60 most influential people of the past six decades
To celebrate The Australian’s 60th anniversary, this masthead has brought together a list of those who have had an impact on all our lives.
60TH ANNIVERSARY COLLECTION
View from The Lodge: Leaders on leadership
In a series of exclusive interviews with three living prime ministers, John Howard, Julia Gillard and Paul Keating discuss influence and their legacies.
Pressure all politicians to put us on ‘up path’: Gina Rinehart
Billionaire miner and investor Gina Rinehart wants Australians to keep their pressure up on politicians and says she uses only her influence to encourage policies which are clearly pro-Australia.
Shining lights whose talent has power to change
What do a tennis ace, a Hollywood actor, a football star and a tech entrepreneur have in common?
Our special series shows how The Australian covers the nation, with six senior writers tapping into the big issues from remote Western Australia to the Queensland coast.
Coast to coast: Australia’s 200km metropolis
One long urban strip is forming as the gaps close between the Gold Coast, Brisbane and the Sunshine Coast.
Out of towns and back to country: Visionary leads his people
For 60 years, this Martu elder has led his people away from towns and back on to country – dry country – because he understands how the non-Aboriginal world works, and why it often does not work at all for his people.
Farmers put their livelihoods on the Line
George Goyder’s Line was the one certainty farmers could count on in a heartbreak land where dust devils dance among the early settlers’ broken dreams. But what happens when even that constant fails? Can human ingenuity and perseverance hold out against climate change?
Renewables ‘biggest change since white man turned up with sheep’
The land will be vastly altered: solar panels on the flats, wind turbines on the ridges and new high-voltage towers connecting it all, but the residents of these towns have more pragmatic things on their minds than rural scenery.
Should you give up your salmon to save a species?
Logan Saltmarsh is worried. But it’s not schoolwork or bolshie big kids unsettling this 12-year-old; it’s Tanya Plibersek. In fact, the whole town of Strahan is on edge.
Life in Australia’s most multicultural suburb
Not quite the Truman show, in this town educated families live in big houses, send their kids to new schools, push babies around in pram brigades and literally dance in the streets.
Lachlan Murdoch on the power of free thinking
In an exclusive interview, News Corporation chairman Lachlan Murdoch speaks passionately about freedom of the press and its value to democracy in a troubled world, and tells of his love for Australia, ‘a country of great opportunity’.
A refugee still traumatised by tragedy of his arrival
Fifty people died on December 15, 2010, in the nation’s worst civilian maritime disaster in more than a century dominating. Of those who had boarded the SIEV 221 days earlier, only 42 people survived. Meysam Rahimzadeh was among them.
Teen sailor defied sea snakes and sharks in reef rescue
Chaice Grant was on his first sea voyage when he spotted a yacht in distress – hundreds of kilometres away from land. What happened next?
Death-rolled by croc and living to tell the tale
Johnny Banjo escaped a crocodile’s jaws of death after minutes of wrestling for his life. After poking the crocodile in the eye, Banjo grabbed his shirt and a loose can of beer before legging it on land. As it turns out, crocs are fast there too.
How a family was born in the wake of devastating Ash Wednesday fires
They lost their home in the 1983 Ash Wednesday fires. Just a few days later, Vivienne and Ian Kroehn were expecting their first child. What happened next?
‘No one knows about my time in a Greek jail’
Fifty years ago The Australian reported a young Sydney woman had been arrested and jailed in Greece for having her boyfriend stay in her apartment. We’ve tracked her down to hear her story.
Olympic swimmer banned with Dawn Fraser surfaces six decades on
Marlene Dayman was 14 at the 1964 Tokyo Games. But after marching at the opening ceremony, she was banned from competing. When you give a teen a ‘life sentence’, how do they turn out?
For a journalist, no story comes close to this one
The Australian’s former US correspondent was outside the Capitol on the day an angry mob invaded, urged on by Donald Trump.
Simple instructions: ‘Wear a ballistic helmet and a bulletproof vest’
The kibbutzim might have been tiny villages but they were the model, in miniature, for how a future Israel could have looked next to its Palestinian neighbours. By all rights, our reporter shouldn’t have made it there. But he did.
A large Indigenous man on my porch had an unexpected message
The story of a marriage forbidden revealed systemic racism and led to a life-long connection. For our 60th birthday, Hugh Lunn recalls this touching story.
Inside story: How Osama bin Laden hid in plain sight
The Australian’s then-South Asian correspondent had numerous run-ins with armed Pakistani police while covering the story of the decade. But nothing they could dish out could have been worse than having to tell the editor she’d been kicked out.
Cold, furious: The most evil man I have ever met
Getting to interview this man was challenging. He hated ‘gringo’ journalists and had vowed he’d never talk to one again. All of my peers warned me he goes crazy if you ask him about the death squads. But I had to try.
‘Stop the presses’: breaking the news of new pope
When the wisps of white smoke billowed from the Vatican chimney, The Australian newspaper had long been put to bed. Our correspondent couldn’t wait another day to file. We share this story for our 60th anniversary.
The first big yarn to take a toll on Hedley Thomas
Being sent to cover the bloody overthrow of the communist regime in Romania was a seminal experience for a young reporter who would become one of The Australian’s most highly acclaimed journalists.
At the scene of the story that gripped the world
Reporting from the muddy mouth of the cave complex as a monsoon loomed, it felt crushingly inevitable we would be relaying grim news about a trapped junior soccer team. But then came a sudden turn.
For a journalist, no story comes close to this one
Simple instructions: ‘Wear a ballistic helmet and a bulletproof vest’
A large Indigenous man on my porch had an unexpected message
Inside story: How Osama bin Laden hid in plain sight
Cold, furious: The most evil man I have ever met
‘Stop the presses’: breaking the news of new pope
The first big yarn to take a toll on Hedley Thomas
At the scene of the story that gripped the world
How far does free speech go? Johannes Leak reflects on cartooning in a censorious age
The 2010s saw Bill Leak produce some of the best work of his career. His cartoons of this period are distinctive in their clarity of message and design, and devastating in content.
‘It’s just not cricket’: An untouchable legacy destroyed
In a sport that has long been a byword for fair play, Will Swanton shares a nation’s disgust at the Australian team’s half-witted cheating in South Africa, and at their disgraced captain. We look back for The Australian’s 60th.
‘National shame’ or a ‘cultural collision’?
They gathered in darkness in unprecedented numbers, reaching more than 1000 people at least twice this week as they strive for entry to the exclusive club of those who have scaled Australia’s rocky, red heart. Here’s how we reported on it at the time.
Four of the greatest op-eds from the past four years
A contrarian takes on lockdowns, Henry Ergas cuts through on the October 7 attack and its fall out, The Australian editorialises the second Elizabethan era and we examine eight reasons the referendum failed.
Masters of mayhem and silencing the science
Rather than a world with strengthening ties, since 2010 they have been disintegrating. There is no peace in the Middle East, China aggressively prodded its neighbours and terror came home. We look at the past 14 years.
Photo makes the best argument for compassion
It was a period of monumental challenge and change. In this collection of images we have celebration, political dissent, civil objection, terror and human survival.
Cartoonists Bill Leak and Peter Nicholson spearhead the attack
Look back at Brown Nose Day, Leak’s 2002 Walkley Award winning cartoon. It’s an example of Leak’s relentless skewering of prime minister John Howard – in this instance for his subservience to the United States.
Surely, our most unexpected gold medal
This Olympics win was so significant a new expression entered Australian vernacular. Do a Bradbury!
Airline failure fallout: We’ve been on this runway before
It was a long process but Ansett Australia, established in 1935, was unable to continue operating despite a tie-up with Air New Zealand, which many blamed for the airline’s continual losses. Attempts to reboot Ansett eventually failed in 2002.
‘I’m scared I can’t do it’: Kidman’s confidence crisis
‘It’s shaping up to be either this enormously brilliant movie or this totally kyboshed turkey,’ one industry figure observed. How would you say it turned out?
‘Chaotic’: Paralysis at the heart of Kevin Rudd’s office
In the commentary pages of The Australian, John Howard’s government was criticised as ‘reactive’ but Kevin Rudd’s administration was seen as dysfunctional.
From triumph to terror: pictures capture a new millennium
The image of Hanabeth Luke’s selfless help to an injured Tom Singer became etched on our memories in this challenging decade, along with moments of Olympic glory, a fire truck dwarfed by furious flames and Schapelle Corby facing Indonesian justice.
They warn you it comes fast, but that’s not even close
In the 2000s, an inferno ripped through Victoria, Kevin Rudd became prime minister, and the war on terror began. Where were you for each of these events?
Your choice: attachment to anachronism or confidence in future?
The Australian’s editorial was run off the front page, a rare occurrence and a sign of the masthead’s commitment to the republican cause in this country. We republish it here today for this masthead’s 60th anniversary.
The picture that helped to change a nation
Photographer Ray Strange noticed something out of the ordinary when prime minister John Howard lifted his arms in front of a pro-gun crowd as he campaigned to bring in more restrictions. It was a sign of how heated the debate had become after the Port Arthur massacre.
Firebrand Bill Leak’s bruising brush and piercing pen
The swashbuckling Bill Leak entered the cartooning scene at The Australian in the 1990s in the era of Hawke, Hewson, Howard and Hanson. That combination makes a cartoonist very happy.
This is what all-out industrial warfare looks like
Patrick Stevedores’ sacking of 1400 workers was the start of all-out industrial warfare, backed by a government that wanted to break the Maritime Union of Australia’s waterfront power. But in the middle were ordinary workers.
Shane Warne ‘a magician capable of anything’: 1990s report
Ear-stud-wearing former ‘party boy’ Shane Warne stunned the cricket world when he took out England’s Mike Gatting at Old Trafford with what became known as the Ball of the Century. Relive the glory here.
This is what ‘90s culture was really about
By the turn of the millennium, gigs will be obsolete, as will CDs, and we’ll all be getting our kicks from interactive computer concepts and feng shui classes. Iain Shedden disagreed. But how right was he?
‘Swamped by Asians’: How Pauline Hanson got it wrong
Columnist and former editor Frank Devine gets right to the point on Pauline Hanson’s divisive maiden speech in parliament: it has the ‘weight of a whisper’.
‘Great fun’: Our cartoonists spare no one
The 1980s were a gift with targets galore. International public figures included Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. In Australia, Bob Hawke emerged as the symbol of celebrity larrikinism.
What dazed young brokers can learn from the ‘grey hairs’
Plenty of investors took a hit when share markets crashed globally in 1987, but an even greater pain was felt in that big casino known as the Sydney Futures Exchange
Twice the nation couldn’t believe its eyes
Millions of bleary-eyed Australians sat glued to their TVs to witness one of sport’s greatest moments — and got a free pass from the PM to take a sickie.
The Australian film that changed cinema
This film’s purpose is original, daring and important: it is to ‘explain what Gallipoli means to Australia’s history and our understanding of ourselves’.
‘I think about dying every day’: Living with AIDS in the 1980s
‘John’, who once worked for The Australian, was Sydney AIDS sufferer No. 20. He spoke to our reporter to explain his disease and society’s reaction to it.
It’s time for cartooning iconoclasts to take over
After serious political and social change in Australia in the 1960s, the attraction of rebellious leftist ideas danced into the 1970s. Our cartoonists found this era both dangerous and funny.
That time when everyone had a stake in a nickel mine – until it all went bust
The god of earthquakes has a connection with the dry and dusty landscape of WA, given the land-shaking impact that Poseidon had on Australian sharemarkets in 1970.
Rod Laver is our ‘finest and truest sportsman’. Would you agree?
In the 1970s we saw intoxicating tennis and anti-apartheid protests as South Africa’s Springboks toured. Students of the form guide, however, had their mind on just one thing: that ‘intellectual Everest’, the next Melbourne Cup.
The day the Queen opened our ‘$100m shrine’
Massive crowds flocked to watch Queen Elizabeth open the Sydney Opera House in 1973, but there was one person missing: the building’s architect Joern Utzon. Or was his ghost a guest?
Australia’s march towards mediocrity
If we are not driving down our average roads, we are walking around with our eyes on the ground. In 1975, The Australian asked why the ambitions of Australians didn’t extend beyond sport.
Australian resilience captured in a single photo
The 1970s were dramatically changing times. These pictures summarise these seismic shifts and show the way The Australian’s photographers bore witness to history.
‘Petty bourgeois attitudes’: Manning Clark on the Whitlam backlash
Political history moved fast in the 1970s, with the first Labor prime minister for decades, Gough Whitlam, being ousted in a constitutional crisis, and terror arrived on our streets. We look back for The Australian’s 60th anniversary.
The 1960s in cartoons
Cartoonists Bruce Petty and Aubrey Collette took a running jump into the newly established national masthead and fitted right in to the rebellious mood of an optimistic post-World War II political vision.
The ‘lucky’ country? Mining wealth built on brains
One of our most eminent historians also proved to be an expert on the future when he wrote about the fortunes of mining in December 1969, just before the great market bust.
When Australia’s athletes truly punched above their weight
Boxer Lionel Rose became world champion, Dawn Fraser stunned with an Olympic threepeat – and then was banned – while Peter Norman’s sprint silver in Mexico was overrun by a Black Power salute. The Australian’s sport coverage in the 1960s was never dull.
‘Not all women have the temperament for paid work’
The first woman to be appointed to a chair at Sydney University, Leonie Kramer, had a balance other women might have envied. When interviewed by The Australian in 1968, she had just enjoyed ‘a nice vacation making jams and preserves’.
![Victoria River Downs Station, Northern Territory, handling of fully grown cleanskin cattle which had been captured in trap yard, 1953 [transparency]. Picture: Frank H. Johnston](https://content.api.news/v3/images/bin/a7b105e21565cf3274eef2afbe79db71?width=650)
‘Pay Indigenous Australians equal wage’: 1960s op-ed
The Australian has always stood for impartial, independent thinking. In the 1960s, we published the forthright views of maverick one-armed expeditioner Jock Marshall.
The 1960s in pictures
The Australian trawled its archives to find the most arresting images from six decades of journalism. These pictures, from war in Vietnam to Bart Cummings with a Melbourne Cup winner, all appeared in our pages.
Moon, Menzies and a missing PM: Relive our sensational Sixties
This decade was a time of fractious debate. Young protesters found lungs on the Vietnam war; a prime minister went missing; and people landed on the moon. We look back at the decade for The Australian’s 60th anniversary.
Best places to stay in NSW and Queensland
To celebrate The Australian’s 60th birthday, we’ve selected a stellar array of accommodation from city, coast and country. Here, we feature NSW and Queensland.
Best places to stay in Victoria, Tasmania and SA
To celebrate The Australian’s 60th birthday, we’ve selected a stellar array of accommodation from city, coast and country. Here, we feature Victoria, Tasmania and SA.
Top picks for Canberra, NT and WA stays
To celebrate The Australian’s 60th birthday, we’ve selected a stellar array of accommodation from city, coast and country. Here, we feature Western Australia, Northern Territory and the ACT.
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