Incumbents

• Monarch
  Monarchy in Australia
  The Monarchy of Australia is a form of government in which a hereditary monarch is the sovereign of Australia. The monarchy is a constitutional one modelled on the Westminster style of parliamentary government, incorporating features unique to the Constitution of Australia.The present monarch is...
  
   – King George V
  George V of the United Kingdom
  George V was King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions, and Emperor of India, from 6 May 1910 through the First World War until his death in 1936....
  
  
• Governor-General
  Governor-General of Australia
  The Governor-General of the Commonwealth of Australia is the representative in Australia at federal/national level of the Australian monarch . He or she exercises the supreme executive power of the Commonwealth...
  
   – John Baird, Baronet of Stonehaven
  John Baird, 1st Viscount Stonehaven
  John Lawrence Baird, 1st Viscount Stonehaven, GCMG, DSO, PC, JP, DL , known as Sir John Baird, Bt, between 1920 and 1925 and as The Lord Stonehaven between 1925 and 1928, was a British Conservative politician, who served as a Member of Parliament, government minister, and was later the eighth...
  
  
• Prime Minister
  Prime Minister of Australia
  The Prime Minister of the Commonwealth of Australia is the highest minister of the Crown, leader of the Cabinet and Head of Her Majesty's Australian Government, holding office on commission from the Governor-General of Australia. The office of Prime Minister is, in practice, the most powerful...
  
   – Stanley Bruce
  Stanley Bruce
  Stanley Melbourne Bruce, 1st Viscount Bruce of Melbourne, CH, MC, FRS, PC , was an Australian politician and diplomat, and the eighth Prime Minister of Australia. He was the second Australian granted an hereditary peerage of the United Kingdom, but the first whose peerage was formally created...
  
   (until 12 October), then James Scullin
  James Scullin
  James Henry Scullin , Australian Labor politician and the ninth Prime Minister of Australia. Two days after he was sworn in as Prime Minister, the Wall Street Crash of 1929 occurred, marking the beginning of the Great Depression and subsequent Great Depression in Australia.-Early life:Scullin was...
  
  

State premiers

• Premier of New South Wales – Thomas Bavin
• Premier of Queensland – William McCormack
  William McCormack
  William McCormack , was Premier of Queensland, Australia, from 1925 to 1929.He was born in Purnam, Queensland and died in Brisbane on 21 November 1947....
  
   (until 21 May), then Arthur Edward Moore
  Arthur Edward Moore
  Arthur Edward Moore, CMG was an Australian politician. He was the Country and Progressive National Party Premier of Queensland, from 1929 to 1932. He was the only Queensland Premier not to come from the ranks of the Labor Party between 1915 and 1957...
  
  
• Premier of South Australia – Richard Layton Butler
  Richard Layton Butler
  Sir Richard Layton Butler KCMG was the 31st Premier of South Australia, serving two disjunct terms in office: from 1927 to 1930, and again from 1933 to 1938....
  
  
• Premier of Tasmania – John McPhee
  John McPhee (Australian politician)
  Sir John Cameron McPhee, KCMG was an Australian politician and member of the Tasmanian House of Assembly. He was Premier of Tasmania from 15 June 1928 to 15 March 1934.-Early life:...
  
  
• Premier of Victoria – William Murray McPherson
  William Murray McPherson
  Sir William Murray McPherson, KBE was an Australian philanthropist and politician. He was the 31st Premier of Victoria....
  
   (until 12 December), then Edmond Hogan
  Edmond Hogan
  Edmond John "Ned" Hogan , Australian politician, 30th Premier of Victoria, was born in Wallace, Victoria, where his Irish-born parents were small farmers...
  
  
• Premier of Western Australia
  Premier of Western Australia
  The Premier of Western Australia is the head of the executive government in the Australian State of Western Australia. The Premier has similar functions in Western Australia to those performed by the Prime Minister of Australia at the national level, subject to the different Constitutions...
  
   – Philip Collier
  Philip Collier
  Philip Collier was Premier of Western Australia for nine years, the longest ever term for an Australian Labor Party premier....
  
  

State governors

• Governor of New South Wales – Sir Dudley de Chair
  Dudley de Chair
  Admiral Sir Dudley Rawson Stratford de Chair, KCB, KCMG, KBE, MVO was a Naval Officer and Governor. De Chair joined the Royal Navy from the age of 16 and served in the Anglo-Egyptian War and later as an Admiral in the First World War. He was appointed as Governor of New South Wales in 1923...
  
  
• Governor of Queensland – Sir John Goodwin
  John Goodwin (governor)
  Lieutenant General Sir Thomas Herbert John Chapman Goodwin KCB, KCMG, DSO , known as Sir John Goodwin, was a British soldier and medical practitioner, who served as the Governor of the Australian state of Queensland between 1927 and 1932.Goodwin was born in 1871 in Kandy, Ceylon to a British Army...
  
  
• Governor of South Australia – Sir Alexander Hore-Ruthven
  Alexander Hore-Ruthven, 1st Earl of Gowrie
  Brigadier General Alexander Gore Arkwright Hore-Ruthven, 1st Earl of Gowrie VC, GCMG, CB, DSO & Bar, PC was a British soldier and colonial governor and the tenth Governor-General of Australia. Serving for 9 years and 7 days, he is the longest serving Governor-General in Australia's history...
  
  
• Governor of Tasmania – Sir James O'Grady
  James O'Grady
  Sir James O'Grady, KCMG was a trade unionist and Labour Party politician in the United Kingdom. He was the first colonial governor appointed by the Labour Party from within its own ranks.- Early life :...
  
  
• Governor of Victoria – Arthur Somers-Cocks, 6th Baron Somers
  Arthur Somers-Cocks, 6th Baron Somers
  Lieutenant-Colonel Arthur Herbert Tennyson Somers-Cocks, 6th Baron Somers, KCMG, DSO, MC , son of Herbert Haldane Somers-Cocks by Blanche Margaret Standish Clogstoun...
  
  
• Governor of Western Australia
  Governor of Western Australia
  The Governor of Western Australia is the representative in Western Australia of Australia's Monarch, Queen Elizabeth II. The Governor performs important constitutional, ceremonial and community functions, including:* presiding over the Executive Council;...
  
   – Sir William Campion
  William Campion
  Colonel Sir William Robert Campion KCMG, DSO, TD, DL was a British politician and Governor of Western Australia from 1924 to 1931....
  
  

Events

• Centenary of Western Australia
  Centenary of Western Australia
  In 1929, Western Australia celebrated the centenary of the founding of Perth and the establishment of the Swan River Colony, the first permanent European settlement...
  
  
• 4 April – A dam on the Cascade River in Tasmania collapses. The subsequent torrent floods the town of Derby
  Derby, Tasmania
  Derby is a small Australian town located in the north east of Tasmania.The area had been surveyed in 1855, but was not settled or inhabited until 1874, when George Renison Bell discovered tin in the area. The Krushka brothers discovered a large lode of tin, and set up a mine in the area, assuring...
  
  , killing fourteen people.
• 3 June – Fremantle, Western Australia
  Fremantle, Western Australia
  Fremantle is a city in Western Australia, located at the mouth of the Swan River. Fremantle Harbour serves as the port of Perth, the state capital. Fremantle was the first area settled by the Swan River colonists in 1829...
  
   is proclaimed a city.
• 12 October – A federal election
  Australian federal election, 1929
  Federal elections were held in Australia on 12 October 1929. All 75 seats in the House of Representatives were up for election, with no Senate seats up for election, as a result of Billy Hughes and other rebel backbenchers crossing the floor over industrial relations legislation, depriving the...
  
   is held. James Scullin
  James Scullin
  James Henry Scullin , Australian Labor politician and the ninth Prime Minister of Australia. Two days after he was sworn in as Prime Minister, the Wall Street Crash of 1929 occurred, marking the beginning of the Great Depression and subsequent Great Depression in Australia.-Early life:Scullin was...
  
   leads the Australian Labor Party
  Australian Labor Party
  The Australian Labor Party is an Australian political party. It has been the governing party of the Commonwealth of Australia since the 2007 federal election. Julia Gillard is the party's federal parliamentary leader and Prime Minister of Australia...
  
   to victory over the incumbent government of Stanley Bruce
  Stanley Bruce
  Stanley Melbourne Bruce, 1st Viscount Bruce of Melbourne, CH, MC, FRS, PC , was an Australian politician and diplomat, and the eighth Prime Minister of Australia. He was the second Australian granted an hereditary peerage of the United Kingdom, but the first whose peerage was formally created...
  
  . Bruce becomes the first Prime Minister to lose his seat in an election.
• 30 November – A state election is held in Victoria
  Victoria (Australia)
  Victoria is the second most populous state in Australia. Geographically the smallest mainland state, Victoria is bordered by New South Wales, South Australia, and Tasmania on Boundary Islet to the north, west and south respectively....
  
  .
• 12 December – Premier of Victoria William Murray McPherson
  William Murray McPherson
  Sir William Murray McPherson, KBE was an Australian philanthropist and politician. He was the 31st Premier of Victoria....
  
   refuses to resign after the election, but is defeated by a no confidence motion in the first meeting of parliament. He retires, with Edmond Hogan
  Edmond Hogan
  Edmond John "Ned" Hogan , Australian politician, 30th Premier of Victoria, was born in Wallace, Victoria, where his Irish-born parents were small farmers...
  
   assuming the premiership.
• 16 December – Rothbury Riot
  Rothbury Riot
  On 16 December 1929, New South Wales Police drew their revolvers and shot into a crowd of locked-out miners in the New South Wales town of Rothbury in Australia, killing a 29-year-old miner, Norman Brown, and injuring approximately forty five other miners...
  
   in which police shoot at locked out miners, killing Norman Brown.

Arts and literature

• 18 January – Sir John Longstaff
  John Longstaff
  Sir John Campbell Longstaff was an Australian painter, war artist and a five-time winner of the Archibald Prize. He was a cousin of Will Longstaff, also a painter....
  
   wins the 1928 Archibald Prize
  Archibald Prize
  The Archibald Prize is regarded as the most important portraiture prize in Australia. It was first awarded in 1921 after a bequest from J. F. Archibald, the editor of The Bulletin who died in 1919...
  
   for his portrait of Alexander Leeper
  Alexander Leeper
  Alexander Leeper , was an Australian educationist.Alexander Leeper, the son of the Rev. Alexander Leeper, canon of St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin, was born on 3 June 1848. He was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, where he graduated B.A. in 1871 and M.A...
  
  .

Sport

• 3 January – Don Bradman makes 112 for Australia v England in the third Test match
  Test cricket
  Test cricket is the longest form of the sport of cricket. Test matches are played between national representative teams with "Test status", as determined by the International Cricket Council , with four innings played between two teams of 11 players over a period of up to a maximum five days...
  
   at Melbourne, his first Test Century
  Century (cricket)
  In the sport of cricket, a batsman reaches his century when he scores 100 or more runs in a single innings. The term is also included in "century partnership" which occurs when two batsmen add 100 runs to the team total when they are batting together. A century is regarded as a landmark score for...
  
  .
• 5 November – Nightmarch
  Nightmarch
  Nightmarch, foaled in 1925 was an outstanding New Zealand bred Thoroughbred racehorse known as The Kiwi. He won the New Zealand Derby and Dunedin Cup as a three-year-old before going to Australia where he became the first horse to win both the Melbourne Cup and Cox Plate in the same year, as well...
  
  wins the Melbourne Cup
  Melbourne Cup
  The Melbourne Cup is Australia's major Thoroughbred horse race. Marketed as "the race that stops a nation", it is a 3,200 metre race for three-year-olds and over. It is the richest "two-mile" handicap in the world, and one of the richest turf races...
  
  .
• New South Wales wins the Sheffield Shield
  Pura Cup
  The Sheffield Shield is the domestic cricket competition of Australia. The tournament is contested between teams from the six states of Australia. Prior to the Shield being established, a number of intercolonial matches were played. The Shield, donated by Lord Sheffield, was first contested during...
  
  
• England defeats Australia 4-1 in The Ashes
  The Ashes
  The Ashes is a Test cricket series played between England and Australia. It is one of the most celebrated rivalries in international cricket and dates back to 1882. It is currently played biennially, alternately in the United Kingdom and Australia. Cricket being a summer sport, and the venues...
  
   series
• South Sydney
  South Sydney Rabbitohs
  The South Sydney Rabbitohs are an Australian professional rugby league football team based in Redfern, a suburb of South-central Sydney, New South Wales. They participate in the National Rugby League premiership and are one of nine existing teams from the state capital...
  
   win the 1929 New South Wales Rugby Football League premiership.
• Collingwood football club win their third consecutive AFL Priemiership flag, after an undefeated home and away season. (They go on to win the flag again in 1930 and remain to date [2009] the only team to win 4 flags in a row).

Births

• 7 January – Robert Juniper
  Robert Juniper
  Robert Litchfield Juniper AM is a Western Australian artist who has also been an illustrator, art teacher, sculptor and printmaker.-Early life:He was born in the wheat-belt town of Merredin, Western Australia....
  
  , artist
• 28 January - Claes Oldenburg
  Claes Oldenburg
  Claes Oldenburg is a Swedish sculptor, best known for his public art installations typically featuring very large replicas of everyday objects...
  
  , artist
• 27 February – Jack Arthur Gibson (d. 2008), rugby league footballer and coach
• 31 January – John Stone
  John Stone (Australian politician)
  John Owen Stone is a former Australian politician. He served as Secretary to the Treasury between 1979 and 1984,and as a Senator for Queensland representing the National Party from 1987 to 1990.-Biography:John Stone was born in 1929...
  
  , politician
• 1 February – R. A. Simpson
  R. A. Simpson
  Ronald Albert Simpson was an Australian poet and poetry editor, artist and art lecturer. He was one of the Melbourne poets, and had a long tenure as poetry editor of The Age.-Life:...
  
  , poet (d. 2002)
• 7 February – John Sullivan, politician
• 16 February – Peter Porter
  Peter Porter (poet)
  Peter Neville Frederick Porter, OAM was a British-based Australian poet.-Life:Porter was born in Brisbane, Australia, in 1929. His mother, Marion, died of a burst gall-bladder in 1938. He attended the Church of England Grammar School and left school at 18, and went to work as a trainee journalist...
  
  , poet
• 29 April – Peter Sculthorpe
  Peter Sculthorpe
  Peter Joshua Sculthorpe AO OBE is an Australian composer. Much of his music has resulted from an interest in the music of Australia's neighbours as well as from the impulse to bring together aspects of native Australian music with that of the heritage of the West...
  
  , composer
• 7 May – Len Fitzgerald
  Len Fitzgerald
  Len Fitzgerald was a former Australian rules footballer of exceptional talent in the VFL and SANFL. At various time he played in the key positions of centre half-forward, centre half-back and ruck-rover.- VFL career :...
  
  , Australian rules footballer
• 15 May – Kevin Cairns, politician (d. 1984)
• 24 May – Brian Wenzel
  Brian Wenzel
  Brian Wenzel is an Australian character actor, most famous for his long run as Police Sergeant Frank Gilroy on television program A Country Practice. He was an original cast member and remained along with Shane Porteous through the entire series, winning a Silver Logie for the role...
  
  , actor
• 26 May – Ernie Carroll
  Ernie Carroll
  Ernie Carroll is an Australian entertainer and television personality most recognised for his role as the man behind Ossie Ostrich on Hey Hey It's Saturday....
  
  , television personality
• 10 June – Ian Sinclair
  Ian Sinclair
  Ian McCahon Sinclair AC , is an Australian politician and former leader of the National Party of Australia.Sinclair was born in Sydney, the son of a suburban accountant. He was educated at Knox Grammar School and at the University of Sydney, where he graduated in arts and law...
  
  , politician and former leader of the National Party
• 12 June – Roy Bull
  Roy Bull
  Roy Bull , was an Australian rugby league footballer of the 1940s and 50s who spent his whole career - as player, coach & administrator - with the Manly-Warringah club in Sydney. In addition to playing in three New South Wales Rugby Football League premiership grand finals, he was a representative...
  
   (d. 2004), rugby league footballer and coach
• 23 June – Herb Barker
  Herb Barker
  Herbert Samuel Barker was an all-around athlete who represented Australia in the hammer throw at the Empire Games and in rugby union as a Wallaby, and played for New South Wales in Basketball.-Early life:...
  
  , athlete (d. 2006)
• 26 June – June Bronhill
  June Bronhill
  June Bronhill OBE was an internationally acclaimed Australian soprano opera singer.-Biography:She was born June Mary Gough in the inland Australian city of Broken Hill, New South Wales...
  
  , opera singer (d. 2005)
• 5 July – Jimmy Carruthers
  Jimmy Carruthers
  James "Jimmy" William Carruthers was an Australian boxer, who became world champion in the bantamweight division.-Amateur career:...
  
  , boxer (d. 1990)
• 8 July – Bruce Gyngell
  Bruce Gyngell
  Bruce Gyngell was a hugely influential Australian television executive, prominent for 50 years in both Australian and U.K. television. Although Gyngell began his career in radio, in the 1950s he stepped into the arena of early television broadcasting, helping to set up Channel 9, the first...
  
  , television executive (d. 2000)
• 20 July – David Tonkin
  David Tonkin
  Dr David Oliver Tonkin AO was the 38th Premier of South Australia, serving from 18 September 1979 to 10 November 1982. He was elected to the House of Assembly seat of Bragg at the 1970 election, serving until 1983. He became the leader of the South Australian division of the Liberal Party of...
  
  , Premier of South Australia (1979–1982)
• 5 August – Reg Lindsay
  Reg Lindsay
  Reginald John Lindsay OAM was an Australian country music singer who won three Golden Guitar Awards and wrote more than five hundred songs in his fifty-year music career....
  
  , country music singer (d. 2008)
• 9 August – John Wheeldon
  John Wheeldon
  John Murray Wheeldon was an Australian federal politician and briefly a minister. He is mainly notable for his views on Australian foreign policy....
  
  , politician
• 23 August – Peter Thomson, golfer
• 25 August – Ron Lord
  Ron Lord
  Ron Lord was an Australian international football goalkeeper during the 1950s, appearing for the host nation in the 1956 Olympic Games staged in Melbourne....
  
  , soccer player
• 25 September – Jack Rutherford, cricketer
• 1 October – Ken Arthurson
  Ken Arthurson
  Kenneth Richard "Arko" Arthurson AM is an Australian rugby league football identity. Affectionately known as "The Godfather of Manly", he played, coached and was later an administrator at the Manly-Warringah Sea Eagles club of the New South Wales Rugby League premiership...
  
  , rugby league footballer, coach and administrator.
• 31 October – Eddie Charlton
  Eddie Charlton
  Edward Francis Charlton AM was an Australian professional snooker and English billiards player. He remains the only player to have been world championship runner-up in both snooker and billiards without winning either title...
  
  , snooker and billiards player (d. 2004)
• 15 November – Eric Robinson
  Eric Robinson (Australian politician)
  Eric Laidlaw Robinson was an Australian politician.Robinson took over his family's sporting goods business and built it up from a single store into a chain along the Queensland coast. He was president of the Queensland branch of the Liberal Party in from 1968 to 1973. He was elected to the...
  
  , politician
• 9 December – Bob Hawke
  Bob Hawke
  Robert James Lee "Bob" Hawke AC GCL was the 23rd Prime Minister of Australia from March 1983 to December 1991 and therefore longest serving Australian Labor Party Prime Minister....
  
  , trade union leader and Prime Minister of Australia (1983–1991)
• 31 December – Doug Anthony
  Doug Anthony
  John Douglas Anthony, AC, CH , is a former Australian politician. He was leader of the National Party from 1971 to 1984, and Deputy Prime Minister from 1971 to 1972 and again from 1975 to 1983.-Early life:...
  
  , politician

Deaths

• 14 July – Walter Baldwin Spencer
  Walter Baldwin Spencer
  Sir Walter Baldwin Spencer KCMG was a British-Australian biologist and anthropologist.Baldwin was born in Stretford, Lancashire. His father, Reuben Spencer, who had come from Derbyshire in his youth, obtained a position with Rylands and Sons, cotton manufacturers, and rose to be chairman of its...
  
   (b. 1860), anthropologist
• 26 November – John Cockburn
  John Cockburn (Australian politician)
  Sir John Alexander Cockburn, KCMG was Premier of South Australia from 27 June 1889 until 18 August 1890.Cockburn was born in Corsbie, Berwickshire, Scotland in 1850. His father was Thomas Cockburn. He was educated at Highgate School, and King's College London, he obtained the degree of M.D....
  
  (b. 1850), Premier of South Australia