Events
- 10 May – Law professor George Duncan is drowned in the Torrens River, Adelaide. Police establish that his death was a homophobic-related murder.
- 3 June – Douglas Nicholls becomes the first Indigenous Australian to be knighted.
- 29 July – Kerry Anne Wells earned Australia's first Miss Universe crown, in Dorado, Puerto Rico.
- 6 October – Faraday School kidnapping – six pupils and their teacher are kidnapped for $1 million ransom in Victoria.
- 15 November – First aircraft hijacking in Australia. Ansett Airlines flight 232 from Adelaide to Alice Springs with 28 passengers and a crew of 4. Followed by gun battle at Alice Springs Airport.
- 1 December – Belinda Green is crowned Miss World in London, becoming the second Australian winner of this pageant. Australia won the two most important beauty contest in this year.
- 2 December – Gough Whitlam becomes Prime Minister of Australia.
- Shane Gould is announced as Australian of the Year
- The health warning, "Smoking is a Health Hazard" became compulsory on cigarette packets in Australia.
Read more about this topic: 1972 In Australia
Famous quotes containing the word events:
“When the course of events shall have removed you to distant scenes of action where laurels not nurtured with the blood of my country may be gathered, I shall urge sincere prayers for your obtaining every honor and preferment which may gladden the heart of a soldier.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“As I look at the human story I see two stories. They run parallel and never meet. One is of people who live, as they can or must, the events that arrive; the other is of people who live, as they intend, the events they create.”
—Margaret Anderson (1886–1973)
“Man is a stream whose source is hidden. Our being is descending into us from we know not whence. The most exact calculator has no prescience that somewhat incalculable may not balk the very next moment. I am constrained every moment to acknowledge a higher origin for events than the will I call mine.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)