Australian Explorers
Saturday, June 8, 1861. : Burke and Wills attempt to collect Nardoo in their quest for survival.
The Burke and Wills expedition was supposed to mark the state of Victoria’s greatest triumph: Victoria hoped to be the first state to mount an expedition to cross the continent from south to north. Instead, due to mismanagement and lack of clear communication, three of the four members of the party who finally made the break to cross to the gulf and back, died. Robert O’Hara Burke, William John Wills and Charles Gray all died. John King alone survived, after being taken in and nursed by the Aborigines of the Cooper Creek area.
Whilst awaiting the rescue that never came, on 8 June 1861 Burke and Wills made their way to where they knew Aborigines collected Nardoo. They were disappointed to find no Aborigines at the camp. Nardoo was an important bush food for Aborigines, who knew how to prepare its seedpods (or, strictly speaking, sporocaps) to make flour. The sporocarps contain poisons that must first be removed for them to be eaten safely. Studies of the explorers’ journals indicate that they probably died of nardoo poisoning, after failing to follow precautions from the Aborigines of how to prepare it safely.
Australian History
Sunday, June 8, 1856. : The first free settlement is established on Norfolk Island.
Norfolk Island lies approximately 1,500 km northeast of Sydney, and along with two neighbouring islands forms one of Australia’s external territories. The first European to discover Norfolk was Captain Cook, on 10 October 1774. Cook’s reports of tall, straight trees (Norfolk pines) and flax-like plants piqued the interest of Britain, whose Royal Navy was dependent on flax for sails and hemp for ropes from Baltic Sea ports. Norfolk Island promised a ready supply of these items, and its tall pines could be utilised as ships’ masts. Governor Arthur Phillip, Captain of the First Fleet to New South Wales, was ordered to colonise Norfolk Island before the French could take it.
Following the arrival of the First Fleet in New South Wales, Lieutenant Philip Gidley King led a party of fifteen convicts and seven free men to take control of the island and prepare for its commercial development. They arrived on 6 March 1788. Neither the flax nor the timber industry proved to be viable, and the island developed as a farm, supplying Sydney with grain and vegetables during the early years of the colony’s near-starvation. More convicts were sent, and many chose to remain after they had served their sentences. The initial Norfolk Island settlement was abandoned in 1813, but a second penal colony was re-established in 1824, as a place to send the very worst of the convicts. The convicts were treated accordingly, and the island gained a reputation as a vicious penal colony. It, too, was abandoned in 1855, after transportation to Australia ceased.
The third settlement was established by descendants of Tahitians and the HMAV Bounty mutineers, resettled from the Pitcairn Islands which had become too small for their growing population. The British government had permitted the transfer of the Pitcairners to Norfolk, which was established as a colony separate from New South Wales but under the administration of that colony’s governor. On 8 June 1856, 194 Pitcairn Islanders arrived to form the first free settlement. After the creation of the Commonwealth of Australia in 1901, Norfolk Island was placed under the authority of the new Commonwealth government to be administered as an external territory. Norfolk Island was granted self-government in 1979.
Australian History
Friday, June 8, 1951. : The School of the Air begins broadcasting from the Flying Doctor base in Alice Springs.
School of the Air provides quality educational services for children in remote areas of Australia. Classes are conducted via shortwave radio with each student having direct contact with a teacher in a major inland town such as Broken Hill or Alice Springs. Where once children relied on mail services to deliver their assignments, now Internet services enable quicker and more reliable delivery.
The concept of the School of the Air was first proposed in 1944 by Adelaide Miethke, a member of the Council of the Flying Doctor service of SA, who suggested using two-way radio to give educational talks to children in the Outback. Once the necessary communications equipment was acquired six years later, the trial program began, with teachers from Alice Springs volunteering to present lessons. Initially lessons were conducted as a one-way affair, but soon a question and answer time was added to the end of each broadcast. The following year, 8 June 1951, saw the official opening of the School of the Air at the Flying Doctor base. The Alice Springs School of the Air currently caters for about 140 students spread over an area of 1,000,000 square kilometres.
Australian History
Thursday, June 8, 2000. : The Olympic Torch relay ahead of the Sydney Olympic Games begins in Uluru-Kata Tjuta.
In 1991, Sydney launched its bid to host the 2000 Olympic Games. In September 1993, the President of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), Juan Antonio Samaranch, announced from Monte Carlo that Sydney, Australia, would be the host for the Games of the XXVII Olympiad in the year 2000.
The Olympic Torch relay commenced in Greece and then moved to Oceania, where it passed from Guam to the Cook Islands to New Zealand. On 8 June 2000, the Olympic Torch relay in Australia began at Uluru-Kata Tjuta, a location of particular significance to the indigenous Australians. Many gathered to watch the ceremony at Uluru on a particularly cold winter’s morning, with temperatures around 1 degree Celsius and a high wind chill factor. Governor-General, Sir William Deane, lit the torch, although due to the strong winds, the flame had to be re-lit, a pattern which was repeated several times during the day. Olympic gold medallist Nova Peris-Kneebone carried the torch for the first leg of the relay, running barefoot as a sign of respect for her people, the indigenous Australians. The torch was then handed to former tennis champion Evonne Goolagong Cawley, before being passed to the traditional owners who were to complete the 9-kilometre circuit of the base of Uluru.
From Uluru, the torch was taken by aeroplane into Mount Isa in north-western Queensland, on a 27 000 km journey in which it was carried by 11 000 torchbearers over 100 days. This was the longest torch relay in Olympic history. A range of unique Australian transportation methods were utilised: the Indian Pacific train carried it across the Nullarbor Plain, the Royal Flying Doctor Service aircraft conveyed it through the isolated expanse of the outback; it was transported by camel-back on Cable Beach at Broome in north-west Western Australia; and finally by a surf boat at Bondi, Sydney. The relay ended on 15 September at Sydney Olympic Park, Homebush Bay, in time for the Opening Ceremony.
World History
Saturday, June 8, 1968. : James Earl Ray, suspected of assassinating Martin Luther King, is arrested in London.
Martin Luther King, Jr. was born on 15 January 1929 in Atlanta, Georgia. He became a Baptist minister, and African American civil rights activist. In his fight for civil rights, he organised and led marches for desegregation, fair hiring, the right of African Americans to vote, and other basic civil rights. Most of these rights were successfully enacted later into United States law with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Martin Luther King’s life was tragically cut short when he was shot in the neck by a rifle bullet in Memphis, Tennessee, on 4 April 1968. On 8 June 1968, James Earl Ray was arrested at London’s Heathrow Airport as he tried to board a flight to Brussels. Ray was an escapee from Missouri State Penitentiary, who had been on the run since 23 April 1967. After being questioned, extradition proceedings were authorised against him.
James Earl Ray was convicted of Martin Luther King’s murder and sentenced to 99 years in prison. Ray’s appeals on the basis that he was only a minor player in a conspiracy gained support from some members of King’s family. Regardless, while King’s life was taken from him prematurely, his legacy lives on in the equal rights now experienced by millions of African-Americans in the USA.
World History
Tuesday, June 8, 2004. : The first transit of Venus across the sun for this millennium is seen.
The transit of Venus occurs when the planet Venus passes directly between the Earth and the Sun, and its unlit side can be seen as a small black circle moving across the face of the Sun. Transits of Venus occur because its orbit around the Sun is inside that of the Earth. Transits of Venus occur in pairs, separated by periods of eight years. The pairs are separated by either 105.5 or 121.5 years. Thus, the next transit occurred in June 2012, but the one after that will not be until 2117. The first transit of Venus across the sun for this century and this millennium occurred on 8 June 2004. The last pair of transits occurred in December of 1874 and 1882.
The transit of Venus is a significant event for the southern hemisphere. Australia’s eastern coast was first discovered when Captain James Cook was sent to Tahiti to observe the transit of Venus which occurred in 1769. Following his scientific mission, he then opened his sealed orders instructing him to sail west and search for “Terra Australis Incognita”, the great unknown southern continent which, at that time, was not yet recognised as the “New Holland” recorded by Dutch traders.