Genealogy Genie

11/05/2022

ON THIS DAY – 11th May

1813 – William Lawson, Gregory Blaxland and William Wentworth, led an expedition westwards from Sydney. Their route opened up inland Australia for continued expansion throughout the 19th century.

1935 – Rugby league: St. George beat Canterbury 91 points to 6 for the highest score and biggest win in NRL history.

1938 – Two jockeys were killed and two injured in a horse racing accident at Morphettville Racecourse in Adelaide, South Australia.

1958 – Construction of Australia's largest man-made lake, Lake Eucumbene on the Eucumbene River in the Snowy Mountains, was completed.

1983 – VFL Board accepted the findings of the McKinsey Report in principle, suggesting major changes to league administration including the establishment of an independent commission.

1989 – The ACT Legislative Assembly met for the first time.

1989 – Rosemary Follett became the first Chief Minister of the Australian Capital Territory and the first female leader of any Australian state or territory.

Pictured:
Framed portraits of explorers Blaxland, Wentworth and Lawson (NMA) – Top
Start of work on the Adaminaby Dam in 1954 to create Lake Eucumbene (Stories Coretext) – Bottom

15/07/2021

ON THIS DAY - 15th July

1847 – St Peter's College, Adelaide was founded by members of the Anglican Church of Australia.

1851 – Charles La Trobe was appointed as first Lieutenant Governor of Victoria.

1905 – Australia first competed in the Davis Cup, in a combined Australasian team with New Zealand.

1912 – The first branches of the Commonwealth Bank were opened in Melbourne and country Victoria. The Prime Minister, Andrew Fisher, was the bank's first account holder and depositor.

1922 – A platypus was displayed for the first time in the United States. - Harry Burrell was a naturalist and wildlife photographer who devoted much of his life to the study of the platypus. He designed an artificial habitat which came to be known as a platypussary, which enabled the transportation of five platypuses to a New York Zoo in 1922. The platypuses were placed on display for the first time in the USA on 15 July 1922.

1964 – The first edition of ‘The Australian’ was published in Canberra. It was Australia's first national daily newspaper, published by Rupert Murdoch's News Limited.

Pictured:
The earliest known view of the School on the current Hackney site, c1852–3. Pencil drawing by Jane Dorothea Cannan, titled ‘Collegiate Institution, Adelaide’ from the collections of the Royal Historical Society of Victoria, Melbourne. (St Peter's College, Adelaide) – Bottom Left
Charles Joseph La Trobe. Frontispiece to The Rambler in Oklahoma (SLV) – Bottom Right
A colour print of platypuses from 1863 (The mammals of Australia. By John Gould [1845-1863]) – Top

21/05/2021

TGIF!!!

19/05/2021

Eleanor Casella will consider field results from her Tasmanian excavation projects to explore a set of overlapped themes: (1) the nature of social relations under incarceration, (2) the broad diversity of convict experiences, and (3) the central role of globalised commodities within Van Diemen’s L...

19/05/2021

After more than 150 years of continuous burials, Sydney's Rookwood Cemetery is running out of room but the blueprint for a massive new burial ground 60km away is facing significant opposition.

19/05/2021

19/05/2021

ON THIS DAY –19th May

1861 – Dame Nellie Melba, Australian operatic singer, was born.

1915 – John Simpson Kirkpatrick, the man who heroically rescued wounded soldiers with a donkey at Gallipoli, was killed.

1942 – The prototype CAC Boomerang, an Australian-designed and built fighter aircraft, took to the air for the first time.

1948 – Federal government announced that Australian rail gauges would be standardised by 1951.

1950 – Cabinet agreed to send forces to aid the British during the Malayan Emergency.

1976 – Gold ownership legalized in Australia.

1997 – In the one and only Super League Tri-series, New South Wales defeat Queensland 23–22 in the longest (104 minutes) & one of the most exciting games of representative rugby league ever played.

Pictured:
Melba, drawn by Frank Haviland (Wiki) – Top Left
Simpson (centre) with his donkey, bearing a wounded soldier (Wiki) – Top Right
Boomerangs under construction at CAC's factory at Fisherman's Bend (AWM) – Bottom

18/05/2021

ON THIS DAY –18th May

1841 – Edward Eyre's sole surviving companion, Wylie the Aborigine, gorged himself on a penguin and most of a kangaroo. - Edward John Eyre was the first white man to cross southern Australia from Adelaide to the west, travelling across the Nullarbor Plain to King George's Sound, now called Albany. Eyre originally intended to cross the continent from south to north, taking with him his overseer, John Baxter, and three Aborigines. He was forced to revise his plans when his way became blocked by the numerous saltpans of South Australia, leading him to believe that a gigantic inland sea in the shape of a horseshoe prevented access to the north. Following this fruitless attempt, Eyre regrouped at Streaky Bay on the west coast of the Eyre Peninsula. He then continued west, which had never before been attempted, in a gruelling journey across the Nullarbor, during which his party faced starvation and thirst. Eyre's overseer, Baxter, was killed on the night of 29 April 1841, as he tried to stop two of the expedition's Aborigines from raiding the meagre supplies. After Baxter died, Eyre was left with just one loyal companion, the Aborigine Wylie. The two continued on, trying to outrun the Aborigines whilst subsisting on very few rations. On 18 May 1841, Eyre and Wylie found that the hard, porous limestone gave way to land that was more promising by the beach, with grass for the horses and an abundance of food for the men. Eyre wrote in his journal that Wylie ate: "... the entrails, paunch, liver, lights, tail and two hind legs of [a] young kangaroo, next followed a penguin that he found dead upon the beach, upon this he forced down the whole of the hide of the kangaroo after singeing the hair off, and wound up this meal by swallowing the tough skin of the penguin ..." Eyre and Wylie rested at this place, Point Malcolm, for another week before continuing their journey westwards.

1854 – Australia's first horse-drawn railway line commenced operations in South Australia.

1914 – Sir Ronald Munro Ferguson commenced duties as Governor-General.

1992 – Auckland (now New Zealand) Warriors were admitted to the 1995 ARL premiership. North Queensland, South Queensland & Perth were all admitted later, forming 20-team comp.

1996 – The Fitzroy Lions (16.11.107) defeated the Fremantle Dockers (10.16.76) at the Whitten Oval in what would be Fitzroy's final ever victory as a stand-alone club.

Pictured:
Wylie (Smore) – Bottom Left
First South Australian tramway (SLSA) – Top
Ronald Munro Ferguson, Governor-General of Australia 1914-1920 (National Portrait Gallery UK) – Bottom Right

17/05/2021

Look at how far we’ve come since this ‘desk instrument with dial’ model from 1922.

J2364, 2804/7