1940 Angry Penguins, a quarterly arts journal is founded by poet Max Harris, providing space for the modernist expression of radical writers, artists and intellectuals.

1941 HMAS Sydney is sunk in action off the Western Australian coast; all 645 crew members are lost.

1942  Darwin is bombed by the Japanese air force and three Japanese submarines enter Sydney Harbour.

1942 Australian troops defeat Japanese forces on the Kokoda Trail in New Guinea with the help of indigenous carriers nicknamed the Fuzzy-Wuzzy Angels.

1942 U.S. Navy forces retreat of Japanese fleet in the Coral Sea; it later defeats Japan in the Battle of Midway.

1943 Ken Hall wins Australia's first Academy Award for the documentary Kokoda Front Line.

1944 Hundreds of Japanese prisoners break out of the Cowra prisoner-of-war camp in NSW.

1944 Federal Opposition Leader Robert Menzies forms the Liberal Party of Australia.

1946 The world's fifth atomic bomb is exploded in a nuclear test at Bikini atoll in the Pacific Ocean.

1946-47 Sidney Nolan produces the first in his series of "Ned Kelly" paintings.

1947  Defending the White Australia Policy, Australia's first Immigration Minister, Arthur Calwell, says: "Two Wongs do not make a White".

1948 Australia's first Holden motor car rolls off the assembly line at Fishermens Bend, Victoria.

1949 ABC Radio begins broadcasting the serial Blue Hills, which runs until 1976.

1949 The Nationality and Citizenship Act introduces Australian citizenship.

1949 The Australian territories of Papua and New Guinea are officially amalgamated.

1951 Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) reports success with a rabbit-killing viral disease called myxomatosis.

1951 Australia, New Zealand, and the US sign the ANZUS Treaty for joint defense of the Pacific.

1951 The Chiko Roll savoury snack is invented by Mr F.G. McEnroe of Bendigo, Victoria.

1953 The CSIRO invents an anti-shrink process for wool.

1953 New Zealander Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay become the first men to conquer Mount Everest

1953 Queen Elizabeth II arrives in Auckland for her first tour of New Zealand and Australia.

1953 On Christmas Eve, the night express train from Wellington to Auckland plunges into the river at Tangiwai, killing 151 people.

1954 Soviets accompanying Evokia Petrov, the wife of defecting Soviet spy Vladimir Petrov, are disarmed in a struggle with police at Darwin airport, allowing Mrs Petrov to remain in Australia.

1954 New Zealand gains seat on U.N. Security Council.

1955 First stage of Australia's Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric Scheme opens.

1956 TV broadcasts begin in Australia. NZ starts regular broadcasts in 1960.

1956 Melbourne hosts Olympic Games.

1956 Britain conducts the first of four atomic weapons tests at Maralinga in the central Australian desert.

1957 Last hanging in New Zealand. Australia's last hanging is in 1967.

1957 Jorn Utzon wins design competition for the Sydney Opera House. After fights with the NSW government over the construction, he resigns in 1966. It opens in 1973.

1957 Si-ro-set process, which adds permanent creases to clothing, is invented by CSIRO's Arthur Farnworth.

1959 Australia's National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA) is established as an important training ground for actors and directors, including Mel Gibson and Geoffrey Rush.

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