heat
wave has claimed dozens of lives and sparked wildfires that have razed
up to 20 homes.
(AFP, 1/31/09)(WSJ, 1/31/09, p.A1)
2009 Feb 3, In Australia PM Kevin
Rudd announced a $27 billion stimulus package. Australia’s Parliament
passed the bill on Feb 13.
(www.youtube.com/watch?v=8sz_2IM3K80)
2009 Feb 4, In northeastern
Australia rain-battered residents were on alert for snakes in their
bathrooms and crocodiles in the road following repeated storms that
have sent local wildlife in search of dry land or a safe haven.
(AP, 2/4/09)
2009 Feb 8, In Australia searing
temperatures and wind blasts created a firestorm that swept across a
swath of the country's Victoria state, where at least 750 homes were
destroyed and a death toll of at least 108. The town of Marysville and
several hamlets in the Kinglake district, both about 50 miles (100
kilometers) north of Melbourne, were utterly devastated.
(AFP, 2/8/09)
2009 Feb 9, In Australia police
declared incinerated towns crime scenes, and PM Rudd spoke of "mass
murder" after investigators said arsonists may have set some of the
country's worst wildfires in history. The official death toll from the
wildfires was later downgraded to 173 from a previous count of 210.
(AP, 2/9/09)(AP, 2/10/09)(AP, 3/30/09)
2009 Feb 12, Hong Kong's High
Court quashed the conviction of Australian Kevin Egan, one of the
city's most high-profile lawyers, who had been jailed for leaking the
identity of a protected witness to a journalist.
(AFP, 2/12/09)
2009 Feb 12, The Aluminum
Corporation of China (Chinalco) announced that it would invest $19.5
billion in Anglo-Australian miner Rio Tinto. In June it was reported
that Chinalco would not complete the deal.
(Econ, 2/14/09, p.73)(AFP, 6/4/09)
2009 Feb 12, In southern
Afghanistan a gunfight between Australian forces and Taliban fighters
killed at least 3 children who were caught in the crossfire in Uruzgan
province.
(AP, 2/13/09)
2009 Feb 13, Australian
authorities charged a man with lighting one of the wildfires that
killed at least 189 people, and whisked him into protective custody to
guard him from public fury. Brendan Sokaluk (39), faced two charges
related to one of the February 7 fires that killed 11 people in
Victoria's Gippsland region, east of Melbourne.
(AP, 2/13/09)(AP, 2/16/09)
2009 Feb 20, Australian Federal
Police agents with search warrants boarded an anti-whaling group's
ship, the Steve Irwin, as it docked in the southern Australian city of
Hobart. They seized videotapes of violent clashes between the activists
and Japanese whalers.
(AP, 2/21/09)
2009 Feb 22, In Brisbane,
Australia, Father Peter Kennedy (71), a rebel Catholic priest who was
sacked for blessing gay couples and allowing women to preach, defied
his archbishop and led mass.
(AFP, 2/22/09)
2009 Feb 23, In southern Australia
more than 100 people evacuated their homes in Victoria state when new
bushfires threatened communities, two weeks after the nation's worst
fire disaster killed more than 200 people.
(AP, 2/23/09)
2009 Feb 26, The Australian
government announced a multi-million dollar investment in research on
reducing gas emissions from farm animals as part of the fight against
global warming.
(AFP, 2/26/09)
2009 Feb, An Australian man in
Victoria state was arrested on charges of raping his daughter for 30
years and fathering four children with her. The daughter first told
police about the alleged abuse in 2005, but no charges were filed
because she said she feared for her safety and would not cooperate with
police.
(AP, 9/17/09)
2009 Mar 2, In southern Australia
rescuers used jet skis, backhoes and human muscle to save dozens of
whales and dolphins stranded on Naracoopa Beach on Tasmania state's
King Island. Rescuers refloated 54 whales and five bottlenose dolphins.
A total of 194 pilot whales and seven dolphins became stranded the
previous evening.
(AP, 3/2/09)(AP, 3/3/09)
2009 Mar 5, Australia and South
Korea agreed during a summit between PM Kevin Rudd and President Lee
Myung-bak to deepen security ties and launch formal talks on a free
trade agreement.
(AP, 3/5/09)
2009 Mar 11, Australia said it
would provide funding to Zimbabwe's new unity government, the first
Western power to announce direct support to the new administration.
(Reuters, 3/11/09)
2009 Mar 11, More than 30 shipping
containers of ammonium nitrate fell off a ship in stormy seas off
Australia, damaging the ship's hull and leaking up to 30 tons of oil
[see Mar 13]. Swire Shipping's cargo liner Pacific Adventurer released
about 200,000 liters (53,000 US gallons) of heavy fuel oil off the
coast of Queensland state as it travelled through cyclonic weather.
Australia later sought more than 18 million US dollars in compensation
from a Hong Kong-based shipping company. In August the Hong Kong-based
Swire Shipping company said it will pay Australia 25 million dollars
(21 million US) in compensation for the oil spill.
(AP, 3/11/09)(AFP, 5/6/09)(AFP, 8/8/09)
2009 Mar 13, Dozens of popular
tourist beaches on Australia's northeast coast were declared a disaster
zone, with their once-pristine sands fouled by a massive oil and
chemical slick. Queensland state's marine safety authority said up to
100 tons of fuel, 250,000 liters, were now believed to have spilled
from the Hong Kong-flagged ship Pacific Adventurer amid cyclonic
conditions on March 11.
(AP, 3/13/09)(Econ, 3/21/09, p.45)
2009 Mar 13, Terra Firma, a
London-based private equity firm, announced it would buy 90% of
Consolidated pastoral Company, the Australian cattle holdings of the
Packer family, which encompass 12 million acres of land.
(Econ, 3/21/09, p.67)
2009 Mar 16, In southern
Afghanistan two suicide bombers attacked police stations, killing 10
Afghan policemen and 2 civilians, underlining the growing threat from a
Taliban-led insurgency. An Australian soldier in a joint
Australian-Afghan army patrol was shot dead during a "very intense
firefight" with 20 Taliban insurgents in Uruzgan province.
(AFP, 3/16/09)(AP, 3/17/09)
2009 Mar 18, The Australian
government said it plans to crack down on excessive executive pay
packages. It will amend the Corporations Act to require shareholder
approval for any termination payments that exceed average annual base
salary, which excludes additional compensation such as shares or stock
options.
(WSJ, 3/19/09, p.C2)
2009 Mar 19, In Afghanistan
Helmand MP Dad Mohammad Khan, a key anti-Taliban lawmaker, was killed
with four other men when a bomb tore through their vehicle. Australia’s
defense chief said a bomb disposal expert was killed trying to defuse a
device in Afghanistan, announcing the country's 10th combat death there.
(AFP, 3/19/09)(AP, 3/19/09)
2009 Mar 22, In Australia warring
bikers brawled through the Sidney airport, beating one suspected gang
member to death and brandishing metal poles "like swords" as they
rampaged through the main domestic terminal in front of terrified
travelers. Anthony Zervas (29) was bludgeoned to death with a crowd
control barrier pole during the fracas. On June 30 Mahmoud "Mick" Hawi
(29), head of the Comanchero motorcycle gang, was charged with murder.
(AP, 3/22/09)(AFP, 6/30/09)
2009 Mar 23, In Australia
volunteers joined rescue workers struggling to save the lives of 17
whales that survived a mass stranding on a beach on Australia's west
coast. Around 90 long-finned pilot whales and bottlenose dolphins were
found beached over more than five kilometers (three miles) in Hamelin
Bay, south of the city of Perth. Most of the animals died, but rescuers
were able to push four dolphins and four whales out to sea at the
stranding site and truck 10 surviving whales overland to deeper waters.
Six whales believed to be part of a pod that was rescued from a mass
stranding re-beached themselves and two died. One of the 4 surviving
whales was found dead on March 26.
(AFP, 3/23/09)(AP, 3/25/09)(AP, 3/26/09)
2009 Mar 24, Australian police
arrested a senior motorcycle gang member as authorities launched a
crackdown on biker groups in response to a deadly airport brawl that
shocked the country and brought a simmering gang war out into the open.
(AP, 3/24/09)
2009 Mar 25, Australia PM Kevin
Rudd visited the US and urged Americans not to view China as an enemy
but as a country offering huge economic opportunities, even though its
leaders have "done some bad things in the past."
(AP, 3/26/09)
2009 Mar 28, Sydney became the
world's first major city to plunge itself into darkness for the second
worldwide Earth Hour, a global campaign to highlight the threat of
climate change.
(AP, 3/28/09)
2009 Mar 29, In Australia
thousands of poisonous cane toads met their fate as gleeful hunters
gathered for a celebratory mass killing of the hated amphibians, with
many of the creatures' corpses being turned into fertilizer for the
very farmers they've plagued for years.
(AP, 3/29/09)
2009 Mar 29, In Australia a gunman
opened fire on a senior member of the Hells Angels, shooting him
multiple times outside a Sydney apartment complex in the latest
incident in an escalating battle between biker gangs.
(AP, 3/29/09)
2009 Mar 30, Downtown Sydney,
Australia's largest city, was plunged into chaos during the late rush
hour when a power cut blacked out traffic lights, caused gridlock on
the roads and left tens of thousands of buildings in darkness. The
blackout exposed a flaw in the city's terrorism warning system.
(AP, 3/30/09)(AP, 3/31/09)
2009 Apr 3, Australia endorsed a
UN declaration that recognizes indigenous rights, reversing years of
opposition and promising a new era in relations between white
Australians and the nation's impoverished Aborigines. Australia was one
of four nations that voted against the declaration when it was adopted
by the General Assembly in 2007.
(AP, 4/3/09)
2009 Apr 6, In Australia a
motorcycle gang leader surrendered to police and became the sixth biker
charged in connection with a brawl that left a rival bleeding to death
before shocked travelers at Australia's busiest airport.
(AP, 4/6/09)
2009 Apr 7, Australia announced
plans to build a 30 billion US dollar broadband network, its biggest
infrastructure project ever, opting to retain government control rather
than contract out the deal.
(AFP, 4/7/09)
2009 Apr 8, A fishing vessel
carrying 45 boatpeople, believed to be from Iraq, landed on Australia’s
remote Christmas Island, island, a day after the opposition party said
a softer stance on refugees had prompted a "surge" in illegal
immigrants.
(AFP, 4/8/09)
2009 Apr 16, Five people were
killed and dozens wounded when a blast tore apart a boat carrying more
than 40 Afghan refugees off Australia's northwest coast. The Australian
Broadcasting Corporation later said it was told the refugees had doused
the boat in petrol to try to force the navy to land them in Australia
and not turn them back to Indonesia, but that the blast was an accident.
(AFP, 4/20/09)
2009 Apr 17, Australia's PM Rudd
denounced people smugglers who set hopeful refugees adrift in rickety
boats as "scum" and pledged to step up efforts to thwart them, after
one vessel exploded at sea and killed three people.
(AP, 4/17/09)
2009 Apr 17, Australia revealed
plans to introduce national arson laws with a maximum penalty of 25
years behind bars in the wake of deadly wildfires that claimed 173
lives.
(AFP, 4/17/09)
2009 Apr 25, Australia intercepted
a boat carrying more than 50 refugees north of Darwin, little more than
a week after an explosion on another vessel killed five people. A boat
carrying 32 Sri Lankan refugees was stopped near the northwest coast on
April 23.
(AFP, 4/25/09)
2009 Apr 29, Australia announced
it will increase by almost one half its troops in Afghanistan to about
1,550 as part of the US-led surge of international forces to bolster
the faltering fight against Taliban insurgents.
(AP, 4/29/09)
2009 Apr 29, Two boats carrying
almost 80 people were intercepted off Australia's northern coast as the
conservative political opposition called for an independent inquiry
into refugee policy.
(AFP, 4/29/09)
2009 May 2, Australia’s government
said it will spend more than 70 billion US dollars boosting its
defenses over the next 20 years in response to a regional military
build-up and global shifts in power.
(AFP, 5/2/09)
2009 May 4, Australia's government
put back its much-vaunted carbon-emissions trading scheme by a year,
bowing to industry demands for more relief amid a recession while
opening the door to an even deeper long-term reduction.
(Reuters, 5/4/09)
2009 May 5, Australia's army
started shooting 6,000 kangaroos to thin their population on an army
training ground near the capital, outraging conservationists who have
vowed to protest.
(AP, 5/8/09)
2009 May 6, Ben Southall (34), a
bungee jumping, ostrich-riding British charity worker was named the
winner of what's been dubbed the "Best Job in the World," a 150,000
Australian dollar ($111,000) contract to serve as the caretaker of
Australia’s tropical Hamilton Island. He beat out nearly 35,000
applicants from around the world for assignment to swim, explore and
relax in the Great Barrier Reef for six months while writing a blog to
promote the area.
(AP, 5/6/09)
2009 May 9, Australia and Japan
joined the ranks of affected countries with confirmed H1N1 swine flu.
New Zealand, the first country in the Asia-Pacific region to confirm
cases, reported two more for a total of seven.
(AP, 5/9/09)
2009 May 11, Australia’s armed
forces chief announced that Australia will formally end its military
mission in Iraq at the end of July, bringing the country's involvement
in one war to a close even as it prepares to send more troops to
Afghanistan.
(AP, 5/11/09)
2009 May 12, Treasurer Wayne Swan
said Australia will post a record 57.6 billion Australian dollar (44.1
billion US) deficit in 2009-10 as it battles the worst global recession
since the Great Depression.
(AP, 5/12/09)
2009 May 14, In Australia a court
suspended a government program to kill 7,000 kangaroos on federal land
near the Australian capital, halting efforts to thin a mushrooming
population of the beloved marsupials that authorities say are
threatening endangered species.
(AP, 5/14/09)
2009 May 20, Australian
authorities declared a state of emergency in Queensland as torrential
rain and gale force winds caused extensive flooding and left one man
dead.
(AFP, 5/20/09)
2009 May 23, In Australia
thousands more people in the flood-hit east were told to leave their
homes as gale-force winds lashed the coast. Emergency services said up
to 20,000 people had been cut off.
(AP, 5/23/09)
2009 May 24, In Australia
thousands of homeowners remained isolated in the flood-hit northeast.
Authorities said days of torrential rain had created a vast "inland
sea."
(AFP, 5/24/09)
2009 May 28, Australian Foreign
Minister Stephen Smith condemned a wave of attacks on Indian students
in Melbourne after the latest assault left a 25-year-old fighting for
his life. Indian student Sravan Kumar Theerthala was stabbed with a
screwdriver on May 24 when a group of teenagers gatecrashed a party he
was attending in the suburbs of Melbourne.
(AFP, 5/28/09)
2009 Jun 4, Australia's Defense
Minister Joel Fitzgibbon (47) stepped down after a series of scandals,
in the first major embarrassment for PM Kevin Rudd. Fitzgibbon had been
under pressure since March when he admitted not declaring to
parliamentary authorities two trips to China paid for by wealthy
businesswoman Helen Liu.
(AP, 6/4/09)
2009 Jun 5, The Anglo-Australian
firm Rio Tinto cancelled its controversial tie-up with China's Chinalco
in favor of a joint venture with fierce rival BHP Billiton and a 15.2
billion US dollar rights issue.
(AFP, 6/5/09)
2009 Jun 9, In Australia a protest
involving hundreds of Indian students turned into a "vigilante" attack
in Sydney overnight, in the latest flare-up in racial tensions in
recent weeks. Police said a group wielding sticks and baseball bats
attacked men of "Middle Eastern appearance" in apparent retaliation for
an earlier assault on an Indian man.
(AFP, 6/9/09)
2009 Jun 11, In Australia an
Australian Aboriginal elder (46), arrested for drunk driving, died
after being "cooked" in the back of a scorching hot prison van. The
next day a coroner found that Mr. Ward's death breached Australia's
obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political
Rights.
(AFP, 6/13/09)
2009 Jun 13, In Australia it was
reported Barry Tannenbaum (43), an expatriate South African
businessman, has denied any wrongdoing in an alleged investment
scandal. Tannenbaum has been accused of fleecing rich South Africans in
what has been billed as one of the country's biggest Ponzi-style
investment scandals, according to local and South African media. The
massive pyramid scheme reportedly cost wealthy investors up to $1.2
billion.
(AFP, 6/13/09)
2009 Jun 15, In Australia Des
"Tuppence" Moran (61), a former underworld enforcer, died from multiple
gunshot wounds to the head while enjoying a coffee in a suburban cafe.
Gangland widow Judy Moran was one of three people later charged in the
slaying.
(AFP, 6/17/09)
2009 Jun 22, Australian police
said that an e-mail challenging PM Kevin Rudd's honesty in his
19-month-old government's biggest political crisis appeared to be a
forgery.
(AP, 6/22/09)
2009 Jun 28, The Australian navy
intercepted a refugee boat with 194 people aboard off the country's
northwest coast. It was the 15th suspected people-smuggling craft to
have been stopped in Australian waters or to have made landfall since
January.
(AFP, 6/28/09)
2009 Jun 29, It was reported that
Australian scientists have developed a "trojan horse" therapy to combat
cancer, using a bacterially-derived nano cell to penetrate and disarm
the cancer cell before a second nano cell kills it with chemotherapy
drugs. Sydney scientists Dr Jennifer MacDiarmid and Dr Himanshu
Brahmbhatt, who formed EnGenelC Pty Ltd in 2001, said they had achieved
100 percent survival in mice with human cancer cells by using the
"trojan horse" therapy in the past two years.
(Reuters, 6/29/09)
2009 Jun 30, Australian serial
rapist John Xydias (45) was jailed for 28 years. For over 15 years he
had dressed his unconscious victims in his collection of women's
underwear and filmed assaults on them.
(AFP, 6/30/09)
2009 Jun 30, In Australia 2 men
were charged with the murder of a female student from China who went
missing June 25 after a night out in Tasmania. Stavros Papadopoulos and
Daniel Joseph Williams, both 21 and from Hobart, were remanded in
custody after a brief appearance before a magistrate. Accountancy
student Zhang Yu (26) was last seen alive outside a Hobart city centre
pub. Police later found her body in the Tyenna river west of Hobart.
(AP, 6/30/09)
2009 Jul 3, Australia announced a
155 million US dollar package for isolated Aboriginal communities,
after a new report revealed shocking levels of child abuse among the
downtrodden minority.
(AFP, 7/3/09)
2009 Jul 8, Australia said Chinese
authorities had detained Stern Hu, Rio Tinto Ltd's top iron ore
negotiator, as well as three other Rio employees on suspicion of
espionage and stealing state secrets, threatening to strain already
fraying ties.
(Reuters, 7/8/09)
2009 Jul 8, Australian residents
of rural Bundanoon, hoping to protect the earth and their wallets,
voted to ban the sale of bottled water, the first community in the
country, and possibly the world, to take such a drastic step in the
growing backlash against the industry.
(AP, 7/9/09)
2009 Jul 11, In Indonesia an
Australian working for the Indonesian subsidiary of US-based mining
giant Freeport McMoRan was shot dead by unknown attackers in Papua.
(AFP, 7/11/09)
2009 Jul 16, Australia and China
traded warnings over Rio Tinto employees detained for spying, as the
United States urged Beijing to ensure transparency and fair treatment
for staff of foreign companies.
(Reuters, 7/16/09)
2009 Jul 18, In Australian Min
Lin, his wife, two sons aged 12 and 9, and a female relative were
killed by blunt force trauma to the upper bodies and heads in their
home in a Sydney suburb. The family had run a convenience store for
more than six years after immigrating from China.
(AP, 7/19/09)
2009 Jul 19, An amateur astronomer
in Australia detected a new scar on Jupiter that covered some 73
million square miles, an larger area than the Pacific ocean.
(SFC, 7/22/09, p.A1)
2009 Jul 20, In Australia
Adelaide-based Vaxine began swine flu vaccine trials with 300 subjects.
Melbourne's CSL had 240 people in its seven-month trial, which started
Jul 22. The companies said their trials are the first tests of a swine
flu vaccine on humans.
(AP, 7/22/09)
2009 Jul 28, In Australia Shane
Kent (33), an Australian convert to Islam, admitted being part of a
terror cell that plotted to kill thousands of people by bombing major
sports events. The former forklift truck driver was about to face a
retrial on the charges, which he previously denied, after a Supreme
Court jury last September failed to reach a verdict.
(AFP, 7/28/09)
2009 Aug 1, Australia's
centre-left ruling party voted for national recognition of same-sex
unions but stopped short of lifting a ban on gay marriage.
(AFP, 8/1/09)
2009 Aug 4, Australian police said
they thwarted a terrorist plot in which extremists with ties to an
al-Qaida-linked Somali Islamist group planned to invade a military base
and open fire with automatic weapons until they were shot dead
themselves. Some 400 officers from state and national security services
took part in 19 raids on properties in Melbourne, before dawn,
arresting four men and detaining several others for questioning. Police
said all four arrested are Australian citizens of Somali or Lebanese
descent aged between 22 and 26.
(AP, 8/4/09)
2009 Aug 5, Australian police
charged four men with planning to attack an army base and shoot
soldiers as the government considered whether to ban a Somalia militant
group linked to the plot.
(Reuters, 8/5/09)
2009 Aug 10, Australia said it has
pledged 7.8 million US dollars this year to help save more than 100
indigenous languages which are in grave danger of dying out.
(AFP, 8/10/09)
2009 Aug 11, China formally
arrested four employees of Anglo-American mining giant Rio Tinto Ltd.
for infringing trade secrets and bribery, but stopped short of laying
politically explosive espionage charges in a case that has strained
ties with key trading partner Australia.
(AP, 8/12/09)
2009 Aug 13, Australian police
said a 20-year-old Australian man has been charged with infecting more
than 3,000 computers around the world with a virus designed to capture
banking and credit card data.
(AP, 8/13/09)
2009 Aug 14, An Australian judge
ruled that Christian Rossiter (49), a quadriplegic man who says he
cannot "undertake any basic human functions," has the right to direct a
nursing home to stop feeding him and allow him to die.
(AP, 8/14/09)(SFC, 8/15/09, p.A2)
2009 Aug 19, Australia celebrated
the biggest trade deal in its history and said it proved vital ties
with China had survived a series of bruising rows. PM Kevin Rudd said
ExxonMobil's 41.3 billion US dollar liquefied natural gas contract with
PetroChina would create up to 6,000 jobs and pump billions of dollars
into the economy. PetroChina ordered 2.25 million tons of liquefied
natural gas (LNG) a year over two decades from ExxonMobil's share of
the still-undeveloped Gorgon plant off Western Australia.
(AFP, 8/19/09)
2009 Aug 20, Australia passed a
clean energy law requiring the country to produce 20 percent of its
power from renewable sources by 2020 in move that could draw billions
of dollars of green investment.
(AFP, 8/20/09)
2009 Aug 21, Australian leader
Kevin Rudd and his trans-Tasman counterpart John Key chaired the
first-ever joint meeting of their cabinets, and said it had been a
valuable opportunity to discuss their joint challenges. They vowed
closer military ties and collaboration on climate change in the
historic meeting.
(AFP, 8/22/09)
2009 Aug 21, A massive oil and gas
leak forced the evacuation of an oil rig off Australia's northwest
coast. PTTEP Australasia, a Bangkok based company, said about 40
barrels of oil had been discharged in the initial incident, and it was
still attempting to bring the leak under control at the rig, owned by
Norway's Seadrill. After 2 days PTTEP said plugging the leak will take
weeks. Government officials said there was little threat of
environmental damage.
(AFP, 8/22/09)(AP, 8/23/09)
2009 Aug 22, The West Australian
town of Broome, with deep historical ties to Japan, voted to sever its
sister city relationship with the Japanese village of Taiji to protest
an annual dolphin slaughter near there.
(AP, 8/24/09)
2009 Aug 26, Australia's highest
court ruled that the country's military justice system is
unconstitutional because its judges are not independent of the military
command, throwing into doubt 171 cases judged in the past two years.
(AP, 8/26/09)
2009 Aug 27, A senior UN official
condemned Australia's controversial intervention into remote Aboriginal
communities, describing the measures as discriminatory and finding
entrenched racism in Australia.
(Reuters, 8/27/09)
2009 Aug 29, Australian
authorities intercepted a boat carrying 52 suspected asylum seekers,
the 18th such vessel to be discovered this year.
(AFP, 8/29/09)
2009 Sep 3, In Australia
millionaire Michael McGurk (45), a Scottish-born property developer,
was gunned down in front of his son (10) outside their exclusive Sydney
home. In 2007 McGurk had unsuccessfully tried to sue the Sultan of
Brunei over an alleged eight million US dollar agreement to buy a
400-year-old gold-lined miniature Koran.
(AFP, 9/4/09)
2009 Sep 9, Australia announced
that it has launched a war crimes investigation into the 1975 killing
of five Australian-based journalists during an attack by Indonesian
forces in East Timor.
(AP, 9/9/09)
2009 Sep 10, Australia announced
liquefied natural gas (LNG) deals worth up to 60 billion US dollars
with Japan and South Korea, raising its status as a major energy
supplier.
(AP, 9/10/09)
2009 Sep 11, A risk consultancy
said Australians have overtaken Americans as the world's biggest
individual producers of carbon dioxide, which is blamed for global
warming. British firm Maplecroft placed Australia's per capita output
at 20.58 tons a year, some four percent higher than the United States
and top of a list of 185 countries.
(AFP, 9/11/09)
2009 Sep 12, Australia intercepted
a boat carrying 83 suspected asylum seekers off its northwest coast
after it was spotted from the air by a military patrol plane. Later in
the day the Australian navy intercepted a suspected people-smuggling
boat carrying 65 asylum seekers off the country's northwest coast.
(AFP, 9/12/09)(AFP, 9/13/09)
2009 Sep 14, In Australia energy
giants Chevron, Shell and ExxonMobil agreed to develop the massive
Gorgon field, giving the final go-ahead to a liquefied natural gas
(LNG) project worth hundreds of billions of dollars.
(AP, 9/14/09)
2009 Sep 15, Australia announced
shock plans to break up dominant telecommunications player Telstra to
boost competition as it presses ahead with a 37 billion US dollar
national broadband network.
(AP, 9/15/09)
2009 Sep 18, Australia approved a
vaccine against swine flu and said it would start administering the
medicine this month to its most at-risk citizens, including medical
staff, pregnant women and the chronically ill. Regulators approved CSL
Ltd.'s vaccine for people above age 10, but the Therapeutic Drug
Administration was awaiting the results of more clinical trials before
approving it for younger children.
(AP, 9/18/09)
2009 Sep 19, Australian
authorities delivered a formal apology to the many thousands of people
who were abused in state-run orphanages and children's homes in decades
past.
(AFP, 9/19/09)
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Subject = Australia
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