1968 in Australia - Events

Events

  • 4 January – The search for the body of Prime Minister Harold Holt, who disappeared whilst swimming off Portsea, Victoria, is called off.
  • 10 January – John Gorton is sworn in as Prime Minister of Australia after the disappearance of Harold Holt.
  • 28 January – Members of English rock groups The Who and Small Faces are escorted by police from a plane at Melbourne's Essendon Airport, after the pilot diverts the flight citing the bands' behaviour.
  • 1 April – American evangelist Billy Graham begins a tour of Australia.
  • 17 April – A state election is held in South Australia. Steele Hall (Liberal and Country League) defeats Don Dunstan (ALP), and becomes Premier of South Australia.
  • 8 April – Fluoridation of Sydney's water supply begins.
  • 30 April – Jim Cairns unsuccessfully challenges Gough Whitlam for leadership of the Australian Labor Party.
  • 1 May – The Duke of Edinburgh arrives in Australia for a ten day visit.
  • 5 May – Three Australian journalists are killed by the Viet Cong in Saigon.
  • 21 May – Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi visits Australia.
  • 14 June – Journalist Simon Townsend, future host of Simon Townsend's Wonder World, is granted exemption from military service after lodging a fifth appeal against his imprisonment and court martial for conscientious objection.
  • 18 June – The first stage of the Warringah Freeway opens in Sydney.
  • 24 June – British comedian Tony Hancock commits suicide in his Sydney hotel room.
  • 2 July – Fifty students are arrested during an anti-Vietnam War protest in Martin Place, Sydney.
  • 4 July – Forty five people are arrested during an anti-war protest outside the U.S. consulate in St Kilda Road, Melbourne.
  • 31 July – The Premier of Queensland, Jack Pizzey, dies in office.
  • 1 August – Jack Pizzey's deputy, Gordon Chalk, is sworn in as his successor until the appointment of Joh Bjelke-Petersen as Premier a week later.
  • 3 August – The standard gauge rail line between Perth and Kalgoorlie is completed.
  • 20 August – The National Gallery of Victoria is opened in Melbourne.
  • 14 October – The town of Meckering, Western Australia, is badly damaged by an earthquake.
  • 28 October – The Postmaster-General's Department decreases the number of mail deliveries per day from two to one.
  • 31 October – Minister for the Army Phillip Lynch admits that Australian Army troops may have breached the Geneva Convention by using water torture during the interrogation of a female Viet Cong suspect.
  • 1 November – The airline Ansett-ANA is renamed Ansett.
  • 14 December – A referendum is held in Tasmania to allow the granting of Australia's first casino license to the Wrest Point Hotel. The referendum is passed.
  • 31 December – MacRobertson Miller Airlines Flight 1750 crashes south of Port Hedland, Western Australia, killing all 26 people on board.

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Famous quotes containing the word events:

    “All strange and terrible events are welcome,
    But comforts we despise.”
    —William Shakespeare (1564–1616)

    “If I have renounced the search of truth, if I have come into the port of some pretending dogmatism, some new church, some Schelling or Cousin, I have died to all use of these new events that are born out of prolific time into multitude of life every hour. I am as bankrupt to whom brilliant opportunities offer in vain. He has just foreclosed his freedom, tied his hands, locked himself up and given the key to another to keep.”
    —Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    ““The ideal reasoner,” he remarked, “would, when he had once been shown a single fact in all its bearings, deduce from it not only all the chain of events which led up to it but also all the results which would follow from it.””
    —Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930)