1965 in Australia

The following lists events that happened during 1965 in Australia.

← 1964 1963 1962 1965 in Australia → 1966 1967 1968
Decades:	1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s
See also:	Other events of 1965 Timeline of Australian history

Incumbents

Viscount De L'Isle

Lord Casey

• Monarch – Elizabeth II
• Governor-General – Viscount De L'Isle (until 7 May), then Lord Casey
• Prime Minister – Sir Robert Menzies
  • Opposition Leader – Arthur Calwell
• Chief Justice – Sir Garfield Barwick

State and territory leaders

• Premier of New South Wales – Jack Renshaw (until 13 May), then Robert Askin
  • Opposition Leader – Robert Askin (until 13 May), then Jack Renshaw
• Premier of Queensland – Frank Nicklin
  • Opposition Leader – Jack Duggan
• Premier of South Australia – Sir Thomas Playford IV (until 10 March), then Frank Walsh
  • Opposition Leader – Frank Walsh (until 10 March), then Sir Thomas Playford IV
• Premier of Tasmania – Eric Reece
  • Opposition Leader – Angus Bethune
• Premier of Victoria – Henry Bolte
  • Opposition Leader – Clive Stoneham
• Premier of Western Australia – David Brand
  • Albert Hawke

Governors and administrators

• Governor of New South Wales – Lieutenant General Sir Eric Woodward (until 31 July)
• Governor of Queensland – Colonel Sir Henry Abel Smith
• Governor of South Australia – Lieutenant General Sir Edric Bastyan
• Governor of Tasmania – General Sir Charles Gairdner
• Governor of Victoria – Major General Sir Rohan Delacombe
• Governor of Western Australia – Major General Sir Douglas Kendrew
• Administrator of Nauru – Reginald Leydin
• Administrator of Norfolk Island – Roger Nott
• Administrator of the Northern Territory – Roger Dean
• Administrator of Papua and New Guinea – Sir Donald Cleland

Events

• actor, dancer and choreographer Sir Robert Helpmann is named Australian of the Year
• the Australian Conservation Foundation is formed
• the Australian Council of National Trusts (ACNT) is formed
• Pintubi Aboriginal people still living an independent traditional lifestyle, and resettle them on the Papunya and Yuendumu
  missions

• The Kinks and The Rolling Stones tour Australia
• 7 January – The first
  Sydney Harbour
  .
• 10 January –
  Evonne Goolagong
  wins the NSW junior hard-court title.
• 11 January – The bodies of two 15-year-old girls,
  Marianne Schmidt, are found at Wanda Beach
  in southern Sydney. Despite the offer of an unprecedented £10,000 reward, the murders are never solved.
• 16 January – The vehicular ferry Empress of Australia begins operating between Sydney and Hobart.
• 27 January – Queensland Police are given the power to arrest without warrant and ban anyone aiding the striking Mount Isa Mines workers. Union leader Pat Mackie is banned from the site.

February

• Judge Aaron Levine overturns the obscenity conviction of the editors of Oz magazine
• Charles Perkins
  leads The Freedom Ride, which travels through country NSW, protesting the racial discrimination against Aboriginal people.
• Margaret Court wins the Australian women's tennis singles title for the sixth consecutive year
• 18 February – Esso-BHP strikes gas at the
  Barracouta well in Bass Strait
  .
• 20 February – Freedom Ride participants including Charles Perkins are ejected from the Moree municipal swimming baths after protesting against its policy of not admitting Aborigines.
• 22 February – Prince Philip opens the Royal Australian Mint in Canberra.
• Australian Broadcasting Commission
  (ABC)
• The Seekers' single "I'll Never Find Another You" reaches No. 1 in the UK charts. It becomes the first recording by an Australian act to sell more than 1 million copies and eventually sells more than 1.75 million

March

• 1 March – The
  Amateur Swimming Union of Australia stuns the nation with its decision that Olympic champion and 1964 Australian of the Year Dawn Fraser will be banned from all amateur competition for ten years. The decision follows an inquiry into Fraser's alleged misbehaviour during the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo
  .
• 6 March – The Australian Labor Party wins the South Australian election, taking government for the first time in 32 years. Labor leader Frank Walsh becomes Premier, replacing LCL leader Sir Thomas Playford, Australia's longest-serving premier, who had held office for 26 years, 4 months.
• 10 March – The first drawing of the national service conscription lottery.
• 17 March – The Queensland government legislates to ban picketing and restricting pamphlets and banners at the Mount Isa mine. The strikers workers return to work later in the month.
• 31 March – Merle Thorton and Rosalie Bogner chained their ankles to the front bar of the Regatta Hotel in Brisbane in protest against the Queensland liquor laws that banned women from pubs.^[1]
• George Johnston wins the Miles Franklin Award for his novel My Brother Jack

April

• 27 April – Police raid Melbourne's Austral Bookshop and seize copies of The Trial of Lady Chatterley, a banned book which recounts of the British obscenity trial of author D. H. Lawrence.
• Prime Minister Robert Menzies announces that an Australian combat force will be sent to South Vietnam in response to a request for military aid from the South Vietnamese government.

May

• 1 May – The
  Robin Askin
  takes power.
• 27 May – The 1st Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment leaves for Vietnam on HMAS Sydney.

June

• The official opening of the
  Captain Cook Bridge, which spans the Georges River
• TV variety show In Melbourne Tonight celebrates its 2000th performance. Since its premiere in 1957 the show had earned the Nine Network over £AU4 million in advertising revenue and it attracted more viewers per capita than any other television show in the world, with the network rumoured to be paying host Graham Kennedy more than £AU20,000 per year (14 June)
• 21 June – The Premier of Tasmania,
  Gordon Power scheme will "result in some modification to the Lake Pedder National Park", but it was still in development and no further details were revealed.^[2]
• 30 June – At a speech to the Australian Club in London, PM Sir Robert Menzies declares that Australia is in a state of war in Vietnam.

July

• 18 to 20 July - Snow is recorded as far north as the Clark Range in Queensland, killing
  North Coast
  turns drought into flood, with Brisbane having its wettest-ever July day with 193.2 millimetres (7.6 in).

August

September

October

30 October – English model Jean Shrimpton wears a controversially short white shift dress to the Victoria Derby at Flemington Racecourse in Melbourne, Australia – a pivotal moment of the introduction of the miniskirt to women's fashion.

November

• 5 November – The 1st Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment, is deployed in Operation Hump in Vietnam.
• 13 November –
  Kevin Arthur Wheatley dies in Vietnam while defending a wounded comrade. He was awarded the Victoria Cross
  for his gallantry.

• The Siding Spring Observatory opens

Arts and literature

• Clifton Pugh's portrait of R.A. Henderson wins the Archibald Prize for portraiture
• Larry Sitsky's opera The Fall of the House of Usher
• Peter Sculthorpe's Sun Music I
• Joan Sutherland returns to perform in Australia after 14 years overseas
• the
  Canberra School of Music
  is established
• Ballet in a Nutshell (later the Sydney Dance Company) and the Australian Dance Theatre form
• The
  South Australian Theatre Company
  is formed
• Sydney's Philip St Theatre stages its famous comedy revue A Cup of Tea, a Bex and a Good Lie Down. The production runs for twelve months, and the title passes into common usage.
• The Ambassador (Morris West)
• The Merry-Go-Round in the Sea (Randolph Stow)
• Miles Franklin Literary Award