Born on this day
Tuesday, May 1, 1934. : Australian actor, John Meillon, is born.
John Meillon was born in Mosman, Sydney, Australia, on 1 May 1934. He began his acting career at age eleven in the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s radio serial “Stumpy”. He made his first stage appearance the following year, then joined the Shakespeare Touring Company when he was sixteen. He furthered his acting experience working in England from 1959 to 1965.
Meillon appeared in many Australian movies during his career, and in 1976 he won the AFI Award for Best Actor for his role of ‘Casey’ in the film The Fourth Wish. He performed in various Australian series through the years, such as A Country Practice, Homicide, The Outsiders, Matlock Police, Division 4 and Skippy, and took on bit parts in several dozen other shows. Meillon is best known for his role as Walter Reilly in the films Crocodile Dundee and Crocodile Dundee II. He also voiced the ‘Victoria Bitter’ beer commercials until he died on 11 August 1989.
Australian Explorers
Wednesday, May 1, 1839. : Eyre departs Adelaide to explore country to the north.
Edward John Eyre was born on 5 August 1815 in Hornsea, Yorkshire. After coming to Australia, he gained valuable bush skills whilst droving cattle overland from Sydney through to the Liverpool Plains, Molonglo and Port Phillip. He was keen to open new stock routes through the country, and aimed to be the first to overland cattle from Sydney to the fledgling colony of South Australia. Whilst unsuccessful in this aim, he was able to lay claim to being the first to overland sheep to the colony.
On 1 May 1839, Eyre departed Adelaide to explore countryside to the north. He discovered excellent countryside just north of Adelaide and rich, alluvial soil around today’s Hutt River. It was on this journey that he discovered and named Mount Remarkable. Eyre finally arrived at the head of Spencer Gulf on 15 May 1839, where he discovered and named Depot Creek.
Australian History
Sunday, May 1, 1622. : The first sighting of any part of the Australian coast by an English crew is made.
The first recorded sighting of the Australian coast by any European crew occurred in 1606, when Dutch Captain Willem Jansz (or Janszoon) explored the western coast of Cape York Peninsula. The first English sighting of Australia was made by buccaneer William Dampier in 1688, but he was not the first Englishman to visit Australian waters.
The Trial, also spelt Tryall or Tryal, was a ship of the English East India Company which was sent to the East Indies in 1621 under the command of John Brooke. Seeking a faster route to the East Indies, the ship’s Master followed Hendrik Brouwer’s recently discovered route from the Cape of Good Hope to Batavia via the Roaring Forties. These strong westerly winds, generally found between the latitudes of 40 and 50 degrees South, forced many ships close to the dangerous reefs off the western coast of the Australian continent. The Trial would later become the first recorded ship to be wrecked in Australian waters.
On 1 May 1622, the crew of the Trial became the first sailors on any English ship to sight the west coast of Australia. They are believed to have sighted Point Cloates, a peninsula on Australia’s far west coast, located about 100 km south south-west of North West Cape in the Pilbara region. Captain Brooke claimed to have seen an island, but because the point was mistaken for other geographical features, it was inaccurately mapped, and even referred to as a “phantom island”, with some doubt as to whether it truly existed. It was not until 1827 that Phillip Parker King suggested that the island was a peninsula.
Australian History
Tuesday, May 1, 1770. : Forby Sutherland becomes the first Englishman to be buried on Australian soil.
Forby Sutherland was a Scottish seaman who was with James Cook during his exploration of Australia’s eastern coast. Cook sailed into Botany Bay on 29 April 1770, where he went ashore, as he and his scientists, seamen and marines explored and mapped the region. During the brief time that Cook sojourned in Botany Bay, Sutherland, who was ill with tuberculosis, died. He was buried on a southern beach in Botany Bay on 1 May 1770; Cook named a nearby headland Point Sutherland in his memory.
Sutherland was the first known Englishman to be buried on Australian soil. However, he is not believed to be the first European. Wrecks of Dutch trading ships were common on the western coast of the continent during the 1600s. There is considerable evidence that numerous survivors of these shipwrecks established unrecorded settlements: it is here that the first Europeans would have been buried.
Australian History
Friday, May 1, 1891. : Australia’s first May Day marches are held in support of the shearers’ strike in Barcaldine.
During the 19th century, shearers in Australia endured meagre wages and poor working conditions. This led to the formation of the Australian Shearers’ Union which, by 1890, had tens of thousands of members. Early in 1891, Manager Charles Fairbairn of Logan Downs Station near Clermont, Queensland, required that shearers sign the Pastoralists Association contract of free labour before commencing work. This was an attempt to reduce union influence.
On 5 January 1891 the shearers refused to work unless the station agreed to their union’s terms. This marked the beginning of many months of union shearers around Australia downing their tools and going on strike. Tensions escalated as striking shearers formed armed camps outside of towns, and mounted troopers protected non-union labour and arrested strike leaders. Shearers retaliated by burning woolsheds and crops, and committing other acts of sabotage and harassment. On 1 May 1891, Australia’s first May Day processions and marches were held in Barcaldine and Ipswich, Queensland, on behalf of the shearers. The Barcaldine march involved over 1300 demonstrators, several hundred of them on horseback. They carried banners of the Australian Labor Federation, the Shearers’ and Carriers’ Unions, a ‘Young Australia’ flag and the Eureka flag.
Soon after this, the violent suppression of the strike action forced shearers to give in. The strike, however, highlighted the need for a political party to represent the rights of the union workers; thus was ultimately born the Australian Labor Party.
World History
Sunday, May 1, 2011. : Osama Bin Laden, leader of Islamic militant group al-Qaeda, is killed.
Osama Bin Laden was the leader of the Islamic militant group al-Qaeda which claimed responsibility for the attacks on the World Trade Centre in New York on 11 September 2001. In this attack, American Airlines Flight 11 which had been hijacked at 8:25am, crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Centre, while at 9:03am, United Airlines Flight 175, which was hijacked within minutes of the first plane, was flown into the south tower. The impact of each plane and subsequent explosions killed hundreds immediately and trapped many more people on higher floors. At 9:40am, a third hijacked airliner, American Airlines Flight 77, was flown into the side of the Pentagon in Washington, killing 64 passengers and 125 military personnel and civilians. A fourth hijacked aeroplane crashed into a field near Pittsburgh, killing the 45 on board after its suicide flight was thwarted by civilian heroes on board the plane. Its intended target was unknown. Over three thousand people were killed in the terrorist attacks that day in September.
On the day following these attacks, US President George Bush declared that the USA would use all of its resources to wage a war on terrorism. Initially, the war on terror began as British and American forces staged an air bombardment of Afghanistan, where the perpetrator of the terror attacks, Osama bin Laden, was thought to be hiding. The regime in Afghanistan quickly fell: Bin Laden, however, remained at large.
The mission to kill Bin Laden gained momentum with the receipt of new intelligence regarding the al-Qaeda leader’s whereabouts in August 2010. He was believed to be residing in a compound at Abbottabad, some 50 km northeast of Islamabad, Pakistan. A Security Operation was mobilised, and the final decision to proceed with a strike was made at 8:20am on Friday, 29 April, in the White House’s Diplomatic Room. On 1 May 2011, US President Barack Obama authorised a helicopter-based strike on the compound. Soon afterwards, the announcement was made that Bin Laden had been killed, and that the US was in custody of his body. The announcement was greeted by loud cheering and celebrations in the US, along with the sobering awareness that the war on terror was not yet over.