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Captain James cook (7 November 1728 – 14 February 1779) was a British explorer, cartographer and navigator. He is well known in Australia for being the first European to achieve contact with the eastern coastline of Australia. In 1770 Cook arrived by boat in Botany Bay, Sydney.
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Between 1788 and 1850 the English sent over 162,000 convicts to Australia in 806 ships. The first eleven of these ships are today known as the First Fleet and contained the convicts and marines that are now known as the Founders of Australia. The six convict ships were: The Alexander
The Charlotte
The Lady Penrhyn
The Friendship
The Prince of Wales
The Scarborough -
In 1851 the Great Australian Gold Rush started when prospector Edward Hargraves claimed to have discovered a “grain of gold” in a waterhole near Bathurst, New South Wales.
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Edward (Ned) Kelly (1855-1880) was born in June 1855 at Beveridge, Victoria, the eldest son of John (Red) Kelly and his wife Ellen. Ned attended school at Avenel until his father died on 27 December 1866.
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Thomas Wills and his cousin, Henry Harrison, and two others W.J. Hammersley and J.B. Thompson, invented the football game to keep themselves, and other cricket players, fit during winter.
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On the 19th of July 1873, Ayers rock was first sighted by the surveyor William Gosse, he was the first European to discover the rock and named it after Chief Secretary of SA, Sir Henry Ayers.
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Thomas Edison officially creates the first electrically powered light bulb. This changed the world because it now allows for industrial processes to continue into the night due to the greater amount of light output compared to a candle.
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At 10.00 am on November 11th 1880, Ned Kelly was hanged in the Old Melbourne Goal, where he became an Australian Legend.
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Women participated for the first time at the 1900 Paris Games with women's events like lawn tennis and golf. Women's athletics and gymnastics debuted at the 1928 Olympics.
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On March 18, 1910 whilst on a visit to Australia and in a Voisin biplane (purchased for US$5,000 in Hamburg, Germany) Harry Houdini made the first controlled, powered flight of an aeroplane in Australia.
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The First World War began when Britain and Germany went to war in August 1914, Prime Minister Andrew Fisher's government gave full support to Britain. The outbreak of war was greeted in Australia, as in many other places, with great enthusiasm.
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At the end of 1918, an agreement was finally made. The fighting was to end on the 11th hour of 11th day of 11th month (11 am on Nov. 11, 1918)
