Australian History

Thursday, May 9, 1901. :   The Duke of Cornwall and York, later King George V, opens the first Commonwealth Parliament in Australia.

Prior to 1901, Australia was made up of six self-governing colonies; New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Queensland, Western Australia and Tasmania. These colonies were ultimately under British rule from the time the First Fleet landed, in 1788, until 1901. Numerous politicians and influential Australians through the years had pushed for federation of the colonies, and self-government. After not being accepted by the states the first time, the amended Commonwealth Constitution was given Royal Assent on 9 July 1900.

On 1 January 1901, federation of the colonies was achieved and the Commonwealth of Australia was proclaimed. Australia’s first Governor-General, John Hope, made the proclamation at Centennial Park in Sydney. Australia’s first Prime Minister was Edmund Barton. The first Australian Federal Parliament, held in the Royal Exhibition Building in Melbourne which was the only building large enough to house the 14,000 guests, was opened by the Duke of Cornwall and York, later King George V, on 9 May 1901.

Australian History

Monday, May 9, 1927. :   The Australian Federal Parliament moves from Melbourne to Parliament House in Canberra.

Australia’s two largest cities, Sydney and Melbourne, had been rivals since before the goldrush days. It was therefore decided that the nation’s capital should be situated between the two cities. Section 125 of the Constitution of Australia provided that:

“The seat of Government of the Commonwealth shall be determined by the Parliament, and shall be within territory which shall have been granted to or acquired by the Commonwealth, and shall be vested in and belong to the Commonwealth, and shall be in the State of New South Wales, and be distant not less than one hundred miles from Sydney.

Such territory shall contain an area of not less than one hundred square miles, and such portion thereof as shall consist of Crown lands shall be granted to the Commonwealth without any payment therefore. The Parliament shall sit at Melbourne until it meets at the seat of Government.”

The first Australian Parliament following Federation of the states met on 9 May 1901 in the Royal Exhibition Building, Melbourne. From 1901 to 1927, Parliament met in Parliament House, Melbourne, which it borrowed from the parliament of the state of Victoria, which in turn sat in the Exhibition Building. The foundation for the city of Canberra was laid down on 12 March 1913. Construction of Parliament House, which was only ever intended to be temporary, began in August 1923 and the building was ready for occupancy in May 1927. On 9 May 1927, Parliament moved to the new national capital at Canberra, where it met in what is now called Old Parliament House. The building cost about 600,000 pounds and was officially opened by the Duke of York, later King George VI, accompanied by Prime Minister, Stanley Bruce. Intended to be temporary, this building housed the Parliament until 1988.

Australian History

Monday, May 9, 1988. :   Australia’s new Parliament House is opened by Queen Elizabeth II.

Australia’s old Parliament House, which was officially opened on 9 May 1927, was only ever intended to be a temporary residence for Parliament to sit. However, it served Australian Parliament for the next sixty years, as the cost of building a new Parliament House was prohibitive, and no Australian government wanted to be seen as wasting money on such a venture. By the 1960s, old Parliament House was too cramped and crowded, especially when expected to accommodate guests. At times, a building designed to house 300 people was expected to cope with over 4,000.

After a protracted battle over whether to put the new House on the same site as the old one, behind it on Capital Hill, or by the lake shore which was where the original designer of Canberra, Walter Burley Griffin, had intended it to be, the Fraser Government in 1978 decided to proceed with a new building on Capital Hill. Construction began in 1981, and the House was intended to be ready by January 1988, the 200th anniversary of European settlement in Australia. Ten thousand Australians were involved in the construction of the new Parliament House. The actual building area, which took up 7.5 hectares of a 32 hectare site, was the largest construction site in the Southern Hemisphere during the 1980s. It was expected to cost A$220 million. Neither deadline nor budget were met.

The building was finally opened by Queen Elizabeth II on 9 May 1988, the anniversary of the opening of both the first Federal Parliament in Melbourne (9 May 1901), and of the Provisional Parliament House in Canberra (9 May 1927). The final cost was over $1,000 million, making Parliament House the most expensive building in Australian history.

Australian History

Tuesday, May 9, 2006. :   After being trapped underground for fourteen nights, Tasmanian miners Todd Russell and Brant Webb finally walk free.

Beaconsfield is a small town in the northeast of Tasmania, Australia, about 39 km north west of Launceston on the West Tamar Highway. The district was first settled in 1805 and became a centre for limestone quarrying. The mining of limestone led to the discovery of gold in 1869 which caused the area to boom immensely, and by 1881 Beaconsfield was known as the richest gold town in Tasmania.

On the evening of Anzac Day, 25 April 2006, a small earthquake caused a rock fall in the mine. Eleven miners came out safely, but three remained trapped in the shaft about 1 kilometre below the ground. On the morning of the 27 April the body of 44-year-old Larry Knight was found in the shaft. On the evening of the 30 April 2006, the other two miners were discovered to be alive, after being trapped in the mine for five days. Their survival was claimed as nothing less than a miracle. They were protected by the 1.2m square cage they were in at the time, and which was where they spent most of their following fourteen days. Brant Webb, 37, and Todd Russell, 35, survived by drinking mineralised water that dripped from the rocks throughout the mine. The family of Larry Knight put aside their grief to share the jubilation of the rest of the town.

The operation to rescue the trapped miners was a long and difficult one, as numerous obstacles were faced. The men were sustained by food, water, medicines, and other vital goods sent down to them through piping sent through a smaller tunnel drilled through the rock. Paul Featherstone, instrumental in the rescue of Thredbo survivor Stuart Diver, also played a vital role in this rescue. Webb and Russell were finally freed at 4:47am on Tuesday, 9 May 2006, the same day selected for Larry Knight’s funeral. A bell at Beaconsfield’s Uniting Church, which had not been rung since the announcement of the end of WWII, pealed in celebration as the news broke, and residents immediately started to converge on the mine site. The men did not surface for another hour, as they were initially taken by 4WD to the mine’s “crib room”, a room the size of a cafeteria, about 700 metres below the ground, for recovery and health checks. The cage lift brought the men to the surface just before 6:00am.

In another sad twist, long-time Australian television personality, reporter Richard Carlton who was with channel 9’s “60 minutes”, collapsed and died after a press conference held at the site, just two days before the men were freed. Carlton threw the Beaconsfield mine situation and its apparent dangers into the spotlight during the press conference. His final story for 60 Minutes – an investigation into the Beaconsfield disaster – ran just hours after his death.

World History

Tuesday, May 9, 1978. :   The body of kidnapped and murdered former Italian Prime Minister, Aldo Moro, is found in a parked car.

Aldo Moro, born 23 September 1916, was one of Italy’s longest-serving post-war Prime Ministers. He served as Prime Minister from 1963 to 1968, and again from 1974 to 1976. One of the most important leaders of Democrazia Cristiana, or DC (in English the Christian Democrats), Moro was considered an intellectual and an exceptional mediator, especially in the internal life of his party, promoting cooperation between Italy’s disparate political parties.

On 16 March 1978, Moro was kidnapped by militant members of the Red Brigades, a left-wing terrorist group formed in 1970 with the sole aim of overthrowing capitalist Italy by violent means. Moro’s five police bodyguards were killed when he was kidnapped at gunpoint from a car near a cafe in full view of rush-hour witnesses, whilst being driven to a session of the house of representatives. The Red Brigades proposed to exchange Moro’s life for the freedom of 13 Red imprisoned Red Brigades terrorists. However, the government immediately took a hardline position on terrorist requests, that the “State must not bend”. Moro was held at a secret location in Rome and permitted to send letters to his family and fellow politicians, begging the government to negotiate with his captors. There has been some conjecture since then that the letters contained cryptic messages for his family and colleagues.

Moro was executed at gunpoint around 9 May 1978, and his body found in the boot of a car in Via Caetani in central Rome. Most of their leading members of the red Brigades were captured and imprisoned by the mid-1980s.