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Heat waves kills 11 in Central Australia and 13 in Sydney
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Hotels and theatres open for the first time on Anzac Day. Organised sport allowed in the afternoon
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Hobart: The last tram runs. Earlier in April, a runaway tram crashed into another tram. Several vehicles, including a bus, were hit by the trams.
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Mackay: TAA Fokker Friendship plane crashes, killling all 29 on board
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Canberra: Compulsory national service training for men ends
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Surfer's Paradise: Billiards champion Walter Lindrum dies at 61
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Stockholm: Immunologist Sir Frank MacFarlane Burnet shares Nobel Prize for Medicine with Briton Peter Medawar Burnett speech on dangers of smoking recorded Nov 24, 1968
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Brisbane: First tied cricket test Australia v West indies at The Gabba
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Federal Government directs all future TV commercials to be made in Australia
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Australia to sell wheat to Communist China
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The Credit Squeeze hits the car industry: GMH to dismiss 2,600 workers and on March 8, Ford sacks 980 workers, making a total of 2000 since the previous November
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Sydney: Last tram runs from La Perousse to Randwick workshops
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Sydney: Stephen Leslie Bradley sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of kidnap victim Graeme Thorne July 1960
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Wimbledon: Rod Laver wins Men's Singles tennis final
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Sydney: Woman fined for being "unsuitably dressed" wearing a bikini at Bondi Beach
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Sydney: Obstetrician Dr William McBride confirms the anti nausea drug thalidomide is linked to birth defects
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Melbourne: Busfhires rage through the Great Divide and the Dandenong Ranges on the edge of Melboune, killing 8 people and destroying hundreds of houses
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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"
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Sydney: Australia tallest building opens, the 25-storey AMP building
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Melbourne: The Southern Aurora arrives from Sydney on the new uniform-gauge line that now links the 2 states Video clip (mute)
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Federal Government bans drug thalidomide
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New York: Rod Laver wins the Grand Slam in men's tennis after his defeat of fellow Australian Roy Emerson in the US Championships. Margaret Smith is the first Australian woman to win the US Women's Singles title
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Perth: Prince Philip opens the Commonwealth Games. Australia's medal tally at the end of the games is 38, the highest score for any one country in Commonwealth Games' history
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Perth: Philip Magalnir becomes the first Australian Aborigine to vote under the new Commonwealth electoral laws granting voting rights to Aborigines
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Bogle/Chandler Case: Two boys near the Lane Cove River in Sydney find the bodies of Dr Gilbert Stanley Bogle, a physicist with the CSIRO, and Mrs Margaret Chandler, wife of a CSIRO scientist. Although poisoning is suspected, the case is still unsolved
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First Secretary of the Soviet Embassy, Ivan Skripov, is expelled as a spy
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Comalco begins full-scale mining of bauxite at Weipa on Cape York Peninsula
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Gippsland: Aboriginal leader Pastor Doug Nicholls leads the fight against the closure of the Lake Tyers settlement
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Wimbledon: Margaret Smith becomes the first Australian woman to win the Women's Singles tennis championship
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WA: First stage of the Ord River irrigation project, the dam at Kununurra, opens
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Australia becomes the first nation to endorse the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty
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Stockholm: The Australian scientist Sir John Carew Eccles is awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine for his work on the central portions of the nerve cell membrane
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Menzies becomes the first Party leader to make his policy speech on TV
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Darwin: Police evict the Mapoon community on Cape York Peninsula and raze community buildings to allow bauxite mining. This becomes the focus for the growing issues of aboriginal land rights
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Sydney: The first hydrofoil ferry service begins
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Jervis Bay: The aircraft carrier HMAS Melbourne collides with the destroyer HMAS Voyager, cutting it in half and killing 82 of the Voyager's officers and crew in the worst peacetime naval disaster in Australian history
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Canberra: Royal Commission into the Voyager disaster opens
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Judy Hanrahan becomes the first woman teller appointed by the Bank of NSW since the war
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The Beatles tour Australia.
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National Service reintroduced
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Queensland Government declares a state of emergency in an attempt to end an industrial dispute at Mt Isa mines.
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Sydney: The first hydrofoil ferry service begins
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Dawn Fraser becomes youngest person to be named Australian of the Year
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Grafton: Freedom Rides - A bus carrying 30 students, including Charles Perkins, has to be escorted from Moree after a demonstration against discrimination at the town's swimming pool
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Canberra: Prime Minister Menzies commits Australian troops to fight in Vietnam.
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Melbourne: Students protest over Springbok tour - the all white Springbok Rugby Union team arrive to a hostile reception
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London: Prime Minister Menzies declares that Australia is at war with Vietnam
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The ALP deletes "White Australia" from its immigration policy
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Roma Mitchell is Australia's first woman judge, after her appointment to the South Australian Supreme Court Bench
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Canberra: Lake Burley Griffin official opened
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The Prime Minister, Sir Robert Menzies resigns after 16 straight years in office. Harold Holt succeeds him
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Adelaide: The Beaumont children, Jane, Arnna & Grant disappear from the suburb of Glenelg
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Australia changes over to decimal currency.
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Joern Utzon quits the construction of the Sydney Opera House
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Sydney: The first Australian conscripts fly out for Vietnam. Anti-conscription and anti-Vietnam War demonstrators could not get near the RAAF base at Richmond
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Long Tan: Australian troops encounter one of the bloodiest episodes yet with the Viet Cong
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Wave Hill: 200 hundred aborigines employed on the Wave Hill cattle station go on strike claiming a wage of $50 a week
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Darwin: Harry Chan elected first ethnic Chinese mayor
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Melbourne: Ronald Ryan is the last man to hang in Australia for the murder of a prison warder while escaping from Melbourne's Pentridge Jail. His execution would result in the abolition of the death penalty.
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Tasmanian bushfires
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Gough Whitlam succeeds Arthur Calwell to become new Leader of the Labor Party
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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
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Brisbane: Demonstrations against Queensland Government regulations, which require groups to apply for, and be granted, a permit before holding any public meeting in the city
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The Federal Government announces it will set up the Office of Aboriginal Affairs
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Portsea: Prime Minister Harold Holt disappears while swimming in heavy surf south of Melbourne. His body is never found
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Canberra: John Grey Gorton sworn in as Australia's 19th Prime Minister after Harold's Holt's disappearance
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Poet Isobel Marion Dorothea Mackellar dies
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Tokyo: Lionel Rose wins the Bantamweight world boxing championship after defeating Masahiko "Fighting" Harada
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Sydney: Pacifist Simon Townsend (later TV entertainer) granted exemption from National Service after being detained at Ingleburn Army Camp on bread and water rations
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Sydney: British comedian Tony Hancock found dead in his flat after overdose of barbiturates and alcohol
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Wimbledon: Rod Laver wins Men's Singles tennis title in the first Open Wimbledon
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Brisbane: Joh Bjelke-Petersen becomes Premier and leader of the Country Party after the death of Pizzey
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Melbourne: Opening of the National Gallery of Victoria
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WA: The town of Meckering destroyed by biggest earthquake yet recorded in Australia. The quake measured 6.9 on the Richter Scale
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Melbourne: Texas oil troubleshooter Paul "Red" Adair arrives to put out massive gas leak and fire on Esso-BHP's gas and oil platform off Lakes Entrance
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Vic: Death toll from bushfires across the state reaches 15
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London: Johnny Famechon wins World Featherweight boxng title
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Violet Town, Vic: Southern Aurora express passenger train crashes into a goods train from Sydney, killing at least 10 people and injuring 50
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Sydney: Opening of musical Hair with controversial 30 second nudity scene
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Melbourne: Arbitration Commission adopts principle of equal pay for women
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Melbourne: Police battle 3,000 Vietnam war protesters outside the US Consulate
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Artist Norman Lindsay dies at 90.
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Canberra: Prime Minister Gorton announces phased withdrawal of Australian troops from Vietnam