MVM 1899

At the age of four and a half, commences school at Jeparit.

"They [the Menzies children] began their education at the first Jeparit school - Victoria number 2988 - in a small timber room that had in 1894 been shifted bodily to the township from a hamlet, Woolshed, near Dimboola."
AW Martin, Robert Menzies: A Life. Vol 1 1894-1943, 1993 p 11.

At right is a newspaper clipping from The Melbourne Age reporting a visit back to Jeparit by Mr Menzies in 1951 to dedicate the Jeparit cenotaph in commemoration of the 2nd World War. On that trip he also revisited the Jeparit school. The text reads:

"He knows the answer
Down at his desk, up goes his hand, the Prime Minister, Mr Menzies, has the answer. He is seated at his old desk at the Jeparit school, and beside him stands the son of his old teacher - the one who taught him the alphabet. The teacher was Mr John Livingstone. With Mr Menzies is Mr Tom Livingstone."

January 29 - February 3: NSW Premier Reid convenes a conference of Premiers. Six amendments to the Constitution Bill are passed to appease NSW and Queensland; the most significant of these relates to finance and the site of the national capital.

April - July: A second referendum on the (amended) Constitution is passed, with bigger majorities in South Australia, New South Wales, Victoria and Tasmania.

September 2: Queensland, voting for the first time, approves the Constitution Bill. Only Western Australia still holds out, worried mainly by the financial clauses.
The Macquarie Book of Events, 1983 p 342.

First Australian troops sent to South Africa to fight in the Boer War.

"The Bushmen's Corps sailed yesterday [from Adelaide] for the Boer War … The crowd was tremendous, and the troopers had their work cut out to make room for the troops. Soon they came, amid deafening cheering and shouting, the wild untrained horses waltzing along in the most unmilitary fashion, doing quite a lot of damage in the crowd. One man and horse came all the length of the street tail first, he got so mixed up and terrified with the band and the row. Some bucked, some kicked, some reared, some waltzed, but in every case the man seemed part of the horse, and such fine men and lovely horses." Maisie, Her life in her letters from 1898 to 1902, ed J Kyffin Willington, 1992 p 304-5.

Vote is granted to non-indigenous women in Western Australia.

War breaks out between between Britain and the Boers in South Africa.

First Hague Peace Conference - 26 nations meet: a Permanent Court of Arbitration is set up.

Asprin is invented.

First magnetic recording of sound is made.


	At the age of four and a half, commences school at Jeparit. "They [the Menzies children] began their education at the first Jeparit school - Victoria number 2988 - in a small timber room that had in 1894 been shifted bodily to the township from a hamlet, Woolshed, near Dimboola." AW Martin, Robert Menzies: A Life. Vol 1 1894-1943, 1993 p 11. At right is a newspaper clipping from The Melbourne Age reporting a visit back to Jeparit by Mr Menzies in 1951 to dedicate the Jeparit cenotaph in commemoration of the 2nd World War. On that trip he also revisited the Jeparit school. The text reads: "He knows the answer Down at his desk, up goes his hand, the Prime Minister, Mr Menzies, has the answer. He is seated at his old desk at the Jeparit school, and beside him stands the son of his old teacher - the one who taught him the alphabet. The teacher was Mr John Livingstone. With Mr Menzies is Mr Tom Livingstone."		Robert starts school 2 Bob Menzies revisits the Jeparit school, The Melbourne Age, 11 Nov 1951 19