The 1960's

By Peter Francis
  • Period: to

    The 1960's

  • America had an enormous influence on Australian music, and American musicians tended to consistently top the 'pop' charts in Australia. A lot of people were listening to American music.

  • 15 January – The 2nd Annual Logie Awards are held the Savoy Hotel in Brighton, Victoria, although they are not televised. Graham Kennedy wins the "Star of the Year" (Gold Logie) award.

  • First Adelaide Festival

  • The last tram runs. Earlier in April, a runaway tram crashed into another tram. Several vehicles, including a bus, were hit by the trams. A conductor was killed and more than 40 people were treated for injuries in the Royal Hobart Hospital.

  • Ian Sinfield wins the men's national marathon title, clocking 2:25:13.9 in Melbourne.

  • Compulsory national service training for men ends

  • Surfer's Paradise: Billiards champion Walter Lindrum dies at 61

  • Brisbane: First tied cricket test

  • Crown-of-thorns starfish begins ravaging the Great Barrier Reef

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

  • Brisbane Rugby League premiership: Norths defeated Valleys 29-5

  • Last tram runs from La Perousse to Randwick workshops

  • The novel Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence is banned from sale

  • Australia signed the Antarctic Treaty

  • Rod Laver wins Men's Singles tennis final

  • Four Corners TV current affairs program first screened on ABC TV

  • Dame Joan Sutherland is announced as Australian of the Year

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

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

  • The first twenty years of Australian television consisted almost completely of American and British TV shows.

  • As Astronaut John Glenn circles the Earth, the city of Perth turns on its lights.

  • Australia tallest building opens, the 25-storey AMP building

  • NBN Television opens in Newcastle, New South Wales as NBN-3.

  • Heather Blundell wins the Women's Championship at the British Open Squash Championships

  • Keith Ollerenshaw wins the men's national marathon title, clocking 2:26:24.2 in Perth.

  • The ‘Mod’ movement died out after a riot on Brighton beach between the ‘Mods’ and ‘Rockers’. After the riots had long ended, fashion designers in London gave the word a whole new meaning.

  • The first performance of the Australian Ballet Company in Sydney was of Swan Lake.

  • John Carew Eccles is announced as the Australian of the Year

  • This era fashions are frequently marked by designers such as Givenchy, Chanel, and Pucci.

  • Careful, He Might Hear You by Sumner Locke Elliott is awarded the Miles Franklin Literary Award

  • Dixie Willis breaks Lyudmila Shevtsova's world record (2:04.3) in the women's 800 metres, clocking 2:01.2 in Perth.

  • Margaret Smith becomes the first Australian woman to win the Women's Singles tennis championship

  • Wimbledon: Margaret Smith becomes the first Australian woman to win the Women's Singles tennis championship

  • Nine Network founded as the "National Television Network"

  • 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

  • The demand for popular fiction continued to grow in the second half of the 20th century. Prominent authors included Nevil Shute (1899–1960), an Englishman who settled in Australia and wrote novels including A Town Like Alice (1950), and Morris West (1916–

  • Continuing the trend begun in the latter part of 1963, women's fashions in 1964 moved still further away from the straight lines and extreme tailoring of "tough chic" to ever greater fullness, softness, and feminine detail.

  • Royal Commission into the Voyager disaster opens

  • Donald Horne's The Lucky Country published.

  • The launch of ATV-0 marks the birth of the third commercial television network

  • Judy Hanrahan becomes the first woman teller appointed by the Bank of NSW since the war

  • Bernard "Midget" Farrelly wins the first World Surfboard Championship at Manly Beach

  • The Beatles tour Australia.

  • 26 inch color TV

  • Eric Edgar Cooke becomes the last man executed in Western Australia, for murdering 8 citizens in Perth, Western Australia between 1959 and 1963.

  • The first hydrofoil ferry service begins

  • Dawn Fraser becomes youngest person to be named Australian of the Year

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

  • London was one of the major influences on the changing fashions in the early 1960s, By 1965, ‘Mod’ fashions, which included miniskirts and hotpants, were being worn across the entire world.

  • Jimmy Hannan wins the Gold Logie Award

  • The ALP deletes "White Australia" from its immigration policy

  • 5 transistor push button tape recorder

  • Light Fingers won the Melbourne Cup.

  • Clifton Pugh's portrait of R.A. Henderson wins the Archibald Prize for portraiture

  • The Prime Minister, Sir Robert Menzies resigns after 16 straight years in office. Harold Holt succeeds him

  • Up to 200,000 protestors attend anti Vietnam war protests around the world

  • Gordon Chater wins the Gold Logie

  • Anthony Cook wins the men's national marathon title, clocking 2:20:44.6 in Ballarat.

  • Dishwasher RCA was invented

  • The first edition of the pop magazine Go-Set is published in Melbourne

  • Australia's first satellite communications earth station opens at Carnarvon in WA

  • Wave Hill: 200 hundred aborigines employed on the Wave Hill cattle station go on strike claiming a wage of $50 a week Darwin: Harry Chan elected first ethnic Chinese mayor

  • Jack Brabham is named Australian Of The Year

  • 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.

  • This Day Tonight, Australia's first national nightly TV current affairs program, premieres on ABC-TV, hosted by Bill Peach.

  • Health authorities begin the first national polio immunisation campaign using the new Sabin oral vaccine developed by Dr Jonas Salk.

  • 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

  • Melbourne's La Mama Theatre opens.

  • In 1967, Amana, a division of Raytheon, introduced its domestic Radarange microwave oven, marking the beginning of the use of microwave ovens in home kitchens.

  • The Federal Government announces it will set up the Office of Aboriginal Affairs

  • Derek Clayton wins his first men's national marathon title, clocking 2:21:58 in Adelaide.

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

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

  • The Seekers are named Australians of the Year for 1967.

  • Founded in 1968, Midea is renowned as a sizeable conglomerate that specializes in the manufacturing of household appliances and sets foot in relevant fields of real estates and logistics.

  • An episode of the ABC series Bellbird stops the nation when the character of Charlie Cousins (played by Robin Ramsay) dies in a fall from a silo.

  • Rod Laver wins Men's Singles tennis title in the first Open Wimbledon

  • Opening of the National Gallery of Victoria

  • The contraceptive, or birth control pill was introduced in Australia in the 1960s. It had a significant impact on society, granting women greater sexual freedom and allowing them to control when and if they had children. The Pill also sparked much moral d

  • Mike Wenden wins his second gold medal at the Olympics for the 200 metres freestyle

  • At the Australian Film Institute Awards ceremony, Prime Minister John Gorton announces the creation of the Australian Film Development Corporation.

  • Boxer Johnny Famechon becomes world featherweight champion, when he defeats Cuban Jose Legra in a bout at the Albert Hall in London.

  • Vic: Southern Aurora express passenger train crashes into a goods train from Sydney, killing at least 10 people and injuring 50

  • The last episode of spy series Hunter is aired.

  • An Australian production of the rock musical Hair opens in Sydney. Produced by Harry M. Miller, it features the debut of young American singer Marcia Hines.George Johnston's novel Clean Straw for Nothing wins the Miles Franklin Award

  • Opening of musical Hair with controversial 30 second nudity sce

  • Melbourne: Arbitration Commission adopts principle of equal pay for women

  • The late 1960s also saw changes to the White Australia Policy, which permitted a small number of skilled Asian migrants to settle in Australia.

  • NASA switches the main transmission feed of the Apollo 11 moon landing to Honeysuckle Creek Tracking Station in Canberra, then Parkes Observatory in New South Wales, which then broadcasts the mission to the world.

  • WoodStock was a time when 500,000 hippies gathered, for "three days of peace" and music.