Australian Explorers
Sunday, April 29, 1770. : Lieutenant James Cook discovers and names Botany Bay.
Lieutenant Cook was born at Marton in North Yorkshire, on 27 October 1728. As the son of a farm labourer, he held no great ambitions, being apprenticed in a grocer/haberdashery when he was 16. Lack of aptitude in the trade led his employer to introduce Cook to local shipowners, who took him on as a merchant navy apprentice. Here he was educated in algebra, trigonometry, navigation, and astronomy, which later set Cook up to command his own ship.
Cook was hired in 1766 by the Royal Society to travel to the Pacific Ocean to observe and record the transit of Venus across the Sun. Following this, Cook’s next orders were to search the south Pacific for Terra Australis Incognita, the great southern continent that many believed must extend around the southern pole. He came across New Zealand, which Abel Tasman had discovered in 1642, and spent some months there, charting the coastline.
Nearly a year later, Cook set sail west for New Holland, which was later to become Australia. On 29 April 1770 Cook’s vessel, the Endeavour, sailed into Botany Bay, after first sighting the eastern coast of Australia ten days earlier. He described the bay as being “tolerably well sheltered”, and initially named it Stingray Bay, after the large numbers of stingray he noted. The name was later changed to Botany Bay due to the vast numbers of new and unique botanical specimens noted by the ship’s botanists, including Joseph Banks. Cook named Cape Solander and Cape Banks after Banks and Finnish botanist Daniel Solander. He then landed at Kurnell, allowing the cabin boy, Isaac Smith, to be the first known European to step foot on the soil of “New South Wales”.
Australian Explorers
Thursday, April 29, 1841. : Eyre’s overseer, Baxter, is killed by two of the Aborigines who accompanied the expedition.
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. On the night of 29 April 1841, as Eyre watched the horses some distance from their camp, two of the Aborigines shot Baxter who tried to stop them from raiding the meagre supplies. After Baxter died, Eyre was left with just one loyal companion, the Aborigine, Wylie. The anguish Eyre felt was recorded in his journal entry: “Ages can never efface the horrors of this single night.”
Baxter could not be buried in the hard limestone surface: Eyre wrapped his body in a blanket and left it there high above the Great Australian Bight at the point now known as Baxter Cliffs. A monument now marks where Baxter was killed.
Australian History
Wednesday, April 29, 1789. : Australia’s first bushranger, John ‘Black’ Caesar, is tried for theft, leading him to make escape plans.
John Caesar, nicknamed “Black Caesar” was Australia’s first bushranger. Most likely born in Madagascar, he was a slave on a sugar plantation until he escaped and headed for London. The theft of 240 shillings resulted in his transportation on the First Fleet, and he one of the first black people to be part of Australia’s colonisation.
Due to difficulties with establishing farms and the limited supplies purchased during the journey of the First Fleet, Governor Arthur Phillip was forced to reduce convict rations in the early part of the penal settlement. This meant that hunger was rife. ‘Black’ Caesar was a big man and powerfully built, and like many convicts, resorted to theft to feed his hunger. He was tried and punished on 29 April 1789. Two weeks later, he escaped to the bush, taking stolen food supplies and a musket with him.
Caesar apparently had difficulty hunting native wildlife, and began stealing food from both free settlers and convicts’ supplies. He was caught on 6 June 1789, and following his trial, was sent to Garden Island to work. Escaping yet again, on 22 December, he survived for only a short while before giving himself up on 31 December.
Governor Phillip pardoned Caesar, but sent him to Norfolk Island as a free settler, where he fathered a child. Three years later he returned to Sydney and took up his life of bushranging once more. He was captured several months later. He enjoyed brief recognition when he directly assisted the capture of the Aborigine Pemulwuy, who had led numerous attacks against Europeans and their occupation of aboriginal land. In 1795, Caesar escaped once more, but on 15 February 1796 was shot and killed by a bounty hunter.
Australian History
Saturday, April 29, 1826. : Jorgen Jorgenson, self-proclaimed King of Iceland, arrives in Van Diemen’s Land as a convict.
Jorgen Jorgenson (formerly Jorgensen) was born on 7 April 1780 in Copenhagen, Denmark, the son of royal clockmaker Jurgen Jurgensen. At fourteen, he was apprenticed on an English collier. After four years as a sailor, he joined a whaler, travelling to Cape Town in 1799 and Port Jackson the following year. In August 1801, he was taken aboard the ‘Lady Nelson’, as second mate, under the name of John Johnson. The ‘Lady Nelson’ was an English brig commissioned by Governor King to determine whether Van Diemen’s Land (later Tasmania) was an island, or joined to the mainland. In this capacity, Jorgenson was present at the founding of the Tasmanian settlements of Risdon Cove in September 1803 and Sullivan’s Cove in February 1804. In 1804, he joined the whaling ship ‘Alexander’ as assistant captain. He claimed to be the first to harpoon a whale in the waters of the Derwent.
Jorgenson returned to Copenhagen sometime during 1806. During the Gunboat War against England, he was captured and made a prisoner of war. After his parole, Jorgenson declared himself the Protector of Iceland, which England had decreed to be under Danish rule at that time. As someone who was drawn to worthy causes, he arrested the ruling Danish Governor, who would not allow trade with other nations, resulting in a food shortage in Iceland. Jorgenson “ruled” Iceland for barely two months before the British arrested him once again.
Jorgenson’s powerful connections earned him an early release and he was soon employed in the British Intelligence. However, in 1820 Jorgenson was arrested for petty theft and sentenced to be hanged; the sentence was commuted to transportation as a convict. He arrived back in Van Diemen’s Land on 29 April 1826.
Whilst working in the Customs office, Jorgenson helped to expose forgery of Government bonds, earning him a ticket of leave. Given his previous experience, he was assigned various exploration tasks to the wild central highlands and West Coast of Tasmania. He and another convict became the first known white men to cross the Central Plateau. For his services, he received a conditional pardon, and began a new career as a police officer. Jorgenson was also a keen observer of the Aboriginal way of life, and wrote about the culture and beliefs of the Tasmanian Aborigines.
Jorgenson died in Hobart on 20 January 1841. Carvings of him and his wife Norah Corbett on the convict-built Ross Bridge south of Launceston depict him as the “Viking King”, complete with crown.
Australian History
Monday, April 29, 1901. : The new Australian Commonwealth Government announces a Federal Flag design competition.
The Commonwealth of Australia was proclaimed on 1 January 1901. Shortly after this, on 29 April 1901, the Commonwealth Government announced a Federal Flag design competition. There were 32,823 entries in the competition, and most featured the Union Jack, the Southern Cross, or native animals.
Five almost identical entries were selected to share the 200-pound prize. The entries belonged to Ivor Evans, a fourteen-year-old schoolboy from Melbourne; Leslie John Hawkins, a teenager apprenticed to an optician from Sydney; Egbert John Nuttall, an architect from Melbourne; Annie Dorrington, an artist from Perth; and William Stevens, a ship’s officer from Auckland, New Zealand. On 3 September 1901, the new Australian flag flew for the first time from the top of the Exhibition Building in Melbourne. The flag was simplified, and approved by King Edward VII in 1902.
Australian History
Tuesday, April 29, 1941. : The town of Meeberrie, Western Australia, is hit by an earthquake.
The tiny town of Meeberrie, Western Australia, lies in the Murchison River region in the central west of the state. During World War II, it was the site of Australia’s largest magnitude earthquake onshore to date.
Beginning around 9:38am on 29 April 1941, Meeberrie was hit by an earthquake measuring 7.2 on the Richter scale. The epicentre was around 200km northwest of Kalbarri, and the effects were felt as far away as Port Hedland to the north, and Albany to the south. There was little damage in Meeberrie as the town’s population is small, but damage to buildings was extensive, with all the walls of the Meeberrie homestead being cracked through from floor to ceiling. Rainwater tanks split open and the ground was visibly cracked over a significant range. Cracks ranged from 8 metres to 18 metres in length and 1cm to 5cm in width, to 45cm deep.
Little information is available on the earthquake as, being wartime, no further investigations were carried out. There were also no government bodies assigned the duty of investigating seismic activity. The quake was recorded by seismographs as far away as Sydney.
Australian History
Friday, April 29, 1988. : Australian icon, the Stockman’s Hall of Fame, is opened in Longreach, Queensland.
The Australian Stockman’s Hall of Fame and Outback Heritage Centre is a complex in Longreach, Queensland, Australia, to pay tribute to the explorers, overlanders, pioneers and settlers of outback Australia.
The memorial was the vision of Australian artist Hugh Sawrey, who conceived the idea in 1974. The location of the Stockman’s Hall of Fame in Longreach, western Queensland, was selected in October 1978. The selection was made on the basis of the site having once been a teamster’s stop beside a large waterhole off the Thomson River. Architect Feiko Bouman won the design competition for the building in 1980, and construction commenced five years later, in July 1985. The Australian Stockman’s Hall of Fame and Outback Heritage Centre was officially opened by Her Majesty the Queen, Elizabeth II, on 29 April 1988, the same year as Australia’s bicentenary celebrations.
Unique aspects of life in outback Australia are showcased through the various galleries of ‘Discovery’, ‘Pioneers’, ‘Outback Properties’, ‘Life in the Outback’ and ‘Stock workers’. Displays are presented through a variety of media. The centre is also used to host a variety of events such as Opera in the Outback, the Drovers Reunion, Musters and Pro Rodeos, and Sheep Shearing competitions.
World History
Sunday, April 29, 1945. : Notorious concentration camp, Dachau, is liberated by US troops.
The Dachau concentration camp was a Nazi concentration camp near the city of Dachau, north of Munich, in Bavaria, southern Germany. It was the first Nazi concentration camp and served as a prototype and model for the others that followed. Over 200,000 prisoners from more than 30 countries were housed in Dachau during the years that it operated. From 1941, Dachau was also used for extermination purposes. Camp records list 30,000 persons killed in the camp, with thousands more who died due to the conditions in the camp, including a typhus epidemic in 1945.
ON 29 April 1945, the 45th Infantry Division of the US Seventh Army, led by Lieutenant Colonel Felix S Sparks, liberated Dachau. The troops were so horrified by conditions at the camp that they shot about 35 of the camp guards, while another 515 were arrested or managed to escape. The troops found 32,000 prisoners at the point of death, crammed 1600 to each of 20 barracks, which had been designed to house 250 people each. They also found 39 railroad cars, each filled with one hundred or more bodies. There was controversy over the US massacre of the guards, and also over the fact that, in their indignation at the conditions, the US troops forced local citizens to come into the compound and help clean up.
World History
Tuesday, April 29, 1952. : The ANZUS Treaty between Australia, New Zealand and the United States goes into force.
ANZUS stands for the “Australia, New Zealand, United States Security Treaty”. The treaty signalled a military alliance between the three nations, with Australia and the United States indicating their cooperation on defence matters in the Pacific region. It was signed on 1 September 1951, and went into effect on 29 April 1952.
The Treaty developed as a result of the cooperation between Australia, New Zealand and the US in the Pacific arena during World War II. By 1951, the US wished to allow for Japan’s rearmament as a result of the Korean War breaking out, including a provision that Japan grant the United States the territorial means for it to establish a military presence in the Far East. However, Australia remained wary of the country which had threatened Pacific security during the war. Australia and New Zealand only agreed to Japan’s rearmament when Australia and New Zealand’s proposal for a three-way security treaty was accepted by the United States. The treaty specifically stated the intention of the three signatories to work to strengthen and maintain peace in the Pacific Area, including Japan. Most recently, the treaty was invoked in Australia following the terrorist attacks in the United States in 2001.
Due to tension between New Zealand and the US over nuclear-armed or nuclear-powered ships of the US Navy visiting New Zealand ports in 1984, New Zealand no longer participates to any extent in ANZUS. However, the treaty is still current between New Zealand and Australia, and the US and Australia.