Events
- 9 January – Yachtsman Tony Bullimore is found alive five days after his boat capsized in the Southern Ocean.
- 1 May – Tasmania becomes the last state in Australia to decriminalise homosexuality.
- 1 May – Melbourne's HM Prison Pentridge is closed.
- 5 May – The position of Chief Minister of Norfolk Island is restored.
- 20 May – A Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission report calls for an apology for an early government policy of removing Aboriginal children from their parents and placing them in institutions.
- 1 July – The telecommunications market is deregulated, allowing the entry of competitors other than Telstra and Optus.
- 13 July – A crowd of over 100,000 people watches the Royal Canberra Hospital implosion. A 12-year-old girl, Katie Bender, is killed instantly and nine others are injured when debris from the site travels across Lake Burley Griffin.
- 30 July – The Thredbo landslide occurs, killing 17 people.
- 2 August – Stuart Diver, a ski instructor, is rescued as the sole survivor of the Thredbo landslide.
- 30 August – Elections in the Northern Territory re-elect the Country Liberal Party government of Shane Stone.
- 31 August – The head of Yagan, a Noongar warrior, is repatriated to Australia 164 years after being taken to the United Kingdom.
- 11 October – A state election is held in South Australia. The Liberal/National coalition government of John Olsen is re-elected, albeit with a substantially reduced minority.
- 15 October – Cheryl Kernot, leader of the Australian Democrats, defects to the Australian Labor Party.
Read more about this topic: 1997 In Australia
Famous quotes containing the word events:
“One of the extraordinary things about human events is that the unthinkable becomes thinkable.”
—Salman Rushdie (b. 1948)
“When the world was half a thousand years younger all events had much sharper outlines than now. The distance between sadness and joy, between good and bad fortune, seemed to be much greater than for us; every experience had that degree of directness and absoluteness which joy and sadness still have in the mind of a child”
—Johan Huizinga (1872–1945)
“It is the true office of history to represent the events themselves, together with the counsels, and to leave the observations and conclusions thereupon to the liberty and faculty of every man’s judgement.”
—Francis Bacon (1561–1626)