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1960

1960 Soprano Joan Sutherland is crowned "La Stupenda" in Venice.

1962 The first volume of Manning Clark's six-volume A History of Australia is published.

1962 Western Samoa gains independence.

1962 Australia's Rod Laver wins his first tennis Grand Slam; wins again in 1969.

1963 Activism through art: the Yirrkala bark-painting petition is sent to federal Parliament in Canberra.

1963 Richard Neville and Richard Walsh launch the weekly satirical magazine Oz.

1964 Aircraft carrier HMAS Melbourne collides with destroyer HMAS Voyager, cutting it in half and killing 82 of its crew.

1964 National Service Act introduces compulsory military service with conscripts chosen by lottery.

1964 Donald Horne's The Lucky Country is published.

1965 New Zealand and Australia sign a free trade agreement.

1965 Australian winemaker Thomas Angove invents the portable wine cask.

1965 Australian swimmer Dawn Fraser, a gold medal winner at three consecutive Olympic Games, is banned from competition for 10 years after souveniring a flag from the emperor's palace during the Tokyo Games.

1965 Cook Islands become self governing.

1965 Te Ata-i-rangi-kaahu becomes first Maori Queen.

1966 Australian Prime Minister Harold Holt promises the US that Australia will "go all the way with L.B.J." (President Lyndon Baines Johnson) in the Vietnam War.

1966 Decimal currency is introduced in Australia, and in New Zealand the following year.

1967 Lord Arthur Porritt becomes the first New Zealand-born Governor-General.

1967 A record "yes" vote of 90.8% in an Australian federal referendum allows the national Parliament concurrent power with the states in Aboriginal affairs and permits Aborigines to be included in Commonwealth census counts.

1967 Australian Prime Minister Harold Holt disappears, presumed drowned, while swimming in surf at Portsea, Victoria.

1968 The inter-island ferry Wahine sinks in Wellington Harbour, killing 51 people.

1968 The phosphate-rich island of Nauru becomes independent.

1968 Carbon dating of bones found at Lake Mungo, in south-west NSW, shows that Aborigines have inhabited Australia for at least 25,000 years. Later evidence suggest the period may exceed 40,000 years.

1969 Shares in the nickel mining company Poseidon soar from $1.85 to $280 in four months.

1970

1970 Australian tennis player Margaret Court wins the women's Grand Slam.

1970 Fiji attains independence.

1971 Neville Bonner becomes the first Aboriginal member of an Australian parliament.

1972 The Commonwealth Arbitration Commission gives Australian women the right to the same pay as men for work of equal value.

1973 Despite federal opposition, Tasmania's Labor government floods Lake Pedder for a hydroelectric scheme.

1973 Color television is introduced in New Zealand, and in Australia two years later.

1974 Cyclone Tracy devastates the Northern Territory city of Darwin on Christmas Day.

1975 Five Australian television newsmen are killed while covering Indonesia's invasion of East Timor.

1975 Papua New Guinea achieves independence.

1975 Australian Governor-General Sir John Kerr sacks Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, causing a constitutional crisis.

1975 The Waitangi Tribunal is established to resolve Maori claims for lost land and treasure.

1975 The Ellice Islands become the dominion of Tuvalu.

1975 Peter Weir's vividly atmospheric Picnic at Hanging Rock helps usher in Australia's film renaissance.

1976 The Aboriginal Land Rights (N.T.) Act gives Aborigines the right to claim vacant or Crown land where they can demonstrate a traditional relationship to the area.

1977 Eighty-three people die in Australia's worst rail disaster when a 300-ton section of a bridge crashes onto a commuter train at Granville in western Sydney.

1977 Advance Australia Fair is chosen as the new Australian anthem in a nationwide poll, replacing God Save the Queen.

1978 The Solomon Islands gain independence

1978 Homosexual rights supporters march through Sydney; 93 people are arrested.

1978 A New Zealand plane crashes on Mt Erebus in Antarctica, killing 257.

1979 Derelict U.S. space station Skylab crashes near Esperance, in Western Australia.

1979 My Brilliant Career launches the screen careers of Judy Davis and Sam Neill.

Chapter 5