Australian History
Thursday, July 11, 1974. : Australian Prime Minister Whitlam appoints the man who would later dismiss him, Sir John Kerr, as Governor-General.
Edward Gough Whitlam became the 21st Prime Minister of Australia on 2 December 1972 in the first ALP electoral victory since 1946. The Whitlam government embarked on a massive legislative social reform program which was forward-thinking and progressive in many ways. On 11 July 1974, Whitlam appointed Sir John Kerr, Chief Justice of New South Wales, as the Governor-General of Australia, succeeding Sir Paul Hasluck. Kerr had joined the Australian Labor Party in 1948 but became somewhat disillusioned with party politics following the Labor split in 1955. When Whitlam appointed Kerr he did not know that Kerr’s political views had changed and that he had come to see the role of Governor-General differently from Whitlam.
By 1975 the office of Governor-General had come to be regarded by many as ceremonial and politically unimportant. Although the Australian Constitution gave the Governor-General wide-ranging powers, including the power to appoint and dismiss Ministers and to dissolve Parliament, Whitlam and others held the view that the Governor-General’s exercise of these powers must always be done on the advice of the Prime Minister. Kerr disagreed with this view, arguing the Constitution very clearly set out the Governor-General’s powers.
The Governor-General’s powers were very clearly put to the test in 1975. Whilst initially popular, the fast pace of Whitlam’s reforms engendered caution amongst the electorate, and the economy was beset by high inflation combined with economic stagnation. The opposition Liberal-National Country Party coalition held a majority in the Senate, the upper house of Parliament. In an unprecedented move, the Senate deferred voting on bills that appropriated funds for government expenditure, attempting to force the Prime Minister to dissolve the House of Representatives and call an election. The Whitlam government ignored the warnings and sought alternative means of appropriating the funds it needed to repay huge debts. With Whitlam unable to secure the necessary funds, Governor-General Sir John Kerr dismissed Whitlam as Prime Minister on 11 November 1975, and appointed Liberal opposition leader Malcolm Fraser as caretaker Prime Minister. This was done on the condition that Fraser would seek a dissolution of both the House of Representatives and the Senate, thus precipitating a general election.
This date is another milestone for former Prime Minister Edward ‘Gough’ Whitlam: he was born on 11 July 1916.
Australian History
Saturday, July 11, 1992. : Seven people are drowned after being washed into the sea at the Kiama blowhole, on the New South Wales coast.
Kiama is an attractive town and Local Government Area 120 km south of Sydney on the south coast of New South Wales, Australia. The name “Kiama” is derived from the Aboriginal word Kiarama, which means “place where the sea makes a noise”. This is in reference to the famous Kiama Blowhole, a natural cavern at Blowhole Point. The ideal conditions in which to view the blowhole are when the seas are running southeast: at these times, the blowhole can erupt in a spray of water up to 60m in height.
Kiama was discovered by explorer George Bass on 6 December 1797. Bass noted the evidence of volcanic activity in the distant past, and of the blowhole itself, he wrote:
“The earth for a considerable distance round in the form approaching a circle seemed to have given way; it was now a green slope … Towards the centre was a deep ragged hole of about 25 to 30 feet in diameter and on one side of it the sea washed in through a subterraneous passage … with a most tremendous noise …”
This beautiful attraction was the scene of a tragedy on 11 July 1992. Seven people drowned at the Kiama blowhole after they were washed into the ocean by a powerful wave whilst watching the phenomenon. Afghani refugee Fared Cina, his wife Angella, and their young daughter Baran drowned, along with Mrs Cina’s nephew Arash. Also killed were Nasarin Zobair, her daughter Kahlida and her son Mustafa.
World History
Wednesday, July 11, 1979. : US Space laboratory, Skylab I, plunges back to earth, scattering debris across parts of Western Australia.
Skylab was the first space station the United States launched into orbit. Launched on 14 May 1973, it was designed to test various aspects of human endurance in space by having teams of astronauts living in Skylab for up to 84 days at a time. Each Skylab mission set a record for the duration of time astronauts spent in space.
In all, the space station orbited Earth 2,476 times during the 171 days and 13 hours of its occupation during the three manned Skylab missions. Astronauts performed ten spacewalks totalling 42 hours 16 minutes. Skylab logged about 2,000 hours of scientific and medical experiments, including eight solar experiments. Skylab had been in orbit for six years when it made its descent on 11 July 1979, with many chunks of hot debris falling across southern Western Australia. Most of the pieces were found on a 160km wide strip of land between the Perth-Adelaide highway and the Indian Pacific railway line.
World History
Thursday, July 11, 1991. : A solar eclipse is observed stretching from Hawaii to South America, and lasting up to 7 minutes in some areas.
A solar eclipse occurs when the moon passes between the Earth and the Sun, casting its shadow over the Earth. The 11 July 1991 eclipse was observed best by scientists in observatories atop Mauna Kea in Hawaii. First contact (when the moon first began its progression across the face of the sun) occurred at 6:30am, and totality (total coverage of the sun) began at 7:28. The longest eclipse for the next 141 years, totality lasted 6 minutes and 52 seconds on the centreline on the Baja peninsula of Mexico.
World History
Tuesday, July 11, 1995. : The Bosnian Serb army takes control of the United Nations “safe haven” of Srebrenica, ultimately resulting in the killing of thousands of Muslim men of military age.
The war in Bosnia and Herzegovina was an armed conflict which took place between March 1992 and November 1995. The war involved several ethnically defined factions within Bosnia and Herzegovina, as a consequence of the former state of Yugoslavia being broken up. The war was finally brought to an end after the signing of the General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina in Paris on 14 December 1995.
The massacre in Srebrenica took place towards the end of the Bosnian conflict. Between 11 July 1995 and 19 July 1995, Bosniak (Muslim) men of military age were taken prisoner, detained in inhumane conditions, and then executed in their thousands. They were shot dead with machine guns and piled into mass graves. The massacre was one of the largest in Europe since WWII. Bosnian Serb army General Ratko Mladić and other Bosnian Serb army officers were indicted for various war crimes, including genocide, at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY). The most recent research places the number of civilian and military victims at around 100,000-110,000 killed and 1.8 million displaced.