1967 in Australia

See also: 1966 in Australia, other events of 1967, 1968 in Australia and the Timeline of Australian history.

Incumbents

• Prime Minister - Harold Holt
• Governor General - Richard Casey

• Premier of New South Wales - Robert Askin
• Premier of South Australia - Frank Walsh, Don Dunstan
• Premier of Queensland - Joh Bjelke-Petersen
• Premier of Tasmania - Eric Reece
• Premier of Western Australia - David Brand
• Premier of Victoria - Henry Bolte

Events

• Prime Minister Harold Holt disappears while swimming in heavy surf at Cheviot Beach, near Portsea, Victoria.

• Gough Whitlam defeats Dr Jim Cairns and Frank Crean to replace the retiring Arthur Calwell as leader of the federal Australian Labor Party

• Indigenous Australians are given the right to be counted as Australian citizens after a national referendum and legislation changing citizenship laws, but voters reject a third referendum question about breaking the nexus between the sizes of the Senate and the House of Representatives (May 27).

• The new Australian 5-dollar note goes into circulation (May 27)

• Harry Chan MLC becomes the Mayor of Darwin, becoming the first Australian of Asian descent to hold such an office

• Ronald Ryan becomes the last man hanged in Australia, executed for the murder of a prison guard, which he commited while escaping from prison in December 1965. He was hanged on February 3, 1967.

• The government decides to abolish the right to make appeals from the High Court to the Privy Council in London in matters of federal jurisdiction (May)

• Don Dunstan succeeds Frank Walsh as Premier of South Australia (June 1)

• Sydney underworld figure Richard Gabriel Reilly is murdered (June 25)

• The postcode system of postal address coding is introduced throughout Australia (July)

• Federal Cabinet decides to drop the word 'British' from the cover of Australian passports, and agrees that it will have to amend the Nationality and Citizenship Act to change the designation 'British subject' on the inside of passports (August)

• folk-pop group The Seekers are named Australians Of The Year

• massive bushfires devastate much of the Tasmanian capital of Hobart and surrounding areas

• QANTAS Airways drops the word 'Empire' from its name

• South Australia's Simpson Desert Conservation Park and Queensland's Simpson Desert National Park are proclaimed

• the NSW National Parks & Wildlife Service is established

• General Motors Holden exports its 100,000th car and launches its first compact sedan, the Torana.

• Sydney is rocked by a series of brutal underworld killings as rival gangs battle for control of the city's lucrative gambling and prostitution rackets

• Bomber aircraft from No. 2 Squadron RAAF Canberra are deployed to Phan Rang airbase in South Vietnam

• Australian military adviser Major Peter Badcoe is killed in action in Vietnam during an operation in Huong Tra District with the 1st ARVN Division Reaction Company

• Australian Roman Catholic bishops publicly declare their opposition to the war in Vietnam (April 12)

Science & Technology

• Honeysuckle Creek space tracking station is opened near Canberra

• Australian health authorities begin the first national polio immunisation campaign using the new Sabin oral vaccine developed by Dr Jonas Salk (May 1

Arts and literature

• Melbourne's La Mama Theatre opens (July 30)
• Thomas Keneally's novel Bring Larks and Heroes wins the Miles Franklin Award
• Joan Lindsay's Picnic At Hanging Rock is published

Film

• Interaction: Moving and Painting (dir. Gil Brealy) wins the AFI Award for Best Film
• Journey Out of Darkness (dir. James Trainor)
• The Pudding Thieves (dir. Brian Davies)
• Robbery (dir. Peter Yates)
• Shades Of Puffing Billy (dir. Antonio Colacino)
• Wheels Across A Wilderness (dir. (Malcolm Leyland)
• Forgotten Cinema (dir. Anthony Buckley, the influential documentary about the rise and fall of the Australian feature film industry

Television

• Graham Kennedy wins his third Gold Logie Award

• The Seven Network premieres a new situation comedy series My Name's McGooley - What's Yours? starring Gordon Chater, John Meillon and Judy Farr, and the spy drama Hunter, starring Tony Ward (July 5)

• This Day Tonight, Australia's first national nightly TV current affairs program, premieres on ABC-TV, hosted by Bill Peach (April 10

Sport

South Sydney defeats Canterbury Bankstown 12-10 in the Grand Final of the NSWRL competition

Deaths

• February 7 - David Unaipon, Aboriginal author and inventor
• August 25 - Stanley Bruce, eighth Prime Minister of Australia
• December 19 - Harold Holt, seventeenth Prime Minister of Australia

See also

• 1967
• 1960s