On 20 January 1880, Bushranger Captain Moonlite (real name Andrew George Scott) was hanged in
Sydney.
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| Albumen silver carte de visite of Australian bushranger Captain Moonlite (Andrew George Scott), a bushranger in the Colony of Victoria, and in the Colony of New South Wales. Created: circa 1879 |
Public Institution Act (1880, removed all state aid from church schools and established a Department of Public Instruction, allowing free public education. (an attempt to minimise differences and problems due to social class, ethnicity and religion). Primary schools were to be "free and fair".
The Bulletin magazine is
first published on 31 January 1880.
In February 1880, the first successful shipment of frozen beef and mutton arrived in London from Australia.
School
becomes compulsory for children aged 6 to 14 in New South Wales in May 1880.
On June 28 1880, Ned Kelly is captured at Glenrowan, Victoria.
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| Native police unit, sent from Queensland to Victoria in 1879 to help capture the Kelly gang |
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| This is one of two photographs of Ned Kelly taken at the Old Melbourne Gaol the day before he was hanged on November 11, 1880 |
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| Ned Kelly armour, located at the State Library of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia, www.slv.vic.gov.au |
The first telephone
exchange in Australia opened in Melbourne in August 1880.
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| Collins Street, Melbourne, VIC, 1880 |
On 11 November 1880, the Bushranger Ned Kelly is hanged.
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| Unidentified woman : a studio view. Approximately 1880. SLSA |
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| Unidentified woman : a studio view. Approximately 1880, SLSA |
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| [General description] Three gentlemen pose for the photographer in a rather droll studio portrait. Mr. James George Russell stands on the left carrying a furled umbrella and smoking a pipe. Mr. W.W. Williams sits wearing a top hat and carrying a cane and Mr. W.F. Loutit, wearing a top hat and smoking a pipe, leans a little on the chair. 1880. SLSA (James George Russell ISO (28 March 1848 – 5 January 1918) was an Australian lawyer and public servant, who was an acting Supreme Court judge in South Australia) |
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| The Premises of Calder & Balfour's City Steam Biscuit Factory, Twin Street, Adelaide, SA, SLSA |
The first telephone exchanges were established in Melbourne and Brisbane in 1880, followed by Sydney in 1881.
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| Opening of the Fitzroy Bridge, Rockhampton, QLD, 1881. SLQLD |
The
population of Australia was 2,250,194 in the 1881 census.
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| Panoramic view of Macquarie Street and city from the dome of the Garden Palace, Sydney, NSW, 1881, State Library of New South Wales |
The first cricket Test match at the Sydney Cricket Ground begins 17 February 1882.
The Transit of Venus across the disc of the Sun is visible from Australia, 6 December 1882.
The gold town of Mount Morgan, QLD, was
established in the 1880s.
Brisbane is the first city in Australia to install electric lighting on 9 December 1882.
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| First fire engine used in Maryborough,QLD, ca. 1882, SLQLD |
Smallpox vaccine was produced in Victoria in 1882 and used to curtail outbreaks.
A census conducted by the Protector of Aborigines NSW found that 200 Aboriginal children were attending school in NSW out of approximately 1500 school-age children (1882).
In June 1883, a rail service between Sydney and Melbourne began when the NSW and Victorian rail
systems are joined at Albury.
Robbery Under Arms, a bushranger novel by Thomas Alexander Browne (pen name Rolf Boldrewood) was first published in serialised form by
The Sydney Mail between July 1882 and August 1883.
Sydney Boys High School is founded in October 1883 in Sydney, NSW, the first boys public school in Australia.
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| Grenfell Street, Adelaide, viewed from King William Street. The 'Register' newspaper building is seen in the centre with its tower. In the foreground is a telegraph pole showing the insulators and the web of wires over the street [ Approximately 1883 |
Silver ore was
discovered at Broken Hill in 1883 by a boundary rider named Charles Rasp.
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| Immigrants arriving at the Bundaberg wharf, QLD, on the Leichhardt (ship) via the Silhet (ship), 1883, SLQLD |
Infant deaths in Adelaide during the 1880s peaked at 200 per 1000 babies. This was the highest rate ever recorded anywhere in Australia. From 1887, a fall in mortality came about by direct state and medical interventions.
Dysentery, typhus and typhoid
caused many deaths.
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| Women and children with shelters at the Bloomfield River Mission, Queensland, 1884, Description: Photograph of grass dome Humpy / Gunya (hut) used by the Wujal Wujal group of Bloomfield River district in South East Queensland. The women are making woven baskets, with their children at the front of their Humpy entranceway. State Library of Queensland |
Life expectancy at birth rose from 43 years for males and 46 for females in the 1850s to 47 and 51 in the 1880s. Life expectancy in Australia today, has risen by more than 30 years since the late 1800s.
BHP was founded in 1885.
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Perth looking south-west from the Town Hall tower. 233201PD: St George's Terrace to King's Park, 1885, SLWA
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| Staff inside the Free Public Library (old State Library of New South Wales), c. 1885, State Library of New South Wales |
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| Launceston, Tasmania, 26 March 1885, NLAUST |
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: A large group of working men and boys photographed in a yard in South Australia; names and purpose not known. Approximately 1885, SLSA
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The first assembly of the Federal Council of Australasia is held in Hobart, 1885. to discuss matters of importance and common interest.
The first female medical student was
admitted in Sydney in 1885 (Dagmar Berne).
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| Royal Palace - Queen of the South's Palace in Goulburn, N.S.W. - 1880s, Aussie~mobs |
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| Essendon Town Hall, VIC, 1886, SLVIC |
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| Chinese cook working in the temporary kitchen of a surveyor's camp, 1886, SLQLD |
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| China Town, Cairns, QLD, 1886. From the Owen Livingstone Amos Photograph Album. State Library of Queensland |
On 21 January 1887, a daily rainfall in Brisbane of 465 millimetres (18.3 inches) was a record for any Australian capital city.
81 miners are killed during a coal gas explosion at Bulli, NSW, 23 March 1887.
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| Cobb & Co's mail coach on the Port Douglas - Herberton Road, Queensland, 1887, SLQLD |
The Working Men's College, an Australian college of further education in Melbourne, was founded in 1887.
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| A view looking down Hunter Street Newcastle, NSW, picture taken before 1887. Tyrrell collection Powerhouse museum |
The Goulburn Weir, built between 1887 and early 1891 across the Goulburn River, VIC, was one of the first major
structures built for irrigation development in Australia.
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| Bilin Bilin, leader of the Yugambeh people from about the 1860s. He was well respected by everyone and could read and write. Bilin Bilin was also known as King Albert, King of the Logan and Pimpama. In 1887 he was given a free pass on the new railway to visit his married daughter at Beaudesert. Emily Mayes from Mayes Cottage in Kingston looked after his breast plate occasionally while he used the waterhole near their house. (Mayes Cottage c1887 is open Thu/Fri/Sat - Free entry). Mayes Cottage is a well-preserved timber home built by the Mayes family in 1887. It was the family's home for 100 years. here |
There was a succession of gold rushes in the Yilgarn region near Southern Cross, WA, in 1887.
Centennial Park is opened in Sydney, NSW, 27 January 1888.
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| Traffic along Parramatta Rd, Sydney, NSW, in the 1880s, State Records |
The Presbyterian Ladies' College, Sydney, NSW,
established, 1888.
The Princes Bridge, Melbourne is opened, October 1888.
The 1880s was the peak of a long economic boom that began with the gold rushes of the 1850s.
Louisa Lawson established
The Dawn: A Journal for Australian Women in 1888. There was a
growing Female Suffrage Movement.
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| Queensland v Melbourne.—International Australian Football, 1888. Queensland Team. Queensland Figaro and Punch (Brisbane, Qld. : 1885 - 1889), Saturday 21 July 1888 |
Peter Lalor, Eureka Stockade leader, died 9 February 1889. (born 1827)
On 24 October 1889 Henry Parkes delivered a speech at the Tenterfield School of Arts on the need for the
Australian colonies to federate into one nation.
The
9 by 5 Impression Exhibition, an art exhibition held in Melbourne, VIC, in 1889. It was the first major exhibition of Impressionist paintings in Australia.
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| Tom Roberts, She-Oak and Sunlight, 1889, National Gallery of Victoria (Tom Roberts' landscape paintings of Australian bush country are among his most recognized works) |
"Clancy of the Overflow", a poem by Banjo Paterson, first published in The Bulletin in December 1889.
In the 1880s, 70 per cent of Australia's imports came from the United Kingdom, which also
received up to 80 per cent of Australia's exports (Vamplew 1987).
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| Cable Tram, corner Bourke & Spring Streets, Melbourne Victoria, circa 1880s. |
A period of speculative extravagance. Beginnings of financial collapse.
Large scale building of social
infrastructure such as schools, hospitals, roads, police stations and courts occurred in the 1880s.
Rapid urbanisation in Australia in the 1880s, with cities surrounded by working-class areas and middle-class suburbs.
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| Opening ceremony Darwin-Pine Creek Railway - 1 October 1889. A letter from JY Harvey, dated 1962, of the Australian Railway Historical Society which accompanies this photograph suggests that the event captured in the photograph is actually the christening of the locomotive which took place on 19th July 1887. A banquet was held in the Palmerston Town Hall. Mrs Paper, wife of the respected Judge was requested to perform the ceremony. The Millars Brothers First Locomotive cost the firm at least five hundred pounds and was christened "Port Darwin". By September 14th, 1889 the railway line was complete and handed over to the Government on October 4th, 1889 with lottle ceremony or fuss, SLSA |
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| Edward Street looking west across the intersection with Queen Street, Brisbane, QLD, 1889, SLQLD |
No 100th Birthday for Australia as it is not a
country until 1901 (Federation). It also seemed highly improbable in 1889 that a federation of the six colonies was only 12 years away.
