Portal:Australia/Anniversaries/November/November 8

H.B. Higgins

• 1907 – The Harvester Judgment delivered by H. B. Higgins giving rise to the legal requirement for a basic wage, which dominated Australian economic life for the next 60 to 80 years.
• 1934 – A grasshopper plague devours 20 tons of grain in two hours in Mildura.
• 1935 – Charles Kingsford Smith, early Australian aviator, dies during a flight from Allahabad, India to Singapore, aged 38.
• 1938 – Australian rules football player Bob Skilton, one of only four players to have won the Brownlow Medal three times, is born.
• 1940 – SS City of Rayville hits a mine in Bass Strait and becomes the first American vessel sunk during World War II.
• 1946 – Guus Hiddink, football coach of Australia at the 2006 FIFA World Cup, is born in Varsseveld.
• 1976 – Brett Lee, cricket fast bowler, is born in Wollongong, New South Wales.
• 1991 – Fremantle Prison is decommissioned.
• 2005 – Police claim to have averted a large scale terrorist attack after arresting 15 people in Melbourne and Sydney.