Pics Week continued: Some Oz History

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Today, some images (and comments) from moments in Australian history . . . 

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Some of the guns surrendered as part of an Australian gun buy-back. 

On 28 April 1996 shooter Martin Bryant killed 35 and injured 23 in a massacre at Port Arthur, Tasmania. Bryant remains in jail, having been sentenced to 35 life sentences without parole. As a result of the shootings, Prime Minister John Howard led the development of strict gun control laws within Australia restricting the private ownership of semi-automatic rifles, semi-automatic shotguns and pump-action shotguns, as well as introducing Australian uniform firearms licensing. As part of the gun-control, the Government had gun buy-back programs in 1996 and 2003 whereby compensation was paid for guns voluntarily surrendered, those guns being then destroyed. 

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Eddie Mabo 

Eddie Mabo (c1936 – 1992) was born Eddie Koiki Sambo but adopted his uncle’s name, Mabo, when adopted by him. An Indigenous Australian from the Torres Strait Islands, he became a land rights campaigner and mounted a High Court challenge to the doctrine of “Terra Nullius”, that Australia was unoccupied at the time of white settlement and therefore up for grabs with no rights of indigenous ownership. The High Court handed down its decision in favour of Eddie Mabo 5 months after he had died of cancer at age 55. It was a landmark decision that saw the beginning of indigenous land rights. It also saw the desecration of his grave overnight. 

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Australian gunners on a duckboard track in Château Wood near Hooge (about 2.5m/4k east of Ypres, Belgium), 29 October 1917. 

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March past of Australian Light Horse. 

Australian Light Horse were mounted troops with characteristics of both cavalry and mounted infantry, who served in the Second Boer War and World War I. 

Australian light horsemen departing from Australia in November 1914. The soldier on the right, Trooper William Harry Rankin Woods, died of wounds on 15 May 1915, one of the first light horsemen to die during the Battle of Gallipoli. 

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Construction of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, South Pylon, 1931 

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International Women's Day march, Melbourne, 8 March 1975. 

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Joe Byrne, member of the Ned Kelly bushranger gang, died at the siege in Glentrowan when shot in the groin by a stray bullet which severed his femoral artery. The next day his body was hung on the door of the lock-up at Benalla and photographed by the press. The above image of Byrne's body propped against the wall of the police station is recognised as Australia's first ever press photograph. 

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The federation of the Australian States and Territories into Commonwealth of Australia was inaugurated on 1 January 1901 in Centennial Park, Sydney. Sixty thousand people watched the first Governor General of Australia, Lord Hopetoun, the first prime Minister, Edmund Barton, and the first Cabinet sworn in within the Federation Pavilion. 

Despite the original Federation Pavilion being an imposing 14 metre high, octagonal, domed structure (richly decorated with bas-relief castings of native flora and the imperial coat of arms), the reality was that it was made largely of plaster of Paris. The plaster pavilion deteriorated rapidly and was removed from the Park in 1903. The Council of Concord purchased it and moved it to Cabarita Park in the Sydney suburb of Cabarita. Over the years the structure was painted and added to for aesthetics and safety, as it looks today . . .