Timeline: 252 events that have shaped Queensland

The first sitting of State Parliament, the moon landing, the 1974 floods, daylight saving trials... These are the biggest events in Queensland, Australia and the world as reported by The Courier-Mail over 175 years.

The first sitting of State Parliament, the moon landing, the 1974 floods, daylight saving trials... These are the biggest events in Queensland, Australia and the world as reported by The Courier-Mail over 175 years.

1846

Arthur Sidney Lyon starts the Moreton Bay Courier newspaper, a four-page weekly paper with a circulation of 200

1848

Explorer Ludwig Leichhardt and his party disappear after leaving the Darling Downs in an attempt to cross the continent

Explorer Edmund Kennedy is speared to death near the tip of Cape York

1851

The growing Moreton Bay Courier moves from the corner of Queen and Albert streets to larger offices on the corner of George and Charlotte streets

Gold is discovered in NSW sparking and Victoria, sparking a gold rush

1859

Queensland separates from NSW

The municipality of Brisbane is declared, named after the river on which it sits, which in turn was named after NSW governor Thomas Brisbane. The local Indigenous name for the river was Meeannjin, which has since become Maiwar

1860

Queensland Parliament sits for the first time

1861

American Civil War breaks out

1864

The first Queensland v NSW cricket match is played

1865

The Brisbane Bridge (later Victoria Bridge) becomes the river’s first road crossing

1862

Queensland’s western border is established

1861

The Moreton Bay Courier becomes The Courier and begins publishing daily

Burke and Wills disappear after crossing the continent from Melbourne to the Gulf of Carpentaria

An illustration of Burke and Wills at the Dig Tree at Coopers Creek

1864

The Courier becomes The Brisbane Courier

The Great Fire of Brisbane destroys much of the CBD

Queensland’s first rail line opens between Ipswich and Grandchester

1865

US president Abraham Lincoln is assassinated

1867

James Nash discovers gold in Gympie, sparking a gold rush and reviving Queensland’s economic fortunes

1868

Transportation of British convicts to Australia ends

The new Parliament House opens in George St, Brisbane

1869

The Suez Canal is completed, cutting travel time to Europe

1875

SS Gothenburg sinks off Bowen with the loss of 102 lives

1876

The Ekka is first held in Brisbane

1877

The first cricket Test is played between Australia and England at the Melbourne Cricket Ground

Bushranger and Australian folk hero Ned Kelly

1880

Bushranger Ned Kelly is hanged in Melbourne

1883

Brisbane’s Boggo Rd jail opens. Over its 109-year history it would become infamous

1885

Trams begin operating in Brisbane

1887

The Brisbane Courier moves to the corner of Queen and Edward streets

1889

The rail network between Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide is completed

Sir Henry Parkes calls for the federation of the six Australian colonies at Tenterfield, NSW

Bundaberg Rum is first produced

1891

Economic depression hits Australia

Shearers’ strike erupts between unionised and non-unionised workers. The Queensland Labor Party is founded under the Tree of Knowledge at Barcaldine

1893

Brisbane is inundated in a series of floods, with about 35 people killed

Brisbane’s iconic Breakfast Creek Hotel is inundated in the 1893 floods. Picture: Woollam Constructions

1895

Waltzing Matilda is first sung at Winton

Premiers of all the colonies, except Queensland and Western Australia, agree on federation proposals

1896

The ferry Pearl capsizes in the Brisbane River, with more than 40 people drowned

1899

The colony of Queensland offers troops to fight in the Boer War

1901

Australia becomes a federation, with the first parliament sitting in Melbourne and Edmund Barton becoming the first prime minister

The Immigration Restriction Act is introduced, forming the basis of the White Australia Policy

The Australian flag is flown for the first time

Queen Victoria dies

1902

Australian soldier Harry “Breaker” Morant is executed in South Africa, for shooting prisoners

1903

Queenslander Samuel Griffith becomes Australia’s first chief justice

The Wright Brothers make their first flight in the US

1905

Queensland women are granted the right to vote

1910

Magician Harry Houdini makes the first powered flight in Australia

1911

The University of Queensland opens

1912

The Titanic sinks on its maiden voyage with the loss of 1500 lives

1913

The foundation stone for the new national capital of Canberra is placed

1914

Austro-Hungarian emperor Franz Ferdinand is assassinated, leading to the outbreak of World War I

The Australian Imperial Force is raised for service overseas

The first Australian troops are killed in German New Guinea

1915

Australian soldiers land at Gallipoli on April 25, establishing a beachhead but sustaining heavy casualties. They are withdrawn in December

The Brisbane Courier begins publishing on Sunday for the first time to keep up with the WWI casualty lists

1916

Australian soldiers are in action on the Western Front for the first time, suffering appalling losses in the Battle of the Somme

Conscription is narrowly rejected in a referendum

1917

Conscription is again rejected at a referendum

Australian troops continue to be decimated on the Western Front

Light Horsemen capture the town of Beersheba from the Turks in history’s last cavalry charge

Supporting troops of the 1st Australian Division on the Western Front in Belgium in 1917. Picture: Australian War Memorial

1918

AIF troops, under the command of Sir John Monash, involved in heavy and decisive fighting that finally brings WWI to an end. More than 60,000 Australians have died

1919

Australian prime minister Billy Hughes signs the treaty of Versailles. Australia gains control over New Guinea

1920

Qantas is established at Longreach

1922

Queensland beats NSW at rugby league for the first time

1927

Canberra officially becomes the national capital

1928

Bert Hinkler completes the first solo flight from Britain to Australia. Charles Kingsford Smith makes the first flight from the US to Australia

Australia and England play the first cricket Test match in Brisbane, at the Exhibition Ground. Don Bradman makes his debut

The Royal Flying Doctor Service begins in Cloncurry

1929

Wall St crashes and the Great Depression hits Australia

1930

Phar Lap wins the Melbourne Cup

1932

The Sydney Harbour Bridge opens

1933

Sir Keith Murdoch’s Herald and Weekly Times acquires The Brisbane Courier and its rival The Daily Mail and merges them, creating The Courier-Mail

Aviator Bert Hinkler dies in a crash in Italy

1935

Sir Charles Kingsford Smith disappears over the Bay of Bengal

Cane toads are introduced to control pests on sugarcane crops. They become a pest themselves

1937

The Courier-Mail and Sunday Mail move into a purpose-built office in Queen street opposite the Post Office

The Dad and Dave radio series, based on the writings of Queensland’s Steele Rudd, begins

Lionel Lindsay's sketch of Dad and Dave Rudd

1939

Australia enters World War II after the German invasion of Poland. The Second AIF is raised

1940

Brisbane’s Story Bridge opens

1941

Australian troops repulse the Germans in North Africa in the Siege of Tobruk

Japan enters the war with surprise attacks at Pearl Harbour and in South-East Asia

1942

Singapore falls to the Japanese, with 15,000 Australians taken prisoner

US general Douglas MacArthur arrives in Brisbane to command the allied war effort in the Pacific from what would become known as MacArthur Chambers

Japan launches air raids on Darwin, Broome, Townsville and Mossman

The Japanese advance in New Guinea is halted on the Kokoda Trail

Australian troops play a key role in the decisive Battle of El Alamein in North Africa

1943

Australian hospital ship Centaur is torpedoed by a Japanese submarine off the southeast Queensland coast, with 268 of the 332 on board perishing. The wreck was not located until 2009

1944

Allied forces enter Nazi-occupied Europe at Normandy, France, on D-Day, the largest seaborne invasion in history

More than 2000 Australian and British prisoners of the Japanese die on the Sandakan Death March, the worst war crime committed against Australians

1945

Germany surrenders after a brutal land war on two fronts and a relentless bombing campaign involving thousands of Australian air crew

The US drops two atomic bombs on Japan, leading to its surrender and the end of WWII

1947

Sixteen people are killed and 38 injured when a train packed with picnickers derails between Ferny Grove and Camp Mountain stations in Brisbane’s northwest

1950

Australia sends troops to fight in the Korean War

1952

Brisbane loses its innocence as Betty Shanks, 22, is beaten to death near her home in Grange. The murder remains unsolved

Queen Elizabeth II assumes the throne at age 25 following the death of her father King George VI. She is coronated the following year

Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip drive past crowds of spectators at the Exhibition Grounds in Brisbane in March 1954.

1954

Huge crowds greet the Queen and Prince Philip on the first Australian visit by a reigning monarch. It was the first of 16 visits by the Queen, the most recent in 2011

The Labor Party splits over concerns of Communist influence in the labour movement

1956

Television arrives in Australia just in time for the Olympic Games in Melbourne

1957

Slim Dusty’s Pub With No Beer, about a hotel in Ingham, Queensland, becomes the first Australian song to chart internationally

1962

A fire at Brisbane’s Paddington tram depot destroys a fifth of the fleet and hastens the demise of the city’s network, which is retired in 1969 in favour of buses

The Bruce Highway, linking Brisbane and Cairns, is completed

The Commonwealth Electoral Act gives all Indigenous Australians the right to vote at federal elections, removing restrictions in Queensland, WA and the NT

Rockhampton’s Rod Laver wins the grand slam of tennis for the first time

1963

The Courier-Mail and Sunday Mail move to their current location in Campbell St, Bowen Hills.

US president John F. Kennedy is assassinated

1964

The Beatles tour Australia

The first Australian troops are sent to Vietnam

Prime minister Robert Menzies announces the reintroduction of conscription

1965

Indigenous Queenslanders gain the right to vote in Queensland

Two women chain themselves to the men-only public bar of Brisbane‘s Regatta Hotel in protest

1966

Australia adopts decimal currency

1967

The Constitution is changed to allow Indigenous Australians to be included in the census

Prime minister Harold Holt disappears while swimming at Cheviot Beach, Victoria

1969

Apollo 11 commander Neil Armstrong is the first human to set foot on the moon

More than 200,000 Australians protest against the Vietnam War

Neil Armstrong is reflected in the visor of Buzz Aldrin as he takes his photo during the moon landing.

1971

Queensland senator Neville Bonner becomes Australia’s first Indigenous MP

Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen declares a state of emergency after protests surrounding South Africa’s rugby tour of Australia

Daylight saving is introduced in Queensland, NSW, Victoria and SA

1972

Queensland abandons daylight saving

Gough Whitlam becomes prime minister, ending Labor’s 23 years in the wilderness

Black September terrorists kill two and kidnap nine Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics. The Games continues and the remaining hostages die when a rescue attempt goes wrong

1973

Fifteen people die when Brisbane’s Whiskey Au Go Go nightclub is firebombed. James Finch and John Stuart are later convicted of arson and one count of murder, but questions remain. A coronial inquest reopened this month

Ipswich infant Deidre Kennedy is abducted and murdered. Raymond John Carroll is convicted but a judge overturns the verdict

The White Australia Policy is officially dismantled

Australia’s involvement in the Vietnam War ends

1974

Brisbane and southeast Queensland are again hit by floods, with 16 people killed and 8000 homes destroyed

Barbara McCulkin and her two young daughters disappear from their home in Brisbane’s Highgate Hill. Their bodies are never found and it takes 40 years for their killers Garry Dubois and Vince O’Dempsey to be brought to justice

US president Richard Nixon resigns over the Watergate scandal

1975

Governor-general John Kerr dismisses the Whitlam government and appoints Malcolm Fraser as caretaker prime minister. Fraser is subsequently re-elected

Brisbane’s Riverside Expressway opens

1976

Brisbane band The Saints release their debut album and single (I’m) Stranded, credited with helping ignite the punk movement in the UK

1979

Brisbane’s first suburban electric train service runs between Darra and Ferny Grove

The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park is proclaimed

The first electric suburban passenger route between Ferny Grove and Darra was inaugurated on November 17, 1979.

1980

Baby Azaria Chamberlain is taken by a dingo at Ayers Rock (now Uluru). Her mother Lindy was convicted of her murder but later pardoned when new evidence emerged

Queensland beats NSW 20-10 at Lang Park in the first State of Origin match

1981

Prince Charles weds Lady Diana Spencer at London’s St Paul’s Cathedral

Maiden flight of NASA’s first space shuttle, Columbia. In 2003 it would tragically burn up on re-entry, with all seven crew perishing

1982

The Queen Street Mall opens as Brisbane’s central pedestrian hub

Brisbane hosts the 12th Commonwealth Games

1983

Seventy-one people are killed in the Ash Wednesday bushfires in Victoria and South Australia

Alan Bond’s Australia II wins the America’s Cup

Labor’s Bob Hawke is elected prime minister

Prince Charles and Princess Diana tour Australia

1984

Advance Australia Fair replaces God Save the Queen as the national anthem

Wivenhoe Dam is completed for the dual purpose of supplying water and mitigating flooding for the Brisbane region

A gas leak at a factory in Bhopal, India, kills thousands of nearby residents

Apple launches the Macintosh, the first commercially available personal computer with a graphical user interface

1985

Microsoft launches the first version of Windows, which brings a rudimentary GUI to IBM-compatible PCs

1986

Space shuttle Challenger explodes soon after liftoff, killing all seven on board

Sharron Phillips, 20, disappears when her car runs out of petrol on Ipswich Rd, Wacol, in Brisbane’s southwest. It remains one of the state’s biggest murder mysteries until a taxi driver’s deathbed confession is revealed in 2013

An explosion at the No.4 underground mine at Moura in central Queensland claims 12 lives

The nuclear reactor at Chernobyl in the then Soviet Union melts down

Brisbane’s Gateway Bridge opens. A duplicate bridge is added in 2010

1987

Reports by The Courier-Mail and ABC detail high-level political corruption in Queensland, ultimately leading to the Fitzgerald inquiry

Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen resigns as premier of Queensland after a 19-year reign

The Black Tuesday stockmarket crash, the biggest since the Great Depression, strips over a fifth of the value from Wall Street and a quarter from the Australian Stock Exchange

Noosa schoolgirl Sian Kingi, 12, is abducted, raped and murdered by Barrie Watts and Valmae Beck

Lord mayor Sallyanne Atkinson during the Pope’s visit in 1986

1985

Sallyanne Atkinson is elected Brisbane’s first female lord mayor

The Queensland Performing Arts Centre opens in South Brisbane

Southeast Queensland is besieged by rolling blackouts as the Electrical Trades Union takes strike action

1988

Australia celebrates its Bicentenary and Brisbane hosts World Expo 88

The new Parliament House opens in Canberra

The Brisbane Broncos enter the NSWRL competition

Three pedestrians are killed and eight injured when concrete panels fall from a construction site at the bottom of Brisbane’s Queen Street Mall

1989

Queensland commences a three-year trial of daylight saving

Tony Fitzgerald’s report on police corruption is released, leading to the jailing of three former ministers and the police commissioner

Wayne Goss become Queensland’s first Labor premier in 32 years

Brisbane “vampire killer” Tracey Wigginton slays council worker Edward Baldock in a West End park, supposedly to drink his blood

The Berlin Wall comes down, the beginning of the end of the Cold War

Soldiers open fire on student-led protesters in Tiananmen Square, Beijing. The official death toll is 300 but it is believed it could be in the thousands

Sir Tim Berners-Lee invents the World Wide Web

1990

Eleven people are killed and 42 injured when a tour bus crashes at Tamborine Mountain in the Gold Coast hinterland

Iraq invades Kuwait, sparking international condemnation and UN sanctions. Australia joins the US-led Operation Desert Shield in the Persian Gulf

1991

Operation Desert Storm (aka the Gulf War) drives Iraqi forces from Kuwait

Brisbane’s modern river ferry fleet begins operating, with CityCats added in 1996

Ipswich schoolgirl Leanne Holland, 12, is beaten to death. Her sister‘s partner Graham Stafford is convicted but the verdict is overturned after he has served 14 years in prison

Modern-day desperado Harold McSweeney and three other inmates escape Brisbane’s notorious Boggo Rd jail by commandeering a rubbish truck and ramming through the gates. All are eventually recaptured, McSweeney surrendering to a Channel 7 chopper crew

Harold McSweeney is recaptured.

1992

McSweeney is shot dead by police while attempting to hijack a Brisbane bus with a fake gun, after escaping from the nearby Supreme Court

The Brisbane Broncos win the first of six premierships. Others were to follow in 1993, 1997, 1998, 2000 and 2006

South Bank Parklands opens on the former Expo 88 site

Queensland votes down daylight saving in a referendum

The High Court’s Mabo decision rules Indigenous native title does exist, destroying the concept of terra nullius

1994

Netscape’s Navigator browser begins to popularise the World Wide Web

1995

Queensland wins cricket’s Sheffield Shield for the first time

The North Queensland Cowboys enter the then Australian Rugby League

Printing of The Courier-Mail and Sunday Mail relocates to a state-of-the-art facility at Murarrie on Brisbane’s bayside

1996

Australia suffers its worst massacre as Martin Bryant shoots 35 people dead and injures another 23 at Port Arthur, Tasmania

Two Black Hawk helicopters collide on an exercise near Townsville, killing 18 mainly SAS personnel

1997

Princess Diana is killed in a car crash in Paris, plunging the world into mourning

Expelled Liberal MP Pauline Hanson forms the One Nation party, which would go on to win 11 seats at the 1998 Queensland election

Logan pop duo Savage Garden (Darren Hayes and Daniel Jones) achieve the first of two No.1 singles in the US with Truly, Madly, Deeply. They repeat the success with I Knew I Loved You in 1999

The Sunday Mail Bridge to Brisbane fun run begins as the Bridge to Bay

1999

A referendum on Australia becoming a republic is unsuccessful

The Gold Coast Titans enter the National Rugby League

Australia leads an international peacekeeping operation in East Timor to quell violence by local militia

The Courier-Mail website launches

Cathy Freeman lights the Olympic flame to open the Sydney 2000 Games.

2000

Fifteen backpackers die in a hostel fire at Childers near Bundaberg. Robert Long is later convicted of several murders

The 27th Summer Olympics are held in Sydney, with Queenslander Cathy Freeman lighting the Olympic flame

2001

Terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre in New York and the Pentagon in Washington kill 3000 people

Australian troops are sent to Afghanistan

2002

More than 200 people, including 88 Australians, are killed in the Bali bombings

2003

Australia join coalition forces in an invasion of Iraq, ousting strongman Saddam Hussein amid fears of weapons of mass destruction

Sunshine Coast schoolboy Daniel Morcombe, 12, is abducted and murdered. An elaborate police sting finally catches his killer, Brett Peter Cowan, in 2011

American honeymooner Tina Thomas dies on a diving trip off Townsville. Her husband Gabe Watson serves 18 months’ jail in Queensland for manslaughter after a plea deal. A murder trial in the US is dismissed by the judge

2004

Palm Island off Townsville is gripped by rioting after the death in custody of Indigenous man Mulrunji Doomadgee. The state later pays $30 million to settle a class action brought by island residents

A Cairns-bound tilt train derails between Bundaberg and Gladstone with 157 people on board. Remarkably no one is killed

Gold Coast woman Schapelle Corby is caught smuggling 4.2kg of cannabis into Bali in a boogie board bag. She is sentenced to 20 years’ jail but is released in 2014. She has since found fame as a reality TV star and social media influencer

A tsunami in the Indian Ocean claims 230,000 mainly Indonesian lives

2005

Fifteen people die when a plane crashes into a mountain at Lockhart River in far north Queensland

Australia’s “Bali Nine”, including two men from Brisbane, are arrested with 8.3kg of heroin. Most are jailed for life, with ringleaders Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran executed in 2015

The Courier-Mail changes from a broadsheet to a tabloid format

2006

Queensland’s world-famous Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin is killed on the Great Barrier Reef. The Courier-Mail leads the global coverage online and in print

2007

Queensland’s Kevin Rudd becomes prime minister, ending John Howard’s 11-year reign

Apple launches the iPhone, which would be released in Australia a year later

2008

The collapse of Lehmann Brothers amid the subprime lending fiasco accelerates the global financial crisis

A freak storm causes extensive property damage at The Gap in Brisbane’s northwest

Premier-elect Anna Bligh delivers her victory speech in 2009.

2009

Two years after replacing Peter Beattie as Queensland Labor leader, Anna Bligh becomes Australia’s first elected female premier

The Black Saturday bushfires kill 173 people in Victoria

2010

Bundaberg Hospital surgeon Jayant Patel is convicted and jailed for the manslaughter of three patients and grievous bodily harm of a fourth. The charges are later overturned but he is banned from practising in Queensland

The Go Between Bridge opens, named for the popular Brisbane band and linking Milton with South Brisbane across the river

Apple launches the iPad

The Courier-Mail tablet app launches

2011

Flooding in southeast Queensland inundates towns and cities and kills 36 people. The Lockyer Valley is devastated and entire suburbs in Brisbane go under

Cyclone Yasi, the biggest storm in Queensland’s history, causes $100 million worth of damage

A tsunami triggers a meltdown at the Japanese nuclear reactor at Fukushima

The Courier-Mail website is optimised for smartphones

2012

Former Brisbane lord mayor Campbell Newman is elected premier with a massive majority - which he loses three years later after a controversial reign

Allison Baden-Clay goes missing from her home in Brisbane’s west. Her body is later found and her husband Gerard tried and convicted of her murder

2013

Brisbane’s Queen Street Mall is locked down as police negotiate with a gunman. He is eventually subdued with non-lethal rounds

2014

A ring of steel encircles Brisbane as it hosts the G20 summit, with world leaders including US President Barack Obama, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping, UK Prime Minister David Cameron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel

New Zealand woman Warriena Wright falls to her death from the Gold Coast balcony of Gable Tostee in a Tinder date gone wrong. Tostee is later acquitted of her murder or manslaughter

The Gold Coast light rail begins operation. It now runs from Helensvale to Broadbeach South, with plans to eventually extend it to Coolangatta and Gold Coast Airport

A Cairns woman kills seven of her children and their cousin. She is later found unfit to stand trial on mental health grounds

Lone gunman Man Haron Monis takes 18 hostages at Sydney‘s Lindt Cafe. He executes the cafe manager and another hostage is killed when police storm the premises

The Courier-Mail smartphone app launches

North Queensland Cowboys’ Johnathan Thurston kicks the winning field goal in the 1995 NRL Grand Final.

2015

Thanks to a Johnathan Thurston field goal, the North Queensland Cowboys beat the Brisbane Broncos in the first all-Queensland NRL Grand Final

2016

News Corp Australia acquires Australian Regional Media (now News Regional Media), adding dozens more local mastheads to its Queensland operations

2017

Same-sex marriage is legalised after a plebiscite

2018

The 16th Commonwealth Games are held on the Gold Coast

Toyah Cordingley is bashed to death on an isolated beach north of Cairns. The prime suspect, am Innisfail nurse, returns to his home country of India and is still being sought by authorities

Construction begins on Brisbane’s $2 billion Queen’s Wharf development, estimated to be completed in 2022

The Brisbane Broncos win the inaugural NRLW premiership

2019

Major works begin on Brisbane’s $5.4 billion Cross River Rail project. It is estimated to be completed by 2024

Bushfires in every state and territory destroy 2600 homes and kill 34 people

Townsville is devastated by flooding

Australian Brenton Tarrant kills 51 people in a shooting spree at a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand

2020

Queensland’s first Covid-19 case is detected, a Chinese national on the Gold Coast

Prime Minister Scott Morrison announces a national lockdown to tackle the Covid-19 pandemic

Queensland’s Chief Health Officer orders a series of lockdowns and border closures to keep the pandemic at bay

2021

Brisbane emerges as frontrunner to host the 2032 Olympics

NRM mastheads begin migrating to the Courier-Mail website

Brisbane is in the box seat to host the 2032 Olympics.