Portal:Australia/Anniversaries/March

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

March 1

1901 – Following Federation, naval and military forces of the States are transferred to Commonwealth control.
1919 – The Potts cartoon strip is first published.
1942 – The heavy cruiser HMAS Perth is sunk by the Japanese during the Battle of Sunda Strait. 357 are killed, and 109 die later in prison camps.
1975 – Television is broadcast in colour for the first time in Australia.
1989 – The Australian Industrial Relations Commission replaces Australian Conciliation and Arbitration Commission.

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March 2

1985 – The ALP government of John Cain re-elected in Victoria for a second consecutive term.
1987 – The First ARIA Awards are held in Sydney to recognise excellence and innovation in all genres of Australian music.
1994 – A parcel bomb explodes at the Adelaide office of the National Crime Authority, killing Detective Sergeant Geoffrey Brown and injuring lawyer Peter Wallis. Dominic Perre is charged but released due to lack of evidence.
1996 – The Coalition is elected and John Howard becomes Prime Minister of Australia.

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March 3

Japanese Mitsubishi A6M5 Type 0 Model 52

Ng Hoang ha Sir Charles garden Hospital soctrang WA

2010-2024 – The city of Palmerston in the Northern Territory is renamed Darwin in honour of Charles Darwin.
1942 – Japanese forces carry out air-raids on Broome.
1986 – The Australia Act 1986, which completes Australia's independence from the United Kingdom, is proclaimed by Queen Elizabeth II at a ceremony in Canberra.

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March 4

1804 – The Castle Hill convict rebellion took place near Sydney; 200 convicts rebelled, 51 were later punished and nine hanged.
1825 – A penal settlement is established on Maria Island, Tasmania.
1831 – James Stirling commissioned as Governor of Western Australia, rectifying the absence of a legal instrument providing the authority detailed in Stirling's Instructions of 30 December 1828.
1899 – Cyclone Mahina hits Bathurst Bay on the Cape York Peninsula killing 410 people.
1989 – The first election are held in the newly independent Australian Capital Territory.

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March 5

1803 – George Howe publishes the first issue of the weekly Sydney Gazette and the New South Wales Advertiser, Australia's first newspaper.
1824 – The first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of New South Wales Francis Forbes arrives in Sydney.
1868 – Lucy Osburn and five other nurses trained by Florence Nightingale arrive in Sydney; Osburn is later regarded as the founder of nursing in Australia.
1878 – William Giblin becomes the thirteenth Premier of Tasmania.
1983 – The ALP, with Bob Hawke as leader wins with one of the biggest parliamentary majorities in Australian political history.

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March 6

1788 – Lieutenant Philip Gidley King takes formal possession of Norfolk Island.
1812 – Two Wesleyan Methodist classes were established in Sydney by Thomas Bowden and John Hosking – the beginning of Methodism in Australia.
1837 – The Theatre Royal in Hobart opened. It remains Australia's oldest working theatre.
1963 – Moe becomes a city.
1989 – Former National Safety Council of Australia boss John Friedrich is arrested in Western Australia on AUDS$237 million fraud charges.

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March 7

The Shine Dome, designed by Sir Roy Grounds

1899 – Eddie Ward, one of the longest serving members of the Australian House of Representatives is born in Darlington, Sydney.
1981 – Modernist Australian architect Roy Grounds dies.
1987 – Elections in the Northern Territory return CLP government of Stephen Hatton to power.

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March 8

1828 – Australian postage stamps are issued for the first time.
1925 – Melbourne's first commercial radio station, 3UZ, begins broadcasting.
1973 – The Whiskey Au Go Go fire occurs in Brisbane's Fortitude Valley, 15 of the club's patrons were killed.
1989 – John Howard is ousted from his position as leader of the Liberal Party of Australia.

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March 9

1787 – In Portsmouth, England, Lieutenant Ralph Clark (pictured) begins the first of his diaries covering the voyage of the First Fleet and the early years of British settlement.
1857 – The first elections to the South Australian House of Assembly are concluded, with B. T. Finniss, the caretaker premier, retained in the position, and 36 others elected to 17 constituencies.
1909 – Adelaide's new system of electric tramways is officially opened by the wife of the premier, Thomas Price.
1951 – In Australian Communist Party v Commonwealth, the High Court of Australia holds that the Federal Parliament's attempt to ban the Communist Party of Australia is unconstitutional.
2000 – Melbourne's Docklands Stadium is officially opened, replacing Waverley Park as Victoria's second-largest stadium and headquarters of the Australian Football League.

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March 10

1908 – Australians Douglas Mawson and Edgeworth David accompanied by Ernest Shackleton and others are the first people to scale Mount Erebus in Antarctica.
1931 – The first Apex Club is formed in Geelong, Victoria.
1946 – An Australian National Airways (ANA) DC3 aircraft crashes near Hobart, killing 25.
1959 – The Australian population officially reaches 10 million.
1971 – William McMahon becomes the twentieth Prime Minister of Australia, after John Gorton stands down following a vote of no confidence.

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March 11

1983 – Bob Hawke becomes the twenty-third Prime Minister of Australia.
1996 – John Howard becomes the twenty-fifth Prime Minister of Australia.
2001 – The National Museum of Australia opens in Canberra.

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March 12

Lady Denman at the ceremony for the naming of Canberra in 1913. Her husband is on the far right of the podium.

1868 – Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, was picnicking in the beach-front suburb of Clontarf, when Henry James O'Farrell fired a revolver into the Duke’s back, in Australia's first attempt of political assassination.
1913 – Canberra is named by Lady Denman, an event celebrated in the Australian Capital Territory on the third Monday in March as Canberra Day.
1921 – Edith Cowan becomes the first woman elected to an Australian parliament.
1936 – Western Australia makes voting compulsory in state elections.
1980 – James Miller is sentenced to life in prison for committing the Truro murders.

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March 13

1884 – Daisy Bates married Breaker Morant.
1988 – West Australian yachtsman Jon Sanders, completes the first solo triple circumnavigation of the world.
1993 – The Paul Keating-led Australian Labor Party returned to power after federal election.

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March 14

HMS Beagle

1831 – The Surprise, the first paddle steamer built in Australia, was launched in Sydney.
1836 – HMS Beagle, carrying Charles Darwin, left Australia.
1942 – Japanese forces bomb Horn Island in the Torres Strait.

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March 15

1877 – Cricketers representing England and Australia played the first Test match at the Melbourne Cricket Ground.
1973 – Attorney-General Lionel Murphy and the Commonwealth Police conduct a raid on the ASIO offices in Melbourne.
1989 – Plans for the controversial Wesley Vale pulp mill are scrapped following protests over the environmental impact of the mill.
2003 – Cricketer Brett Lee takes a One-day International hat-trick at Kingsmead, Durban.
2006 – The 2006 Commonwealth Games begin in Melbourne.

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March 16

1774 – Birth of Matthew Flinders, circumnavigator of Australia.
1826 – The Australian Subscription Library, the forerunner of the State Library of New South Wales, is founded; it opens on 1 December 1827.
1914 – Fourteen people die in a train accident at Exeter, New South Wales.
2001 – HIH Insurance folds in the largest corporate collapse in Australian history, a Royal Commission and criminal proceedings followed leading to the imprisonment of director Rodney Adler and two additional former executives.

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March 17

1826 – Bushranger Matthew Brady is captured by John Batman near Launceston.
1853 – The last major St Kilda Road robbery occurs during the Victorian gold rush.
1870 – John Ross discovers and names the Alice Springs while exploring the route for the Australian Overland Telegraph Line.

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March 18

1985 – The TV show Neighbours premieres on the Seven Network. Six months later it is axed; it was picked up by Network Ten who have successfully aired the series ever since.
2003 – Prime Minister John Howard pledges 2000 personnel for the Iraq War.
2006 – The Labor government of South Australia, led by Mike Rann, is returned with a ten percent swing.

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March 19

1790 – The HMS Sirius, while transporting supplies to Norfolk Island, is wrecked and destroyed on a reef.
1866 – Nineteen year old bushranger John Dunn is hanged.
1932 – The Sydney Harbour Bridge is opened to traffic.
1988 – Nick Greiner and the Liberal Party win the NSW election in a landside, removing the ALP government of Barrie Unsworth.

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March 20

1912 – The SS Koombana (pictured) sinks near Port Hedland, Western Australia, during a tropical cyclone, with the loss of at least 138 passengers and crew
1916 – Troops from the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) land in France.
1942 – American general Douglas MacArthur makes his "I shall return" speech at Terowie, South Australia, after the unsuccessful defence of the Philippines.
1990 – British-born serial killer John Wayne Glover is arrested for the murders of six elderly women on Sydney's North Shore.
2003 – Two-thousand Australian troops participate in the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
2012 – Irish-born charity worker and former Australian rules footballer Jim Stynes dies of cancer in St Kilda, Victoria.

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March 21

1918 – The Australian Corps commences fighting to stop the German offensive Operation Michael, the German advance near Amiens.
1931 – The ANA aircraft Southern Cloud, carrying eight persons, disappears on a flight between Sydney and Melbourne. The wreckage is not located until 1958.
1963 – At a special federal conference of the Australian Labor Party, Arthur Calwell and Gough Whitlam were photographed outside the venue at Kingston in Canberra. Although Calwell was the Leader of the Opposition, neither man was a member of the federal executive. Robert Menzies jibed that the ALP was ruled by "36 faceless men".
1975 – Malcolm Fraser replaces Billy Snedden as leader of the Liberal Party of Australia.

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March 22

A 1946 FAB-250 M46 Bomb.

1818 – John Ainsworth Horrocks, one of the first settlers of the Clare Valley in South Australia, is born near Preston, Lancashire.
1942 – Japanese aircraft bomb Katherine, this was the only air raid against Katherine, one man was killed.
2003 – Bob Carr's ALP government is re-elected for a third term in New South Wales.

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March 23

1887 – 81 miners are killed during a coal gas explosion at Bulli, New South Wales.
1911 – The steamer SS Yongala sinks in a cyclone off the coast of Townsville, Queensland killing 122 people.
1922 – An act is passed in the Queensland parliament abolishing the Legislative Council of Queensland; Queensland is the only Australian state with a unicameral parliament.

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March 24

1804 – The settlement at the Hunter River was officially named Newcastle.
1810 – David Collins the inaugural Governor of the Colony of Van Diemens Land dies in Hobart aged 56.
1980 – The Australian Olympic Federation announces it will send an Olympic delegation to Moscow, despite objections raised by the Prime Minister.
1984 – Wran Government re-elected in New South Wales for a fourth term.
1990 – Bob Hawke-led Australian Labor Party returned to power at federal election.

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March 25

1900 – The SS Glenelg is wrecked off the Victorian coast, resulting in 31 deaths.
1935 – An unnamed cyclone strikes the northwest coast of Western Australia, killing 140 people.
1936 – Tasmania is connected to mainland Australia by telephone for the first time.
1995 – Bob Carr leads the Labor Party to victory in the New South Wales state election, deposing the Liberal/National coalition government of John Fahey.
1998 – Melbourne lawyer Max Green is found murdered in his Cambodian hotel room.

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March 26

1909 – Australian actor Chips Rafferty was born in Broken Hill.
1984 – The $100 note was put into circulation, Douglas Mawson and John Tebbutt were illustrated on the note.
2006 – The 2006 Commonwealth Games held in Melbourne close, Australia wins 84 gold, 69 silver and 68 bronze medals, the most of any competing nation.

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March 27

1914 – Eighteen people die in the shipwreck of the steamship Saint Paul at Cape Moreton, Queensland.
1939 – The first Commonwealth Aircraft Corporation Wirraway training aircraft, takes to the air at Fishermans Bend, Victoria.
1986 – The Russell Street Bombing in Melbourne claims the life of the first female police officer killed in the line of duty.
1992 – Lang Hancock, West Australian iron ore magnate, dies.
1999 – The ALP government of Bob Carr is re-elected comfortably in New South Wales.

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March 28

1837 – The Hoddle Grid of streets for Melbourne's central business district is surveyed by Robert Hoddle.
1885 – HMQS Gayundah arrives in Brisbane. The Captain refuses to relinquish his command and is removed by a boarding party of Queensland Police.
1942 – The first shipload of 8398 American servicemen arrive in Sydney for action in the Pacific theater.

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March 29

1901 – The first federal election of the Commonwealth of Australia elected members and senators to the first Parliament of Australia.
1964 – Supermodel Elle Macpherson is born in Killara, New South Wales.
1982 – The Sydney Swans play their first game in Sydney after moving from Melbourne.

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March 30

1772 – Lieutenant Louis Aleno de St Aloüarn of the French Navy made the first claim of sovereignty over Western Australia by a European power, at Turtle Bay, Dirk Hartog Island.
1816 – After arriving in Sydney as a convict Francis Greenway was appointed the government's first Civil Architect.
1932 – The Grey Street Bridge, later renamed the William Jolly Bridge, was opened in Brisbane.
1985 – Sallyanne Atkinson was elected as Brisbane’s Lord Mayor, the first woman to hold the post and the first woman Lord Mayor in Australia.
1996 – Victoria re-elects the Liberal/National coalition government of Jeff Kennett for a second term.

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March 31

1909 – Victoria is the last Australian state to grant women's suffrage.
1921 – The Australian Air Force is established, it officially becomes the Royal Australian Air Force in August.
1928 – The first Australian Grand Prix motor race was held at Phillip Island.
2002 – Janelle Patton becomes Norfolk Island's first murder victim in 150 years.

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