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Timeline: 1881 – 1890

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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

A coal mine opens at Berrima, NSW.

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.



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