Australian History
Tuesday, August 30, 1853. : The last ship to carry convicts directly from Ireland to Australia arrives in Fremantle.
Transportation of convicts to Australia began when the first ship departed Portsmouth, England, in May 1787, and ended on 9 January 1868, when the last convict ship left Britain in 1867 and arrived in Australia on 10 January 1868. This ship, the “Hougoumont”, brought its final cargo of 269 convicts to Western Australia, as New South Wales had abolished transportation of convicts in 1840. During its transportation era, Australia received 160,000 convicts.
Ireland ceased transportation of convicts to Australia earlier than England. The final convict-carrying ship direct from Ireland arrived in Fremantle, Western Australia, on 30 August 1853. The ship that made the final voyage of transportation was the ‘Phoebe Dunbar’. It left Kingstown, near Dublin, Ireland, on 2 June 1853, and carried 93 passengers and 295 convicts, although eight men died at sea, one died in the harbour and one in the Convict Establishment Hospital. The passengers were made up entirely of pensioner guards and their families.
Australian History
Thursday, August 30, 1923. : The first Australian transcontinental train with a sleeper car departs from Terowie in South Australia.
From the time that railways came to Australia, they proved to be an invaluable asset, especially in the country’s remote regions. South Australia became the first state to utilise horse-drawn trains, doing so between Goolwa and Port Elliot in 1854, and within two years the colony had begun work on a new section of line running for 30km from Adelaide to Gawler. This line gradually extended further north. The vision of a transcontinental railway took shape, and construction of the original Ghan track north from Port Augusta began in 1878. The first section of the railway reached Government Gums, now Farina, in 1881. The next stage of the line was extended to Marree in 1882, then Oodnadatta in 1891. Oodnadatta remained the terminus for several decades before the next stage of the railway line began, in 1926.
Up to this point, the trains were mainly freight trains, with day passenger trains which stopped overnight at Quorn and Marree. The first passenger train with the sleeping car “Alberga” made its inaugural run from Terowie to Oodnadatta on 30 August 1923. Legend has it that, as the train stopped at Quorn at dusk, an Afghan passenger alighted from Alberga, rolled out his mat to face Mecca, and began reciting his evening prayers before continuing his journey. After a railway worker subsequently dubbed the train the Afghan Express, the name stuck. It was later shortened to the ‘Ghan Express’, and finally just ‘The Ghan’, the name by which the overnight passenger service is known now. Other sources state that the name was derived from the 19th century Afghan camel drivers who helped to explore the country’s remote regions, as the line roughly follows the Afghan trade route taken from Adelaide to the north. However, a commemorative plaque at Alice Springs railway station supports the origin of the name being credited with the events that occurred at Quorn.
Australian History
Thursday, August 30, 1945. : Australia’s Advisory War Council is disbanded.
The Advisory War Council (AWC) was an Australian Government body established during World War 2 to strengthen Australia’s war effort. The purpose of the Council was to “… consider and advise the Government with respect to such matters relating to the defence of the Commonwealth or the prosecution of the war as are referred to the Council by the Prime Minister and may consider and advise the Government with respect to such other matters so relating as it thinks fit.”
At the outbreak of World War 2, Prime Minister Robert Menzies formed a War Cabinet in September 1939 as the main government body advising on the Australian war effort. The War Cabinet consisted of eight Australian Government ministers chosen by the Prime Minister and was crucial to the war effort. However, an air crash in August 1940 killed three members of the Cabinet: Minister for Air James Fairbairn; Minister for Navy Frederick Stewart; and Minister for Information Henry Gullet. This tragedy was one of several circumstances which considerably weakened the United Australia Party-Country Party coalition leading to the loss of several seats for the Menzies Government in the general election in September 1940.
Menzies approached opposition leader John Curtin to form a national government. Curtin declined but proposed an Australian War Council, made up of members of both the government and the opposition, to help enhance the war and defence efforts. Jurisdiction of both the War Cabinet and the AWC was to cover military strategy, armaments and munitions, aircraft production, transport, and railways. Menzies agreed and the AWC was established under National Security regulations on 28 October 1940. When John Curtin’s Labor Party achieved victory in 1941, it was agreed that the War Cabinet would automatically accept any AWC recommendation supported by the majority of ministers, giving the AWC greater power and authority during the war years.
After the war ended, the Advisory War Council was disbanded, on 30 August 1945.
World History
August 30. : Cleopatra, famous Queen in ancient Egypt, dies after allowing herself to be bitten by a poisonous snake.
Cleopatra, the famous Queen in ancient Egypt, was born in 69 BC in Alexandria. Although she was the third daughter in line to her father Ptolemy XII, she came to the throne after her two elder sisters died, and after the death of her father. She was considered to be an intelligent, charismatic and shrewd politician.
Cleopatra met Marcus Antonius (Marc Antony) in 42 BC and began a love affair with him which eventually led to her own death. When Antony’s wife Fulvia died in 40 BC, he married the leader Octavian’s sister Octavia, but chose to settle in Alexandria as the acknowledged lover of Cleopatra. In 32 BC, Octavian declared war on Antony and Cleopatra. The senate deprived Antony of his powers, and the Romans supported Octavian. When Octavian’s forces defeated Antony and Cleopatra in the naval battle at Actium, they fled to Egypt. Fearing they would be found, Marc Antony committed suicide. Cleopatra was jailed, and though well treated, wished to commit suicide by poisoning herself with snakebite, as this was said to secure the victim immortality. She arranged for an asp, a small, poisonous cobra, to be hidden in her meal: she and her two maids were bitten, and subsequently died, on 30 August 30 BC.
World History
Thursday, August 30, 2001. : Former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milošević is charged with genocide.
Slobodan Milošević, born 20 August 1941, was the President of Serbia and of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia during a time of growing nationalism. Communist governments throughout eastern Europe had collapsed in the early 1990s, and many smaller countries which had been incorporated into Yugoslavia were demanding their autonomy. Whilst Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia and Slovenia embraced their independence, Serbia and Montenegro chose to stay on in the federation.
As a fiercely nationalistic Serb, Milošević initiated aggressive attacks on ethnic Albanians in the province of Kosovo, during which over half of the province’s Albanian population fled and several thousand people died. A NATO campaign of air strikes (Operation Allied Force) eventually forced Milošević to back down.
In June 2001, Milošević was handed over to the United Nations War Crimes Tribunal and taken to The Hague to be tried for war crimes allegedly committed during his rule. On 30 August 2001, Milošević was told he would be charged with genocide, the most serious of all war crimes. Later, the original charges of war crimes in Kosovo were upgraded by adding charges of genocide in Bosnia and war crimes in Croatia. His trial began at The Hague on 12 February 2002, with Milošević defending himself while refusing to recognise the legality of the court’s jurisdiction.
Milošević was found dead in his cell on 11 March 2006 in the UN war crimes tribunal’s detention centre in The Hague.
Special Days
Sunday, August 30, 1835. : Today is Melbourne Day, celebrating the founding of the city.
Melbourne is the capital of the southernmost mainland state of Victoria, Australia. For seven years in a row, beginning in 2011, the city was ranked #1 on the Economist Intelligence Unit’s (EIU) Liveability Index. In 2017, Melbourne received a perfect score for healthcare, education and infrastructure, ranking highly also on culture, stability and environment, giving it an overall score of 97.5 out of a possible 100. However, the city had a controversial beginning.
In May 1835, native born Australian grazier John Batman failed in his application for a grant of land in the Westernport Bay area of southern Australia. This did not deter him, and in May 1835 he led a syndicate called the ‘Port Phillip Association’ to explore Port Phillip Bay, looking for suitable sites for a settlement. After establishing a camp at Indented Head at the tip of the Bellarine Peninsula, Batman sailed into the mouth of the Yarra. Exploring on foot, he met a group of Aborigines with whom he signed a ‘treaty’, allowing him access to almost 250,000 hectares of land. In August that year, Governor Bourke declared Batman’s treaties invalid, and issued a proclamation warning off him and his syndicate as trespassers on crown land.
Late in August 1835, a group of settlers consisting of five men, a woman and the woman’s pet cat arrived from Van Diemen’s Land (later Tasmania), seeking new grazing lands. They arrived aboard the schooner ‘Enterprize’ which had been purchased by John Fawkner in April for the purpose of searching for a suitable settlement site on the other side of Bass Strait. The ‘Enterprize’ landed on the north bank of the Yarra River, close to the point where William Street and Flinders Street intersect, at a location now known as ‘Enterprize’ Park. On Sunday 30 August 1835, the passengers disembarked and commenced the first permanent European settlement in the area, clearing land for housing and crops.
Despite the attempts at government intervention, the foundling settlement remained. Fawkner, who had sent the original party of settlers, arrived with his family in October, while Batman brought his family in November. As the settlement grew, Governor Bourke sent a Commissioner to report on its development. In the Commissioner’s report he referred to the settlement as ‘Bearbrass’. Following a later inspection, the name ‘Glenelg’ was suggested by the Colonial Secretary. On 9 March 1837, Governor Bourke named the flourishing settlement ‘Melbourne’ after the British Prime Minister of the day.
30 August is now celebrated as ‘Melbourne Day’, when the events of the landing of the ‘Enterprize’ are commemorated with a variety of activities including a flag-raising ceremony and a Junior Mayor competition.