Dimboola Courier

19/01/2024

in history, January 20:

1803 - Superintendent of public works, Charles Grimes, announces that the Mornington Peninsula, now a popular holiday spot, is unsuitable for settlement.
1841 - China cedes the island of Hong Kong to the British.
1880 - Bushranger Captain Moonlight is hanged.
1887 - The British ship ‘Kapunda’, laden with immigrants bound for Western Australia, sinks off the Brazilian coast, killing 300.
1936 - Edward VIII succeeds George V as King of Great Britain and her dominions.
1945 - Franklin D. Roosevelt is sworn in for an unprecedented fourth term as US President. The US Constitution now limits any President to a maximum of two terms.
1953 - Dwight D. Eisenhower is inaugurated as the 34th President of the United States of America, becoming the first President to begin his presidency on January 20 following the ratification of the 20th Amendment, which moved the beginning and end of the terms for all US Presidents to 4 January from this date.
1964 - The trial of the perpetrators of Britain’s Great Train Robbery begins.
1995 - The Shires of Dimboola and Lowan are merged to form the Hindmarsh Shire Council with its administrative base in Nhill.
1989 - Ronald Reagan becomes the first US President elected in a “0” year, since 1840, to leave office alive.
1998 - The Metcard automated public transport ticketing system began operations in several Melbourne railway stations.
2017 - Donald Trump is inaugurated as the 45th President of the United States of America.
2021 - Site works commenced for the new bus shelter on Lochiel Street adjacent to the old Dimboola Hotel site. Work on the new library necessitated relocating the old bus stop from behind the Old Shire Hall.

18/01/2024

in history, January 19:

1790 - The second fleet of convicts sets sail from England to New South Wales.
1877 - Construction of a great hall and vestibule in the Victorian Parliament commenced (it was completed in July 1879).
1882 - Victorian Premier John Cain (Snr) was born.
1887 - The railway line between Dimboola and Serviceton near the South Australian border is opened, linking Melbourne and Adelaide by rail.
1955 - The board game ‘Scrabble’ makes its debut in Australia and the UK.
1957 - GTV 9 begins transmission in Melbourne.
1966 - A farmer in Tully, far north Queensland, reports finding a ‘flying saucer nest’ in one of Australia’s most significant UFO sightings.
1975 - Triple J begins broadcasting in Sydney.
1986 - The first known computer virus for PCs is released.
2004 - Australian cricketer David Hookes died.
2007 - Four men using only skis and kites completed a 1,759 kilometre trek to reach the Antarctic pole of inaccessibility for the first time since 1965 and for the first time ever without mechanical assistance.
2011 - Dimboola residents were advised to evacuate as floodwaters flowing down the Wimmera River threatened to breach the weir, with the fear that if this occurred, fast-flowing water could inundate streets and homes. Despite suffering some damage, the weir held, and this situation was averted.
2013 - Lance Armstrong admits to doping in all seven of his Tour de France victories.

18/01/2024

Local community groups will again host Australia Day events in the Hindmarsh Shire’s four main towns this year.

Find out what is happening in your local town here -
https://read.dimboolacourier.com.au/6099

Local community groups will again host Australia Day events in the Hindmarsh Shire’s four main towns this year.

17/01/2024

in history, January 18:

1788 - The first elements of the First Fleet carrying 736 convicts from England to Australia arrives at Botany Bay to set up a penal colony.
1825 - Explorers Hume and Hovell return to Sydney after their successful exploration overland to Port Phillip in what is now Victoria.
1849 - Edmund Barton, the first Prime Minister of Australia and First Class cricket umpire during the 1870s, is born.
1866 - Wesley College is established in Melbourne.
1882 - Creator of Winnie-the-Pooh, A A Milne, is born.
1886 - Modern field hockey is born with the formation of The Hockey Association in England.
1887 - A Royal Commission on the extension of Melbourne westwards was established.
1944 - Paul Keating, Federal Treasurer in the Hawke Government, and later the 24th Prime Minister of Australia, is born.
1977 - 83 people are killed in the Granville railway disaster in Sydney when a bridge collapsed on a crowded commuter train.
1980 - Pink Floyd’s album “The Wall” hits #1.
2003 - Firestorms begin their onslaught on Canberra, resulting in the deaths of four people and the destruction of more than 500 homes.
2005 - The world’s largest commercial jet, the Airbus A380, is unveiled in France.
2014 - The first lane of the new road bridge over the river on Wimmera Street was opened for traffic. Over the following four months, the old bridge was demolished, and a second lane was added to the new bridge.

16/01/2024

in history, January 17:

1773 - Captain James Cook’s ship, the ‘Resolution’, becomes the first known ship to cross the Antarctic Circle.
1899 - American gangster and businessman ‘Al’ Capone, is born.
1912 - Captain Robert Scott’s expedition arrives at the South Pole, one month after Roald Amundsen.
1932 - Albert Jacka, the first Australian Victoria Cross recipient in World War One, died.
1944 - Meat rationing is introduced throughout Australia, a result of shortages caused by World War Two.
1946 - The United Nations Security Council holds its first meeting.
1962 - Actor, comedian, writer, and artist Jim Carrey is born.
1964 - The first lady of the United States from 2009 to 2017, Michelle Obama, is born.
1968 - Australian singing group ‘The Seekers’ are named Australians of the Year for 1967.
1991 - The Gulf War against Iraq begins with the launch of Operation ‘Desert Storm’.
1995 - An earthquake in Kobe, Japan, kills over 6,400 people.
1995 - Australia beat Australia A to win cricket’s World Series Cup on the only occasion that Australia entered two teams in this competition which usually included Australia and two visiting international teams.
2011 - Following significant rainfall earlier in the month, the railway line north of Dimboola was damaged in several places by the resulting flooding. The pictured section of track between Jeparit and Ellam suffered the most spectacular wash away. Despite fears that this damage would condemn the line to permanent closure, it was repaired and reopened as far as Rainbow around a year later.

16/01/2024

Smoke may be visible near Gerang Gerung and from the Western Highway from a haystack fire near Antwerp.

Smoke may be visible near Gerang Gerung and from the Western Highway from a haystack fire near Antwerp.

15/01/2024

in history, January 16:

Today is celebrated as ‘National Nothing Day’ in the United States, which was created as a day to provide one National Day when people can just sit without celebrating, observing or honouring anything.

547 - Ivan the Terrible was crowned Tsar of Russia.
1793 - Free settlement commences in Australia.
1837 - The “Proclamation Establishment of Government in SA” is printed on South Australia’s first printing press.
1909 - Australian geologists Douglas Mawson and Edgeworth David become the first to reach the magnetic South Pole.
1919 - The ban on the production and sale of alcohol, known as Prohibition, takes effect in the United States.
1933 - The controversial Bodyline cricket series between Australia and England came to a head during the Adelaide Test when Australian batsman Bert Oldfield was struck by a delivery from English fast bowler Harold Larwood, almost causing a riot amongst the 32,000 strong crowd.
1957 - Three B-52 aeroplanes leave California in the USA for the first non-stop flights around the world.
1993 - During the first final of the cricket’s World Series Cup in Sydney, Australian batsman Dean Jones demanded that West Indian fast bowler Curtly Ambrose remove his white wristbands because they were disturbing his concentration. An angry Ambrose did as asked, then went on to spearhead his team’s victory by taking 5 for 32.
2003 - The Space Shuttle Columbia takes off for mission STS-107 which would be its final one. Columbia disintegrated 16 days later upon re-entry.
2016 - A bushfire ignited by a lightning strike the evening before taking hold in the northern Grampians. When it was contained five days later, a total of 52,000 hectares of bushland and farms had been burnt. A large pyrocumulus cloud column of smoke and fire was created by the fire (pictured), generating its own weather pattern including lightning and thunder.

14/01/2024

in history, January 15:

1559 - Elizabeth I is crowned Queen of England.
1790 - The mutineers of the ‘Bounty’ arrive at Pitcairn Island and establish a settlement there.
1797 - The Top Hat makes its first appearance, causing a riot.
1842 - Mary MacKillop, Australian nun and saint, is born,
1872 - John King, surviving member of the leaders of the Burke and Wills Expedition, died of tuberculosis at St Kilda, aged 33.
1929 - Civil rights activist Martin Luther King is born.
1958 - Hawthorn and Brisbane Bears AFL player, and Hawthorn and West Coast Eagles coach, Ken Judge, is born.
1962 - Australian tennis players Rod Laver and Margaret Court win the 50th Mens’ and 50th Women’s Australian Opens respectively.
1976 - The first episode of the Australian drama series ‘The Sullivans’ is broadcast.
1991 - Queen Elizabeth II signs letters patent allowing Australia to become the first Commonwealth realm to institute its own Victoria Cross. Five ‘Victoria Cross for Australia’ have been awarded since.
2001 - Wikipedia, a free Wiki content encyclopedia, goes online.
2004 - The first freight train from Adelaide to Darwin departs. This train utilised the newly completed south to north railway link north of Alice Springs to the Northern Territory capital.
2009 - US Airways Flight 1549 makes an emergency landing into the Hudson River shortly after take-off from LaGuardia Airport in New York City. All passengers and crew members survive. The story was told in the 2016 movie ‘Sully: Miracle on the Hudson’.
2014 - A house in Anderson Street, Dimboola, is struck by lightning during a thunderstorm. Tiles were blown off the roof in several places and the SES attended to weatherproof it with plastic sheeting. The residents, who were home at the time and uninjured, said the electricity supply was not interrupted, although they did hear a loud bang when it struck.
2016 - Footballer and coach Ken Judge died, on his 58th birthday.

13/01/2024

in history, January 14:

1699 - English sea explorer William Dampier sets out to chart the northwest coast of Australia.
1806 - Sir Charles Hotham, Lieutenant Governor and first Governor of Victoria between 1854 and 1855, is born in Dennington, Suffolk, England.
1830 - Captain Charles Sturt discovers that the Murrumbidgee River flows into the Murray.
1841 - The highest flood in Brisbane’s recorded history occurs.
1852 - William A’Beckett was appointed the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Victoria.
1875 - German theologian, musician, philosopher, and physician, Albert Schweitzer, is born.
1907 - Former Governor of South Australia, Sir James Fergusson, is killed in an earthquake in Jamaica.
1911 - Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen reaches the Ross Ice Shelf on his quest to be the first to reach the South Pole.
1914 - Henry Ford introduces an assembly line for the Model T car.
1944 - Dimboola residents were thankful that not much significant damage was caused by a bushfire that burnt 3,000 acres of the Little Desert and adjacent grasslands. Volunteers from the local fire brigade managed to save a house, sheds and haystacks that were directly threatened by the flames.
1960 - The Reserve Bank of Australia, the country’s central bank and banknote issuing authority, is established.
1990 - The first episode of ‘The Simpsons’ is aired.
2002 - The Australian Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) grounds 5000 light aircraft that had used contaminated Mobil fuel.

13/01/2024

Several unusual and even controversial proposals have been suggested over the years to put Lake Hindmarsh and Lake Albacutya to different uses – one was to drain them and make the land available for farming.

Read more here -

Lake Hindmarsh is Victoria’s largest natural freshwater lake and is appreciated as a valuable natural asset for recreation and its natural beauty, but there have been some unusual proposals made over the years to put it to other uses.

12/01/2024

in history, January 13:

1888 - The National Geographic Society is founded in Washington, D.C., USA.
1893 - Footballer Roy Cazaly, famous for his ability to take spectacular marks, is born. Cazaly played 99 games for South Melbourne between 1911 and 1920, and a further 99 games with St Kilda between 1921-24 and 1926-27, with a one-year break in 1925 to coach Minyip in the Wimmera League where they only missed the finals by percentage. He also coached both South Melbourne and Hawthorn in the VFL and several clubs in Tasmania.
1915 - Winston Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty, presents a plan for an assault on Turkey’s Dardanelles. Once approved, this action was where Australian troops made their first significant contribution during World War One at Gallipoli.
1939 - The ‘Black Friday’ bushfires burn 20,000 square kilometres of Victoria, devastating many townships and communities, and claiming 71 lives. The temperature in Melbourne reached a record 45.6 degrees Celsius.
1955 - Australian singer-songwriter, guitarist, and producer Paul Kelly, is born.
1990 - Australian actor, Liam Hemsworth, is born.
1998 - One of the 110 missing episodes of the British TV show “Doctor Who” was found in New Zealand.
2004 - The ferry ‘Spirit of Tasmania III’ makes the first Sydney to Tasmania voyage. This service only lasted until August 2006. The other two 'Spirit of Tasmania' ferries operate a daily service between Melbourne and Devonport in each direction
2003 - The Bali Memorial Garden, in the Victorian Parliamentary Gardens, is officially opened in memory of those who lost their lives in the 12 October 2002 Bali Bombings.
2012 - The Italian cruise ship, the Costa Concordia, runs aground off Italy’s coast, killing 32.

12/01/2024

Read the latest from Hindmarsh Shire in the first Mayoral Column for the new year -

Read the latest from Hindmarsh Shire in the first Mayoral Column for the new year.

11/01/2024

in history, January 12:

1876 - Jack London, the author of “Call of the Wild”, is born.
1899 - Paul Hermann Muller, the man who discovered that DDT was a potent insecticide, is born.
1908 - A wireless message was sent long-distance for the first time, from the Eiffel Tower in Paris.
1945 - During World War II, Soviet forces began a massive offensive against the Germans in Eastern Europe.
1972 - Former Australian Test cricketer, and current Test umpire, Paul Wilson, is born.
1979 - Singer “Tiny Tim” establishes a new world non-stop singing record of 2 hours, 15 minutes and 7 seconds.
2005 - Nine die in a devastating bushfire on the Eyre Peninsula in South Australia.
2005 - Australia's first Twenty20 cricket game was played at the WACA ground in Perth between the Western Warriors and the Victorian Bushrangers in front of a crowd of 20,700.
2011 - Tugboat skippers Doug Hislop and Peter Fenton heroically prevent Brisbane’s twin Gateway Bridges from being damaged by floating debris.
2012 - Grants of $40,000 for the Dimboola Recreation Reserve and $12,500 for the Jeparit Recreation Reserve are announced to repair damage caused by the significant floods that the district experienced twelve months previously in January 2011.
2016 - The Dimboola Courier reported that a 24-tonne load limit will be introduced on the historic Albacutya Bridge, north of Rainbow. This bridge was demolished in late 2021 and replaced by a new two-lane bridge opened in May 2022.
2023 - Lisa Marie Presley, the only child of singer and actor Elvis Presley and actress Priscilla Presley, died aged 54 following a cardiac arrest.

10/01/2024

in history, January 11:

1874 - Colonel Peter Warburton completes his gruelling nine-month crossing of the Great Sandy Desert.
1879 - The Zulu war against British colonial rule in South Africa begins.
1896 - The town of Bourke in New South Wales saw the end of thirteen days of extreme temperatures, which killed 47 people.
1935 - Amelia Earhart becomes the first person to fly solo from Honolulu, Hawaii, to Oakland, California.
1942 - Japan declared war on the Netherlands on the same day their forces invaded the Dutch East Indies.
1943 - The United States and Britain signed treaties relinquishing extraterritorial rights in China.
1949 - Australian singer-songwriter and lead singer of the band Sherbet, Daryl Braithwaite, is born.
1972 - East Pakistan becomes the independent state of Bangladesh.
1986 - British television presenter and mathematician, and star of the TV show ‘8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown, Rachel Riley, is born.
1988 - The National Tennis Centre in Melbourne is opened by the Premier, John Cain (Jnr), in time to host the 1988 Australian Tennis Open championships.
2011 - Despite Brisbane being supposedly flood-proof, a flood of epic proportions begins to inundate the city.
Picture - Not a significant picture for the date, other than it was taken on this day in 2010 of a ship departing Portland harbour.

09/01/2024

in history, January 10:

1810 - William Haines, the first Premier of Victoria, is born.
1852 - South Australia’s first lighthouse begins operation, located at Cape Willoughby on Kangaroo Island.
1855 - The Gold Fields Commission recommended a general amnesty for all those connected with the Eureka Stockade incident that occurred near Ballarat the previous month.
1893 - Albert Jacka, the first Australian to be awarded the Victoria Cross in World War One, is born.
1920 - The Treaty of Versailles takes effect, officially ending World War One, but also sowing the seeds for the causes of the Second World War that would begin just 19 years later.
1928 - Aviators Hood and Moncrieff disappear on their attempt to make the first trans-Tasman flight from Australia to New Zealand.
1935 - Edwin Flack, Australia’s only athlete to compete in the first modern Olympic games in 1896, died. At those games, Flack won gold medals in both the 800 and 1500-metre running events, and he also competed in the marathon and in both the singles and doubles tennis (with a partner from England).
1945 - British singer-songwriter Rod Stewart is born.
1946 - The United States Army Signal Corps successfully bounces radio waves off the Moon and receives the reflected signals.
1946 - The United Nations General Assembly meets for the first time.
1978 - The Soviet Union launched two cosmonauts aboard a Soyuz capsule for a rendezvous with the Salyut VI space laboratory.
2003 - North Korea announced that it was withdrawing from the global nuclear arms control treaty and that it had no plans to develop nuclear weapons.
2007 - The iTunes Music Store reached 1.3 million feature-length films sold and 50 million television episodes sold.
2023 - Cardinal George Pell died aged 81 in Rome.

08/01/2024

in history, January 9:

1816 - The Davy safety lamp is first utilised in a coal mine, initially terrifying the miners who fear an explosion.
1819 - James Francis, the ninth Premier of Victoria who served in that office between 10 June 1872 and 31 July 1874 is born.
1854 - The first Melbourne branch of the English, Scottish and Australian Chartered Bank was opened. Known as the ES&A bank, it merged with the Australia and New Zealand Bank in 1970 to form the Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Limited (ANZ Bank).
1868 - The last ship transporting convicts to Western Australia docks at Fremantle.
1869 - The fast clipper ship, ‘Thermopylae’, reached Melbourne after a record 60 days sailing from London.
1945 - Soldiers from the United States led by General Douglas MacArthur ‘return’ to the Philippines as promised.
1972 - The former ocean liner, the RMS Queen Elizabeth, is destroyed by fire in Hong Kong harbour.
1996 - The first episode of the TV show ‘Third Rock from the Sun’ is screened.
2001 - A Kenyan man being strangled by a python frees himself by biting the snake on the neck.
2001 - Apple announced iTunes at the Macworld Expo in San Francisco, for organizing and playing digital music and videos.
2002 - Michael Jackson receives the Artist of the Century award at the American music awards.
2007 - Apple Inc. CEO, Steve Jobs announces the iPhone.
2013 - A dust storm off Onslow, in the northwest of Australia, creates what looks like a huge red ocean wave.

07/01/2024

in history, January 8:

1676 - King Charles II of England is forced to withdraw his Proclamation Suppressing Coffee Houses, delivered only twelve days earlier.
1856 - The City of Melbourne was first lit with gas.
1878 - A political crisis known as 'Black Wednesday' began in Victoria on this day when Premier Graham Berry began dismissing public servants, starting with police and judges, in response to the upper house blocking his Appropriations Bill. Berry argued that without an Appropriations Bill they could not be paid.
1909 - Premier of Victoria, Sir Thomas Bent, retired from office after serving 1,789 days, with John Murray replacing him to become the State's 33rd Premier.
1916 - During World War One, the last British troops are withdrawn from the Gallipoli peninsula.
1918 - U.S. President Woodrow Wilson announced his Fourteen Points as the basis for peace upon the end of World War One.
1931 - The largest gold nugget found in Australia in the twentieth century is found by 17-year-old Jimmie Larcombe, who was prospecting with his father in Larkinville near Kalgoorlie. Called the 'Golden Eagle', the nugget weighed 32.2 kilograms and remains the largest found in Western Australia.
1935 - Elvis Presley, King of Rock' n' Roll, is born.
1939 - 'Australia’s tiniest pilot’ receives her flying licence. Miss Florence Martindale from Dimboola, who stood just five feet tall, had to be propped up on three cushions so she could reach the rudder controls of the Moth aeroplane (similar to the one pictured) with her feet on her final test flight. After three weeks of formal training at Essendon Aerodrome in Melbourne, she gained her ‘A’ pilot’s licence.
1942 - Stephen Hawking, English physicist and author, is born.
1959 - Paul Hester, drummer with bands 'Split Enz’ and ‘Crowded House’, is born.
2004 - The RMS Queen Mary 2, then the largest ocean liner ever built, is christened by her namesake’s granddaughter, Queen Elizabeth II.

06/01/2024

in history, January 7:

1799 - Bass and Flinders complete their first circumnavigation of Van Diemen's Land.
1832 - James Munro, the Premier of Victoria (between 1890 and 1892), was born.
1895 - Hudson Fysh, Australian pilot, businessman and co-founder of Qantas Airways Limited, is born.
1912 - Antarctic explorer Douglas Mawson reaches and names Commonwealth Bay on the Antarctic continent.
1919 - The Electricity Commissioners Act in Victoria passed through the Victorian Parliament, which created the State Electricity Commission of Victoria which came into being two years later under the chairmanship of World War One hero Sir John Monash.
1920 - The first Prime Minister of Australia, Edmund Barton, passed away.
1930 - A Royal Commission on the prices of flour and bread presented its final report to Parliament.
1931 - Guy Menzies flies the first solo non-stop trans-Tasman flight (from Australia to New Zealand) in 11 hours and 45 minutes, crash-landing on New Zealand's west coast.
1934 - Charles Kingsford Smith breaks the Sydney-Melbourne round-trip road record, clocking 17 hours in his sports car.
1965 - The first hydrofoil ferry, the MV Manly, begins operating in Sydney Harbour.
1983 - Hans Tholstrup completes the first solar-powered crossing of Australia.
1990 - The Leaning Tower of Pisa is closed to the public amidst fears that its lean has become too dangerous.
2015 - Terrorists kill 12 at the Paris office of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.

05/01/2024

in history, January 6:

Today is Epiphany, a Christian feast celebrating the visit of the Wise Men to Jesus in Bethlehem, and the traditional day to take down Christmas decorations.

1066 - Harold is crowned King of England after the death of Edward the Confessor.
1412 - Tradition suggests that the Christian martyr Joan of Arc was born on this day.
1912 - Australia's first aircraft crash occurs. William "Billy" Ewart Hart, who was the first to hold an Australian aviator's licence (issued in December 1911), also has the distinction of being the pilot in charge of the country's first aeroplane crash. Whilst flying his aircraft at a height of 180 metres, he hit turbulence and began to lose altitude, hitting a post and coming to rest upside down beside a railway line. Both Hart and his passenger survived, suffering only minor injuries.
1925 - Hollywood legend and humanitarian, Paul Newman, is born.
1929 - Mother Teresa arrives in Calcutta to begin her work amongst India's poorest and diseased people.
1935 - Resident of the Ebenezer Mission at Antwerp, Robert Kinnear, the first aboriginal winner of the Stawell Gift foot race in 1883, died.
1955 - English comedian Rowan Atkinson is born.
1979 - The Village People's song 'Y.M.C.A' becomes their only UK number one single, which at its peak sold over 150,000 copies a day.
1984 - The last day of Test cricket for Greg Chappell and Dennis Lillee, who had announced their retirement, and Rod Marsh, who played on for the one-day international series before retiring.
1992 - Shane Warne takes 1 for 150 in his first Test innings.

04/01/2024

CFA is calling on Victorians to become ‘citizen scientists’ to help contribute critical information about the state’s fire risk.

Read more here -

CFA is calling on Victorians to become ‘citizen scientists’ to help contribute critical information about the state’s fire risk.

04/01/2024

in history, January 5:

1802 - John Murray names Port Phillip Bay.
1809 - The Treaty of the Dardanelles was concluded between the Ottoman Empire and the United Kingdom. The treaty ended the Anglo-Turkish War. It restored extensive British commercial and legal privileges in the Ottoman Empire in return for the United Kingdom's promise to protect the integrity of the Ottoman Empire against the French threat. The treaty also affirmed the principle that no warships of any power should enter the straits of the Dardanelles and the Bosporus.
1843 - An Act for the Government of New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land was proclaimed which restructured the Legislative Council and increased formal representation for the residents of Port Phillip (what is now known as Victoria) to six elected members.
1871 - A Group of Chinese prospectors found a gold nugget at Dunolly in Victoria, which became known as 'The Precious', and yielded 50.418 kg of pure gold.
1891 - Australia's great shearers' strike, which led to the formation of the Labor Party in Australia, begins.
1893 - The railway line between Warrackanbeal and Beulah is opened. One of the features of this line was the solid brick construction of the station building at Beulah (pictured).
1941 - British pioneering aviatrix Amy Johnson, the first woman to fly solo from London to Australia, disappears after bailing out of her plane over the River Thames, and is presumed dead. A road at the north end of Lake Hindmarsh bares her name, in recognition of her being the first woman to fly solo from London to Australia.
1975 - The Tasman Bridge in Hobart is struck by bulk ore carrier 'Lake Illawarra', killing 12 people.

03/01/2024

in history, January 4:

1688 - English sea explorer William Dampier first lands on Australian soil at King Sound in northwest Western Australia.
1809 - Louis Braille, the inventor of the raised-dot writing system for the blind, is born.
1810 - Governor Lachlan Macquarie takes strong action to restore order following the deposition of Governor Bligh in the Rum Rebellion.
1840 - The 'Port Phillip Herald' began publication in Melbourne, from a weatherboard shack in Collins Street, and it was the fourth newspaper to start in Melbourne. It continued to be published until 1990 when the 'Herald' merged with the 'Sun News Pictorial' to form the 'Herald Sun'.
1898 - Australian fast bowler Ernie Jones became the first bowler to be called for throwing in a Test, when he was called by umpire Jim Phillips in a Test against England in Melbourne.
1912 - The Scout Association is incorporated throughout the British Commonwealth by Royal Charter.
1936 - Billboard magazine publishes its first music hit parade.
1958 - Leading the New Zealand section of the Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition, Edmund Hillary and his party were the first to reach the South Pole overland since Amundsen in 1911 and Scott in 1912 and the first ever to do so using motor vehicles.
1967 - Donald Campbell, the man who broke both the World land and water speed records in the same year (1964), is killed as he attempts another record.
1971 - Richard Chee Quee, the first player of Chinese origin to play first-class cricket in Australia, is born.
1990 - Victorian Premier between June 1955 and August 1972, Sir Henry Edward Bolte died.
2015 - Crews from the railways and two crane companies spent the day rerailing six grain hopper wagons that had come off the rails, but remained upright, in the siding adjacent to George Street in Dimboola. The mishap occurred two days earlier.

02/01/2024

in history, January 3:

1496 - Leonardo da Vinci unsuccessfully tests a flying machine.
1521 - Pope Leo X issued the papal bull Decet Romanum Pontificem, excommunicating Martin Luther, the German priest whose questioning of certain Roman Catholic practices initiated the Protestant Reformation.
1870 - Western Australia adopts its first state flag.
1888 - The drinking straw is patented.
1892 - J R R Tolkien, author of 'Lord of the Rings', is born.
1907 - A young Charles Kingsford-Smith becomes the first person to be rescued using a new Australian invention; the surf lifesaving reel.
1909 - World-class pianist and entertainer, Victor Borge, is born.
1925 - Benito Mussolini dissolves the Italian parliament and becomes dictator.
1929 - Don Bradman scored his first Test century when he made 112 against England at Melbourne Cricket Ground.
1956 - A fire damages the top part of the Eiffel Tower.
1956 - Actor, director, producer, and screenwriter Mel Gibson is born.
1977 - Apple Computer, Inc. incorporates.
1996 - The first flip phone, the Motorola StarTAC, goes on sale.