[Jan] [Feb] [Mar] [Apr] [May] [Jun] [Jul] [Aug] [Sep] [Oct] [Nov] [Dec]
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gelatin silver photograph, Fairfax Press
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1st
Imagine 8th
Imagine 15th
Imagine 22nd
Imagine 29th
Cherish |
18 Germaine Greer blasts Australian newspapers and advertisers during an address to the National Press Club, criticising them for their use of "fantasy women" and "cheesecake" pictures,. She also called on journalists to wrest control from the "dynastic tyrants" who run the major newspaper companies. 24-26 The inaugural Sunbury Rock Festival is held at Digger's Rest, outside Melbourne, over the Australia Day long weekend. Compered by ex-Loved Ones lead singer Gerry Humphries, the three-day event is a watershed in Australian rock music, and the first major rock festival to feature an all-Australian lineup, including Billy Thorpe & the Aztecs, Chain, Spectrum, Pirana, The La De Das, Phil Manning, Greg Quill & Country Radio and The Wild Cherries. New Melbourne band Madder Lake are the first group to play; by the following year they are headlining. 27 The Aboriginal Tent Embassy is set up on the lawn outside Parliament House in Canberra as a demonstration for Aboriginal land rights. It is eventually removed by police in July. 28 General Motors-Holden sacks 1240 workers from its plants in NSW, Victoria and S.A. |
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If I Die / Such A Girl Milesago (2LP) Sex, Dope, Rock'n'Roll: Teenage Heaven
(LP) |
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5th
Cherish 12th
Ernie (The Fastest Milkman In The West) 26th
Brand New Key |
7 Gough Whitlam promises that a Labor government will grant Aboriginal land rights, provide free legal aid for Aborigines who believe their rights are being denied, and overrule state laws which discriminate against them. 27 The Women's Electoral Lobby is launched in Melbourne |
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4th
American Pie 11th
American Pie 18th
American Pie 25th
American Pie |
13 Australian TV "loses its virginity" when the first episode of legendary sex-and-sin soapie Number 96 premieres on the Ten Network.. The series, set in an Sydney inner-city apartment block, follows the lives and loves of its various tenants and their friends. At its peak, No. 96 was the most popular show on Aussie TV and even led to a movie spinoff. It broke new ground and challenged many accepted rules of TV censorship. Over the course of the series, which ran for 1, 218 episodes, it featured the first full-frontal nudity on Australian TV, the first interracial kiss, and was the first TV series in the world to feature a sympathetic portrayal of homosexuality, with regular characters who were openly gay -- Don Finlayson, played by Joe Hasham, and Dudley Butterfield, played by Chard Hayward. The series also led to one of the first examples of Aussie soap stars branching out into a pop music career, when actress Abigail, who played the sultry Bev Houghton, had a Top Ten hit with a version of Serge Gainsbourg's Je T'aime. Another innovation was the end-of-season "cliff-hanger", like the bombing at the end of the 1973 series, and the "Pantyhose Strangler" plot at the end of the 1974 series. This device was later adopted as a common trick on American TV soaps, epitomised by the famous "Who Shot J.R.?" episode of "Dallas". 15 Steele Hall resigns as Coalition leader in SA 31 The Rock Isle Pop Festival is held over three days at Mulwala, on the NSW/Victorian border, west of Albury. The festival boasts an all-star lineup of Australasian acts -- Carson, Chain, Co. Caine, Country Radio, Fat Mumma, Friends, Frieze, Highway (NZ), Icabod Crane, Ida May Mack, La De Das, Lobby Loyde & The Coloured Balls, Russell Morris & Cycle, Doug Parkinson, Pirana, SCRA, Tamam Shud and Billy Thorpe & the Aztecs -- and two leading overseas acts, Canned Heat and Steve Stills & Manassas. Despite this, the event is a disaster, marred by excessive alcohol, violence and general bad vibes, and the third day is cancelled when it is washed out by heavy Easter rains. |
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| Morning,
Good Morning / You & Me La De Das |
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1st
American Pie 8th
Without You 15th
Without You 22nd
Without You 29th
Without You |
2 The last episode of ABC Radio's long-running "The Argonauts' Club". The legacy of a more innocent time on Austraian radio, the venerable children's program first went to air on 7 January 1941, and was co-hosted for its entire 31-year run by Atholl Fleming, known to generations of Australians by his on-air names "Mac" and "Jason". By 1950 the club had attracted over 50,000 members with 10,000 new members joining each year in the 1950s. Many notable Australians worked as presenters on the show including poet A.D. Hope ("Antony Inkwell"), future ABC General Manager Talbot Duckmanton ("Tal") who hosted a weekly sports segment, actors Leonard Teale ("Chris") and John Ewart ("Jimmy") and future "Mr Sqiggle" host and film producer Patricia Lovell. Painter Jeffrey Smart ("Phidias"), commented on art, and popular children's author Ruth Park contributed dramatised stories. Her main character, which began life as a bunyip, eventually evolved into her beloved "Muddle Headed Wombat" character (voiced inimitably by actor John Ewart) and its popularity on The Argonauts led Park to write her successful series of Muddle-Headed Wombat books in the 1960s. - the third and final day of the troubled Rock Isle Pop Festival at Mulwala in southern NSW is washed out by rain and all performances are cancelled. 4 ABC-TV's Gerald Stone hosts a live, three-hour forum, "The Great Debate on Education", with participants from all state capitals. 6 Trams cease running in Bendigo, Vic. 24 WA appoints Australia's first ombudsman |
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6th
Without You 13th
Amazing Grace 20th
Amazing Grace 27th
Amazing Grace |
4 Harry M. Miller's Australian production of the Tim Rice-Andrew Lloyd Webber rock musical Jesus Christ Superstar opens at Sydney's Capitol Theatre. The cast, drawn from both the theatre and the rock scene, features English singer Trevor White (ex-Sounds Incorporated), former Sebastian Hardie lead singer Jon English, actress/singer Michelle Fawdon, Reg Livermore (ex-Hair), and former Easybeats lead singer Stevie Wright, with ex-Tully keyboardist Michael Carlos leading the orchestra. The innovative production, designed by Paul Thompson and directed by Jim Sharman, also sets new standards for Australian theatre technology and sound. 6 Broadcaster Atholl Fleming dies aged 77. Best known as "Mac", Fleming spent most of his working life as the host of ABC Radio's long-running children's show The Argonauts' Club. Fleming's death comes just over a month after the program had been cancelled after 31 years on air. 10 Dr George Duncan, a visiting law lecturer at the University of Adelaide, is found drowned in the Torrens River in Adelaide in suspicious circumstances. The case becomes a cause celebre in Adelaide's gay community, with accusations of police involvement in his death and a subsequent cover-up. (->17/7) - Channel 10 announces that TV soap opera Number 96 will now be broadcast five nights per week 23 The government approves the production of the Nomad aircraft |
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| Morning,
Good Morning / You & Me The La De Das |
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3rd
Amazing Grace 10th
Amazing Grace 17th
The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face 24th
The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face |
2 ACTU President Bob Hawke announces a ban on the servicing of UTA aircraft in protest at the French nuclear tests at Muroroa Atoll. 3 Pastor Doug Nicholls, the 65-year-old clergyman, activist and former champion footballer, becomes the first Aboriginal Australian to be knighted. - Author Martin Boyd dies in Rome, aged 78. 9 Former Pick-A-Box quiz champion Barry Jones is elected to the Victorian state parliament. 16 Runner Herb Elliott returns the President's Prize, awarded to him in France in 1968, in protest against France's testing of nuclear weapons in the South Pacific. 17 Five men dressed in suits and ties are caught in the act of burgling the office of the Democratic Party National Committee in the Watergate Building in Washington DC. Their hands sheathed in surgical gloves and their pockets stuffed with sequentially numbered $100 bills, the men are attempting to repair a telephone bug they had installed three weeks earlier and rifling through files, photographing some. It is subsequently discovered that the men were working under the direction of G. Gordon Liddy, a former FBI officer and White House operative who is the finance counsel at Nixon's Committee for the Re-election of the President (CREEP). The discovery of the burglary leads to FBI and US Senate investigations. Over the next two years the so-called Watergate Affair escalates to become America's biggest internal political crisis of the 20th century, leads to the arrest and gaoling of several senior White House officials and finally forces the resignation of the 37th President, Richard Nixon. 23 Six days after the Watergate burglary, President Nixon agrees to a plan suggested by White House chief-of-staff H.R. Haldeman to derail the FBI's investigation of the break-in by claiming it would interfere with a CIA operation. Crucially, the meeting is recorded as part of a routine program of automatic taping of Oval Office conversations, and when it becomes public two years later it is the final straw in forcing Nixon to resign. 30 The Ord River Dam is officially opened in W.A. |
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| Gypsy
Queen / Radio Rag Country Radio |
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1st
Sylvia's Mother 8th
Sylvia's Mother 15th
Sylvia's Mother 22nd
Puppy Love 29th
Puppy Love |
8 Spectrum/Murtceps perform at the TF Much Ballroom, Fitzroy, Melbourne. 17 The investigation into the death of Dr George Duncan reaches an impasse, although there are strong suspicions of foul play and allegations of police involvement in both his death and the alleged cover-up after the event. The University of Adelaide Council publicly expresses "grave disquiet" about the case, and some members of Adelaide's gay community claim that there is a "mystery witness" who saw the drowning, but gay rights group Campaign Against Moral Persecution (CAMP) say that the man will not come forward because he is married with children. Three South Australian Vice Squad detectives called before the eleven-day inquest refuse to testify, and subsequently resign. (<10/5). 22 The newspaper Nation merges with The Review to become Nation Review. 30 The last program of ABC Radio's long-running music series "For The Music Lover". Host Dr A.E. Floyd, 95, retires as the oldest presenter in Australian broadcasting history. 31 The Box Flat mine near Ipswich in Queensland is sealed off to contain a fire, still burning after seventeen miners were killed by a massive underground explosion. The force of the blast was so great that parts of some bodies are found almost 400 metres from where victims were working near the pit entrance.
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Boppin' The Blues I'll Never Smile Again |
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5th
Puppy Love 12th
Puppy Love 19th
Puppy Love 26th
Puppy Love |
1-3 Tamam Shud play their last three shows in Melbourne before breaking up - September 1st at Sebastian's, with MacKenzie Theory and Toads, Sept 2nd at Garrison, with Madder Lake, and Sept. 3rd at Sebastian's, with Blackfeather and Carson. 5 The Nine Network broadcasts the last episode of its long-running popular music show Bandstand, which premiered in 1958. 8 355 million year-old fossil reptile footprints are found at Mallacoota in Victoria. 18 Swedish police fine Paul and Linda McCartney for cannabis possession. 13 Daddy Cool perform their farewell show at the Much More Ballroom in Melbourne. The concert is recorded, and released in 1973 as the LP The Last Drive-In Movie.
26 The Opening Ceremony
of the Games of the XX Olympiad is held in Munich, Germany. The
1972 Munich Games are the largest yet, setting records in all categories,
with 195 events and 7,173 athletes from 121 nations. For the first ten
days, al goes well, but in the early morning of 5 September, eight
Palestinian terrorists break into the Olympic Village, killing two members
of the Israeli team and taking nine more hostage. In the ensuing battle,
all nine Israeli hostages are killed, as well as five terrorists and one
policeman. The Olympics are suspended and a memorial service is held in
the main stadium. In defiance of the terrorists, the International Olympic
Committee orders the competitions to resume after a pause of 34 hours. |
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2nd
Daddy Don't Walk So Fast 9th
Daddy Don't Walk So Fast 30th
Boppin' The Blues |
1 Australia officially changes from the Fahrenheit to the Celsius scale for temperature measurement. 3 Swimmer Shane Gould wins a total of five medals in the Munich Olympics. 5 Journalist John Highfield becomes the first reporter in the ABC's forty-year history to broadcast live and unscripted during a national news bulletin. London-based Highfield had been in Munich filing preliminary reports on the 1972 Olympic Games, and after handing over to an ABC Sports team, he had returned to London. There, in the early hours of 5 September he heard the first reports that PLO terrorists had occupied the Israeli athletes' quarters in the Olympic Village. Highfield talked his way onto an empty, Munich-bound British Airways jet and was back in Munich within hours. Returning to the Village, he is fortunate to find a position where he can see a bus come out of the village and armed men jump from it. He phones Sydney in the early hours of Thursday morning and informs ABC radio news director Russell Handley of the situation. Realising nothing is yet available on the wire services, Handley decides to put Highfield's call live to air at 7:45am during the main early morning news bulletin. Highfield continues to report live during the "AM" program and throughout the day, monitoring German TV coverage of the crisis. His reports continue for over 40 hours, and his work is later praised by ABC's News Division as being "of heroic proportions". 16 Terrorists detonate two bombs outside Yugoslav travel agencies in Sydney. 23 Manly beats Eastern Suburbs in the Rugby League Grand Final. |
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7th
Boppin' The Blues 14th
Popcorn 21st
Popcorn 28th
Popcorn |
3 Controversy erupts over a This Day Tonight story about the Postmaster General's Department (PMG). In August, TDT had taped an interview with J.S. Baker, Secretary of the Union of Postal Clerks and Telegraphists, talking about alleged overcharging on long-distance calls. Because the ABC Board is responsible to the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs, an internal regulation requires that any stories about the PMG must be vetted by management and cannot go to air without a balancing comment from the Minister or the Director of Posts & Telegraphs. TDT contacts the Director Mr E.F. Lane for comment, but he repeatedly declines to appear, and despite requests from TDT, ABC management rules that the interview cannot be screened, although it is clear that the PMG have no intention of commenting. Then, on 29 September, a story surfaces about Parliament House in Canberra being accidentally overcharged for thousands of telephone calls. Sydney TDT producer Tim Bowden realises that this gives the Baker interview new currency, but the PMG Director is unavailable for comment that day. Executive producer Tony Ferguson asks the ABC's acting Assistant General Manager, Keith Fraser, to approve the story, but Fraser rules that the Baker interview cannot be screened without a balancing comment from the PMG. Ferguson decides to run it anyway, against Fraser's order, and it screens on the Friday 29 September edition. Although the required "balance" is given on the following Monday's show, when PMG Director Lane is interviewed for his reaction, Ferguson's contravention of Fraser's order, plus unauthorised comments to the press, lead to him being suspended on Tuesday 3 October. This sparks a wave of protests within the ABC, including a petition from the entire TDT national staff calling for his reinstatement. 4 Country Radio record their debut LP Country Radio Live in front of an invited audience at TCS Studios in Melbourne. - Wool prices reach their highest level in twenty years 5 Two men kidnap teacher Mary Gibbs, 19, and six young female pupils from a country primary school at Faraday near Castlemaine, Victoria. They hold them captive overnight in the back of a baker's van and demand $1 million ransom from the state government. 6 The Faraday school kidnappers leave their hostages in the early hours of the morning to meet the Victorian Education Minister, Mr Thompson, who has volunteered to deliver the ransom money. While the kidnappers are away, just before sunrise, teacher Mary Gibbs kicks out a metal panel from the back of the van and escapes with her six young pupils, leading them through the bush to safety. They are found near Lancefield by rabbit shooters at about 7:30am and taken to the local police station. 7 Carlton beats Richmond in the VFL Grand Final. 9 The Faraday school kidnappers are captured. 21 The Snowy Mountains Scheme is officially completed.. 24-26 The US government's Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) sponsors the world's first conference on computer networking in Washington DC, and gives the first demonstration of the use of its ARPA-Net computer network. 25 Police announce that no arrests are to be made in the case of drowned university lecturer Dr George Duncan, due to lack of evidence, although strong suspicions remain that he was murdered. (<-10/5). 26 ABC Radio reaches another landmark when Blue Hills, the longest running serial in radio history, broadcasts its 5000th episode. Writer Gwen Meredith created the new series, which premiered on 25 February 1949 and she penned every episode in its record-breaking run. Actress Queenie Ashton was also with the program for almost its entire run: she left briefly in 1949 when her original character was written out, but returned a few months later (playing a character more than twice her age at the time) and she remained in the role of 'Grannie Bishop' until the series concluded, 27 years later. Having delivered the first lines of the first show in 1949, it was fitting that Ashton delivered the final lines of the concluding episode #5795, on 30 September 1976. 27 The newly formed all-Aboriginal National Black Theatre premieres its first production, Basically Black, at Sydney's Nimrod Theatre. |
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| Sunny
Day / I Was Born Chain |
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4th
Popcorn 11th
Popcorn 18th
Popcorn 25th
Popcorn |
7 Piping Lane wins the Melbourne Cup. 15 Consolidated Press publishes the first edition of Cleo women's magazine (the first in Australia to feature a nude male centrefold). 13 Gough Whitlam delivers his famous policy speech launching Labor's 1972 election campaign at Blacktown Civic Centre, Sydney. 16 A 35-year-old man is shot in the back and killed by NT police while trying to escape from Alice Springs airport, after Australia's first airline hijacking. He had hijacked the Ansett plane with 34 passengers on board over central Australia and had demanded that a parachute and light plane be supplied to him on arrival at Alice Springs. - The groundbreaking comedy
series The Aunty Jack Show
premieres on ABC-TV in Sydney.  20 Dr Peter Pockley, head of the ABC Science Unit, resigns from the ABC Senior Officers Association in protest after he is charged with breaking the ABC rule governing public comments by staff on Commission activities. The charges stem from remarks Pockley made at the 1972 ANZAAS Conference, criticising the Science Unit's exclusion from a new TV series called "Science Australia". 29 The Aunty Jack Show premieres in Melbourne.
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Boogie, Part I / Boogie, Part II Wintersong / Observations From A Second
Storey Window I'll Never Stop Loving You / It's The Beginning |
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2nd
Popcorn 9th
Ben 16th
Ben 23rd
Ben 30th
Ben |
1 On the eve of the federal election, The Sydney Morning Herald publishes a landmark editorial endorsing the Australian Labor Party. 2 The Australian Labor Party, led by Gough Whitlam, wins a decisive victory in the federal election, ending 23 years of Liberal rule. 5 New PM Gough Whitlam and deputy Lance Barnard are sworn in as a two-man interim "super-ministry", and they push through a remarkable list of reforms during their first week in power. Barnard immediately announces the end of conscription and the release of jailed draft-dodgers. Other new policies include the recognition of China, the withdrawal of the last Australian troops from Vietnam, the reopening of the equal pay case, the establishment of new Departments of the Media and Aboriginal Affairs, the reversal of the Liberal government's opposition to Rhodesian independence, and the lifting of sales tax on contraceptives and the excise on Australian wines. 6 All Australian men jailed for resisting National Service are released. 11 The Whitlam government announces the withdrawal of the last Australian forces in Vietnam 17 Michael Chugg and Michael Gudinski stage a free concert called "Celebrate The Defeat Of The Draft" at Richmond Reserve Oval, Melbourne, featuring Carson, Coloured Balls and Matt Taylor. - Sir Bernard Heinze becomes the first person to conduct an orchestra at the Sydney Opera House when he presents a SSO concert for Opera House construction workers 19 The full Whitlam ministry is sworn in. - The last Australian troops leave Vietnam. Of the 49,211 Australian personnel who served in Vietnam, 499 were killed, 2 missing believed killed, and 2,069 injured 20 Billy Snedden replaces William McMahon as Liberal leader. 22 The Labor Government establishes diplomatic relations with the Communist republics of China and East Germany 23 The Australian dollar is revalued upwards by 7.05% |
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Boppin' The Blues (LP) Blown (LP) Country Radio Live (LP) The Great Australian Rock Festival Various Artists |
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