Timeline: 1881 – 1890
Note: The content on this page has been lifted from a website that was created some time ago. As a consequence, it may contain links that are broken and no longer work. We are in the process of checking and updating all links on this and similar pages. Unfortunately it is a very time consuming task so it will be some time before the updates are completed. We apoligise for this inconvenience.
1881 |
January 8 |
A cyclone, which kills 16 people, decimates the pearling fleet on the Ashburton River, WA. |
January 9 |
SS Chimborazo grounded on Marion Reef, SA. |
January 20 |
Bushfires cause extensive damage to properties at Rookwood and Lidcombe in suburban Sydney. |
January 25 |
An intercolonial conference imposes unilateral restrictions on the number of Chinese immigrants following ongoing trouble on Australia’s goldfields involving Chinese miners. |
January 27 |
The NSW Government invites offers from English companies to build a bridge across Sydney Harbour. |
February 3 |
Ornithologist John Gould dies age 76. |
February 4 |
The standard gauge railway line from Sydney to Albury is completed. Albury station is two miles away from Wodonga station, from which a wide gauge line travels to Melbourne. |
March 1 |
The Perth to Fremantle, WA, railway line is completed under the supervision of Engineer-in-Chief, Charles Yelverton O’connor. |
March 1 |
Rev Charles Strong, head of Scots Church, is tried for heresy in Melbourne over an article he wrote on the atonement. The case is thrown out of court. In a tense and dramatic sequence of events he refuses to attend the General Assembly of the Victorian Presbyterian Church on 14th November 1883 arguing the action against him as "unconstitutional and illegal" according to the laws of the Church. He defiantly sets sail for Scotland the next day. |
April 30 |
George Adams opens the Tattersall’s racing sweepstakes to the public for the first time at the Sydney Cup. |
May 31 |
The results of the first Australia-wide census is released, revealing that Australia’s population has passed 2 million. |
July 17 |
Sydney University became the first Australian university to accept women as students. |
August 2 |
Marcus Andrew Hislop Clarke, author of ‘For The Term of His Natural Life’, dies of pleurisy in Melbourne. |
August 18 |
The NSW Government passes an act forbidding the ring-barking of trees. |
October 15 |
Two separate settlements are built are Little Bay, Sydney, to cope with a smallpox epidemic. |
November 5 |
Butter is successfully shipped from Victoria to England. |
December 5 |
NSW Government legalises trade unions. |
December 9 |
The fastest trip from Plymouth, England, to Adelaide is made in 63 days by the wood clipper, Torrens. |
December 21 |
Measures are being taken to stop the spread of the Phylloxera bug which is decimating vineyards across Victoria. |
December 29 |
A law is passed in NSW limiting the sale of alcohol to before 10 p.m. on weekdays and all day on Sundays. |
1882 |
January 10 |
A cyclone caused major damage to the town of Palmerston (Darwin), NT. |
March 7 |
The north west of Western Australia is hit by a major cyclone which causes damage to the towns of Cossack and Roebourne. |
March 18 |
A group of 25 women are fined for holding an illegal raffle in Sydney. |
March 18 |
March 22 |
A telephone exchange opens at the Sydney GPO with 10 subscribers. |
April 1 |
An April Fool’s Day joke, an announcement that Russian ships which visited Sydney recently had planned to make an extortion attempt, renews concern about the nation’s defences, and leads to an upgrading of fortifications around the Australian coastline near larger cities and towns. |
May 5 |
Antarctic explorer Sir Douglas Mawson born in Yorkshire, England. |
May 17 |
The railway line between Adelaide and Port Augusta, SA, opens. |
July 8 |
Composer and pianist Percy Grainger born at Brighton, Vic. |
July 13 |
Gold is found at Mt Morgan, Queensland. |
July 26 |
Perth’s first daily newspaper, The Daily News, is established. |
August 1 |
The Melbourne suburban railway line to Frankston, Vic, is opened. |
August 1 |
Writer and poet Henry Kendall, dies age 43. |
August 13 |
The first intercolonial Rugby Union match held between New South Wales and Queensland ends in a four tries-four goals to one goal win to NSW. |
September |
The Ashes series of cricket matches between Australia and England came into being, when the cricket stumps and bails used in a test match between the two countries were ceremonially burnt, and the ashes placed in an urn. This action was taken to mark the "deceased state of English cricket" after Australia beat the English at their own game. |
September 8 |
Sydney’s St Mary’s Cathedral is opened. |
September 23 |
Sydney’s Garden Palace building, erected for the International Exhibition two years earlier, is destroyed by fire. It is believed to have been deliberately lit. The building housed a substantial collection of historical items including irreplaceable Aboriginal artefacts and records from the convict days. |
October 5 |
Sydney’s original Iron Cove Bridge is opened. |
November 12 |
The Orient liner Austral sinks in Neutral Bay, Sydney Harbour, with the loss of five lives, while being loaded with coal. |
November 27 |
Melbourne’s Spencer Street Station became Australia’s first public venue to be lit by electricity. |
December 1 |
The Melbourne suburban railway line to Lilydale opens. |
December 4 |
Significant deposits of silver, lead and zinc are found at Zeehan, Tasmania. |
December 4 |
The Great Northern Railway reaches Charters Towers, Qld. |
December 12 |
Golf officially begins to be played in Australia with the formation of the Australian Golf Club at Sydney’s Moore Park. |
December 15 |
Twenty two men die in one of Australia’s worst mining disasters at a coalmine in Creswick, Victoria. |
1883 |
January 1 |
Gold is discovered at Princhester, near Rockhampton, Queensland. |
January 12 |
A person is almost burnt to death in Newcastle, NSW, in an alleged case of spontaneous human combustion. |
January 24 |
Aborigines kill five policemen at Cloncurry, Qld, in an outbreak of interracial violence. |
February 9 |
Architect Edmund Thomas Blacket, dies age 65. |
February 27 |
The shipping port of Port Kembla, NSW, opens for traffic. The first shipload of locally mined coal departs Port Kembla on the following day. |
March 7 |
NSW Premier Henry Parkes threatens to limit Irish migration to NSW if Irish people do not stop transplanting their old world animosities to the new. |
April 4 |
South eastern New Guinea is annexed as part of Queensland. |
April 9 |
Electric lighting is successfully exhibited at the Government Printing Office, Brisbane. |
April 15 |
Australian 12fth Prime Minister Stanley Melbourne Bruce born in Melbourne. |
April 30 |
Sydney businessmen James Burns and Robert Philip join forces to form Burns Philip and Co. Ltd. one of Australia’s oldest ands most successful companies. |
May 14 |
Adelaide’s telephone exchange opens with 48 subscribers. |
May 23 |
Adelaide Zoo is established. |
May 29 |
Melbourne bare knuckle boxer ‘Professor’ Billy Miller beats NSW champion Larry Foley in an intercolonial boxing match that runs for three hours through 41 rounds. |
May |
The Durack family embark on their overland trek from western Queensland to the Kimberley region of WA. |
June 1 |
Macquarie Lighthouse, South Head, Sydney, is illuminated. |
June 5 |
The Aboriginal Protection Board established in NSW. |
June 15 |
The railway lines north from Melbourne and south from Sydney meet at Albury, though a change of trains is required at Albury Railway Station for many years as the two lines are built to different gauges. |
June 26 |
The St Johns Ambulance Association established in Melbourne. |
August 6 |
Hobart’s telephone exchange opens with 10 subscribers. |
September 10 |
Charles Rasp, a boundary rider at Mount Gipps station in Western NSW, finds deposits of silver and lead in the Barrier ranges. Mining of the deposits results in the establishment of the town of Broken Hill, NSW. |
November 17 |
The Tasmanian News is first published in Hobart. |
November 27 |
The Victorian Government announces plans to eradicate rabbits from the Mallee district and open it up for farming. |
December 4 |
Writer Katherine Susannah Pritchard born. |
December 8 |
An intercolonial conference takes major steps towards the federation of the Australian colonies. |
December 12 |
The Launceston, Tas, telephone exchange opens with 35 subscribers. |
December 12 |
The Victorian Government throws its support behind plans to implement large scale irrigation schemes around the state, particularly along the Murray River. |
1884 |
January 1 |
Bushfires destroy many properties at Yass, NSW. |
January 5 |
Food manufacturer, founder of Kraft Walker Cheese Company and inventor of Vegemite, Fred Walker, born. |
January 24 |
Commander-in-chief of armed forces during World War II, General Thomas Albert Blamey, born at Wagga Wagga, NSW. |
January 31 |
SA Trades and Labour Council established. |
January 31 |
The Queensland town of Bowen is completely destroyed by a cyclone. |
February 23 |
Grafton, NSW, is lit with gaslight. |
February 27 |
17 year old Hugh McKay demonstrates a stripper harvester he claims to have invented in Drummartin, Vic. |
March 1 |
Copper is discovered at Forbes, NSW. |
April 2 |
Two trains collide at Werribee, Vic, killing three people. |
April 17 |
Bare knuckle boxer Alex Agar is killed during a fight at Randwick Racecourse, NSW. |
August 27 |
As drought and an economic depression begin to bite, the Planters Association in Mackay, Qld, votes to cut wages by 10 percent. |
August 2 |
WA passes an act to regulate whipping as punishment. |
August |
South Australia battles a smallpox epidemic. |
May 12 |
The Central Methodist Mission opens. |
August 31 |
SA Premier and Registrar-General Sir Richard Robert Torrens dies. |
September |
White and black policemen launch a punitive attack against the Kalkadoon tribe near Cloncurry, Qld, resulting in most of the tribesmen being killed. |
September 8 |
Three miners are killed by Aborigines on the Daly River, NT. |
October 17 |
NSW legislation deems all minerals extracted during mining activities are the property of the Crown. |
November 28 |
A number of masters and crew, of vessels working in Queensland waters, are charged with having kidnapped and murdered island natives being procured for work on Queensland plantations. |
December 17 |
The Australian Geographical Society holds its first meeting in Melbourne. |
December 29 |
Edward G. (Red Ted) Theodore, Premier of Queensland and Federal Treasurer, born. |
December 29 |
Calls to have women banned as barmaids in Melbourne because of the ‘disastrous social consequences’. |
1885 |
January 3 |
NSW passes the Crown Lands Act to encourage closer settlement in regional districts. |
January 8 |
Prime Minister John Curtin born in Creswick, Vic. |
January 25 |
A train derails at Cootamundra, NSW, killing seven people. |
February 23 |
The Australian colonies offer to send troops to the Sudan in support of British military activities there. |
March 28 |
The Queensland Navy is established with the arrival of two gunboats, HMQS Gayundah and HMQS Paluma from Britain. |
May 2 |
Australia’s colonial governments declare their readiness for an invasion following the increase in tension between Britain and Russia. The tension arose over an ongoing dispute over the Afghan border. |
May 5 |
The Queensland Government begins taking home 432 natives of New Guinea who it believes were ‘blackbirded’ (kidnapped or recruited under false pretences) into working on north Queensland plantations. |
May 26 |
The Hacking River to the south of Sydney is stocked with trout and perch to encourage the local fishing industry. |
April 10 |
The creation of a new state in northern Queensland is proposed. The idea had been floated as early as 1859 and would have seen Townsville as its capital. The idea is revived following attempts by the Qld government to restrict and regulate Kanaka labour on the state’s plantations. |
June 11 |
Naval surveyor Admiral John Lort Stokes dies, age 72. |
June 28 |
The Seventh-Day Adventist sect establishes a church in Melbourne, its first in Australia. |
August 10 |
A horse drawn tram service is instigated between Woolloongabba and Breakfast Creek, Brisbane. |
August 15 |
Broken Hill, NSW. declared a town. |
September 4 |
The Great Western Railway reaches Bourke, NSW. |
September 22 |
Australia’s 20th Prime Minister Joseph Benedict Chifley born in Bathurst, NSW. |
November 10 |
Sir Alfred John Stephen administered NSW 10th November 1885 to 11th December 1885. |
November 11 |
Melbourne’s first trams take to the road, travelling from Spencer Street along Flinders Street to Richmond. The first service operates five tramcars. |
November 15 |
NSW’s first Sunday newspaper, The Sunday Times, is published. |
November 28 |
Frederick York Wolsely demonstrates his commercial sheep shearing machine. |
December 5 |
A goldrush begins at Halls Creek, WA, after the discovery of gold there by Charles Hall and Jack Slattery earlier in the year. |
December 12 |
Charles Robert Wynn-Carrington, Baron Carrington, appointed Governor NSW (12th December 1885 to 2nd November 1890) |
1886 |
January 3 |
Cricketer Arthur Mailey born in Zetland, Sydney, NSW. |
January 19 |
The British Government offers Norfolk� Island to the colony of New South Wales. |
January 19 |
Australian wharf workers go back to work after an 18-day strike over wages. |
February 24 |
The Commercial Bank of South Australia suspends payments. |
March 28 |
The Convict system closes as a result of the crime rate in Britain and Ireland falling so low, only 300 convicts are being sent to WA. |
March 31 |
With less than 50 men imprisoned in Western Australia under convict system, British government hands Fremantle Prison and the Asylum over to colonial authorities. |
July 8 |
George Clunes-Ross granted the Cocos Islands ‘in perpetuity’ from Queen Victoria. |
August 8 |
Radio pioneer Ernest Thomas Fisk born. |
August 16 |
Perth workers agree to a 9-hour working day. |
September 3 |
NSW Government’s income tax bill defeated in parliament. |
September 8 |
Western Australian pioneer priest Joseph Mary Benedict Serra dies, age 76. |
October 22 |
Californian irrigation experts, brothers George and William Chaffey, sign a deal with the Victorian Government to develop an irrigation colony on the Murray River at Mildura. |
December 3 |
Queensland legalises trade unions. |
December 4 |
The WA government restricts the numbers of Chinese migrants following the discovery of gold in the Kimberley region and an anticipated influx of Chinese prospectors. |
December 10 |
The Princess Theatre opens in Melbourne. |
December 24 |
Fire destroys Adelaide’s Academy of Music Theatre for the third time in as many years. |
1887 |
January 11 |
Unemployment reaches its highest ever level in the midst of an economic depression. |
January 19 |
The Victorian and South Australian railways meet on the border at Serviceton. |
February 15 |
The South Australian Government follows Victoria’s lead and signs up George and William Chaffey to introduce irrigation along the River Murray at Renmark. |
March 25 |
All 83 men and boys working the Bulli Colliery are killed in an explosion, caused by the ignition of a gas build-up. |
April 13 |
The first Intercontinental Medical Conference is held in Adelaide. |
April 25 |
The pearling fleet at Cape Jaubert near Broome, WA, is decimated by a cyclone. |
May 9 |
The first Colonial Conference opens in London to discuss common problems and issues of concern throughout the British empire. |
June 21 |
Queen Victoria‘s jubilee is celebrated around Australia. |
June 21 |
A major railway accident occurs at Peats Ferry, NSW, when a passenger train carrying 400 holiday makers runs out of control down a hill. It follows a crash near Windsor, Victoria, a month earlier in which five people were killed and 154 injured. |
July 1 |
An outbreak of smallpox is reported in Sydney. |
July 18 |
A mail ship travelling via the Suez Canal breaks the record for sea travel between London and Sydney, arriving in 32 days. |
July 19 |
During a period of high unemployment, the Victorian government pays unemployed men to break rocks. |
November 16 |
South Australia introduces payments for its parliamentarians. |
December 1 |
The Perth telephone exchange opens with 17 subscribers. |
December 26 |
The work of a 17-year old poet named Henry Lawson is first published in The Bulletin. |
1888 |
January 12 |
A steam tramway is opened at Broken Hill, NSW, by the visiting Duke of Manchester. |
January 14 |
Sydney to Brisbane rail link opens with the completion of the Hawkesbury River railway bridge. |
January 26 |
The centenary of the European settlement of Australia celebrated throughout the country. |
January 31 |
The Centennial International Exhibition opens in Melbourne. |
February 13 |
The Australian Mining Exchange opens in Sydney. |
April 2 |
Her Majesty’s Opera House opens in Brisbane. |
April 2 |
Scientist and explorer Nicolai Miklouho-Maclay, dies age 41. |
April 25 |
In the worst incidence of violence ever witnessed in an Australian parliament, NSW Legislative Assembly member J. Fletcher seizes J. Haynes and beats his head against the bench, in front of horrified members. |
May 15 |
The Lilydale, Vic, railway line is extended from Lilydale to Yarra Flats (Yarra Flats became Yarra Glen) with intermediate stations at Coldstream and Yering. |
May 24 |
Aboriginal communities throughout Australia are given blankets to celebrate Queen Victoria‘s birthday. |
June 2 |
Amid calls to restrict Chinese migration to Australia, the term ‘white Australia’ is first used in a newspaper article in the radical Brisbane newspaper, The Boomerang. |
June 10 |
Tamworth, NSW, becomes the first Australian community as a whole to adopt electric street lighting. |
August 15 |
R.L. Sneddon, the captain of the visiting British Rugby Union team, drowns in the Hunter River, NSW. |
September 1 |
Writer Arthur William Upfield born. |
September 5 |
British New Guinea joins the British Empire with a promise that in ten years time, it will be administered by the Queensland Government. |
September 18 |
The NSW Governor, Lord Carrington, installed as the Grand Master of the colony’s first United Grand Freemason Lodge by South Australia’s Grand Master, Sir Samuel Way. |
September 20 |
Soldiers are sent to the Hunter Valley coalfields to crush riotous demonstrations by coal miners. |
September 30 |
The Great Northen Railway between Palmerston (Darwin) and Pine Creek, NT, opens. The line was eventually pulled up after its closure in 1976. The rails were disposed of, at $50 a tonne, to Queensland, and as reinforcing rods to Hong Kong, Taiwan and the Philippines. Sleepers were donated to Indonesia under the Colombo Plan. Wagons went to Port Augusta, SA. |
October 4 |
The present Prince’s Bridge, Melbourne, is officially opened. |
October 28 |
Politician and orator William Bede Dalley dies, age 57. |
October 10 |
Launceston, Tas, declared a city. |
October 31 |
Polar explorer Sir Hubert Wilkins born at Mount Bryan, SA. |
November 3 |
The invention of the mechanical lawnmower is announced. It is claimed by the Sydney Morning Herald as a significant household labour-saving device. |
November 6 |
A fire destroys an entire street in the town of Broken Hill NSW. |
November 8 |
W.M. & P.R. Foster begin brewing beer in Melbourne, Vic. |
November 16 |
Michael Griffin, charged with the brutal murder of an Aborigine, Marabool, is acquitted after 18 minutes when a jury states that the word of Aboriginal witnesses is not sufficient proof. |
December 13 |
The NSW wheat crop fails, the yield being the lowest in 30 years, as the nation remains in the grip of a crippling drought. |
December 16 |
Melbourne’s Princes Bridge opens. |
1889 |
January 9 |
An outbreak of typhoid in Melbourne kills 400 people. |
January 16 |
The highest temperature ever measured in Australia, 127.58 degrees F (53 degrees C), is recorded in Cloncurry, Queensland. |
January 17 |
A heatwave hits western New South Wales and pre-empts destructive bushfires. |
February 7 |
A small meteor falls into the sea off North Head, Sydney Harbour. |
February 9 |
Eureka rebellion leader and politician Peter Lalor dies, age 62 |
February 14 |
The first through train travels from Perth to Albany, WA. |
April 3 |
The waters in the crater of the Blue Lake at Mt Gambier, SA, mysteriously begin to rise. |
April 8 |
The Dubbo, NSW, courthouse is opened. |
June 12 |
The Australian Labour Federation is formed in Brisbane. |
June 22 |
Sydney’s tallest building, the head office of the Mutual Life Association of Australasia, opens. It stands more than 34 metres above street level. |
June 24 |
Eleven men are buried alive when a coal mine near Newcastle, NSW, caves in. |
July 27 |
Sir John Alexander Cockburn replaces Thomas Playford as Premier of South Australia. |
July |
Melbourne’s first hydraulic lift is installed. |
September 3 |
The first hydro-pneumatic gun mounted in NSW is fired, at South Head. |
September 21 |
NSW Parliamentarians are paid salaries for the first time. |
October 10 |
The Northern Territory’s first railway, between Darwin and Pine Creek, opens. |
October 14 |
Australia’s first electric trams run between Box Hill and Doncaster, Melbourne. |
October 24 |
Henry Parkes makes his famous speech in Tenterfield calling for the federation of the colonies of Australia under a national government. |
November 5 |
Explorer Peter Egerton Warburton dies age 76. |
December 21 |
The Bulletin published Andrew Barton (Banjo) Paterson‘s poem, ‘Clancy of the Overflow‘. |
December 21 |
World champion rower Henry Searle is buried in Melbourne after dying of typhoid a week earlier. |
December 21 |
Economists fear the collapse of Melbourne’s Premier Permanent Building Land and Investment Association could herald the end of a decade of colonial prosperity. |
1890 |
January 1 |
Hobart University established, becoming the fourth university in Australia. |
January 16 |
The Sydney suburban railway line between St Leonards and Hornsby opens. |
February 4 |
The railway line between Melbourne and Warrnambool, Vic, opens. |
February 7 |
Federation conference agrees in principle to a federated Australia. |
February 8 |
Dr Emma Constance Stone becomes the first female medical practitioner in Australia and the first to be registered with the Medical Board of Victoria |
March |
The Outer Circle Railway Line linking the Melbourne localities of Oakleigh and Waverley Road opens, although the trains mainly run past deserted platforms where suburbs are yet to be built. The line closes in 1895. The Elsternwick to Oakleigh railway, built by Murray Ross between 1883 and 1891, suffers a similar fate. Only one train ever runs on it and it becomes known as Ross’s Folly. It is dismantled in 1915. |
April 18 |
Melbourne’s Queen Street bridge is opened. |
June 30 |
The Adelaide Public Library opens in the Mortlock Library building. |
July 18 |
Australia’s 19th Prime Minister, Francis Michael Forde, born Mitchell, Qld. He serves as Prime Minister for only eight days – 6&endash;13 July 1945. |
August 15 |
Representative government is granted in Western Australia with the State Constitution given Royal assent. |
August 21 |
4,500 men employed on Sydney wharves strike over the use of non-union labour on the Sydney waterfront. |
August 29 |
Richard Gardiner Casey, Liberal politician and Governor-General, born in Brisbane. |
August 30 |
A bore at Narooma Station, NSW, strikes the largest basin of artesian water yet discovered. |
September 20 |
The Riot Act read to strikers protesting the use of non-unionists handling wool on Sydney’s wharves. |
September 29 |
The Queensland Government introduces triennial parliaments. |
October 1 |
The Advocate newspaper launched in Launceston, Tasmania. |
October 3 |
A whole block of central Sydney is destroyed by fire. |
November 3 |
Sir Alfred John Stephen administers NSW 3rd November 1890 to 14th January 1891. |
November 9 |
Sydney’s first electric trams begin running between Bondi Junction and Waverley. |
November 22 |
Burglars steal coins and valuable artefacts from the NSW Art Gallery in Sydney. |
November 28 |
Tasmania introduces payments to parliamentary members. |
December 12 |
A perfect cross creates the world’s first pure breed of cattle dog, the blue heeler. It is developed by dog breeder brothers Jack and Harry Bagust of Sydney, after first crossing the Australian native Dingo with a blue-mottled Scotch Collie. |
December 31 |
Artist Daryl Lindsay born. His wife Joan Lindsay wrote ‘Picnic At Hanging Rock‘. |
December 21 |
Western Australia’s first ministry sworn in under that state’s first Premier, Sir John Forrest. |