1960's

By eshays
  • Canberra: Compulsory national service training for men ends

  • Federal Government directs all future TV commercials to be made in Australia

  • Sydney: Woman fined for being "unsuitably dressed" wearing a bikini at Bondi Beach

  • Melbourne: Busfhires rage through the Great Divide and the Dandenong Ranges on the edge of Melboune, killing 8 people and destroying hundreds of houses

  • Perth: As Astronaut John Glenn circles the Earth, the city of Perth turns on its lights. "I can see the outline of a town and a very bright light just to the south of it." Glenn dubs Perth "The City of Lights"

  • Perth: Philip Magalnir becomes the first Australian Aborigine to vote under the new Commonwealth electoral laws granting voting rights to Aborigines

  • Australia becomes the first nation to endorse the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty

  • Period: to

    The Beatles tour Australia.

  • Sydney: The first hydrofoil ferry service begins

  • London: Prime Minister Menzies declares that Australia is at war with Vietnam

  • Australia changes over to decimal currency.

  • 90% of white Australians vote in referendum for proposal to count aborigines in the census and to allow the federal government to make special laws for them

  • Portsea: Prime Minister Harold Holt disappears while swimming in heavy surf south of Melbourne. His body is never found

  • Canberra: John Grey Gorton sworn in as Australia's 19th Prime Minister after Harold's Holt's disappearance

  • Melbourne: Police battle 3,000 Vietnam war protesters outside the US Consulate