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Awarded Japan’s Order of the Rising Sun, First Class: Sir Robert
Menzies is one of only three former Prime Ministers to be given this honour,
the others being Sir Edmund Barton in 1905 and John McEwen also in 1973. "And in
April 1973, from a wheelchair on the sidelines of the field at Prince's
Park, Menzies briefly addressed the crowd at the unfurling of Carlton's
1972 premiership flag." A W Martin, Robert Menzies A Life Vol 2 1944-1978, 1999 p 562. "As the
years passed, however, failing health and the inevitable isolation of
old age blighted him. When his old opponent Arthur Calwell died in 1973
Menzies, too ill to attend the funeral service, sat in a car outside,
weeping." Allan Martin in Australian Prime Ministers, 2000 p 204. |
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When the Whitlam government announced the end of the
use of racial criteria in selection of migrants, both sides of politics
are fully committed to a non-discriminatory immigration policy. Up to
1970 British migrants constituted almost half of the total arrivals. Voting age is
lowered from 21 to 18. The Sydney Opera
House is opened by Queen Elizabeth II. People's Republic
of China is recognised: Mr Whitlam is the first Austalian Prime Minister
to make an official visit to Red China. Australia opposes
French nuclear testing in the Pacific.
"Green Bans" are imposed by the Builders' Labourers Federation
on an area in The Rocks to prevent the demolition of some of Sydney's
oldest buildings. Patrick
White is awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature "for an epic and psychological
narrative art which has introduced a new continent into literature".
Born 1912 in London to Australian parents, the family settled in Sydney
when Patrick was six months old. He worked for 2 years as a jackeroo in
NSW before attending King's College, Cambridge. |
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Vietnam Peace Agreement is formally signed in Paris. Arab-Israeli
War: UN ceasefire arranged with UN troops in buffer zone. World energy
crisis as Arab states cut oil supplies. Watergate scandal
emerges in the USA. Britain on a
three-day working week to conserve energy following the miners strike. Manned Skylab
space station orbits the earth. |
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