• Attends school in Jeparit.
• R G Menzies on the Jeparit school:

"I remember vividly the school ... It was built of wood. It stood on a little sandy rise between the township and the river. There were, in my time, about thirty pupils ... At least a dozen of the pupils walked three or four miles in from their parents' farms.

"I became, over a few years, a sort of infant prodigy; a purely comparative term. The reason was not far to seek. My parents were both great readers. I grew up on a fascinating melange of books."
Sir Robert Menzies, Afternoon Light, 1967 p 9.

• January 1: Lord Hopetoun, the first Governor General, proclaims the Commonwealth of Australia at a ceremony in Centennial Park, Sydney. It is ...

... the first liberal democracy in the world to result from a democratic vote of the people, unpressured by external threat or internal coercion. ... The legislative agenda outlined in the first speech by the Governor-General concentrated on practical tasks: setting up a High Court, adopting adult suffrage, creating a national industrial relations system and planning for the old-age pension.
M Gordon, The Age, 9 May 2001.

• Barton Government, January 1. The interim Federal Ministry is sworn in, with Sir Edmund Barton as Australia's first Prime Minister.
• Population is 3.82 million.
• Federation of Australian states: before 1901 the Australian colonies are responsible for their domestic affairs, with Britain controlling foreign relations and defence. What changes in 1901 is that the colonies transfer some of their powers to the Federal Government. Britain retains control of foreign relations and defence, although in practice the new Australian government is in a stronger position to make its case to the mother country, and the British government also prefers to deal directly with the one Australian government rather than with several colonial (now state) governments.
  D McDougall, The Age, 26 March 2001.
• Customs houses along interstate borders are abolished and free trade begins.
• May 9: The Duke (later King George V) and Duchess of Cornwall and York open the first Commonwealth Parliament in the Royal Exhibition Building, Melbourne. Most men and women present dress sombrely out of respect for the late Queen Victoria who had died in January.
• September: the Australian national flag is chosen.
• White Australia Policy: To ensure Australia remains essentially a country of British settlement, the first major piece of legislation to pass in the new parliament is the Immigration Restriction Act, enshrining the White Australia Policy. However, the non-white population is high - many Chinese came to Australia during the gold rushes and Pacific islanders had been imported to work in Queensland's sugar plantations. Aborigines are barely mentioned in the new constitution.

• Death of Queen Victoria, 22 January 1901; Edward VII becomes King.

Tuesday: 22 January 1901
We have just had very dreadful news, which I suppose reached you before us. I mean the death of our dear old Queen. She died at 6.30 this evening, and at 7.30 up here in Halifax boys were shouting the news in the street and selling papers. Isn't it a too dreadful thing. Nothing could describe the awful gloom over everything yesterday and today. ... I would give almost anything to be in London tonight - fancy hearing St Paul's tolling. The Queen's death will touch everything and everybody, and all things will be different. Every mortal thing here is put off, some postponed and some abandoned. This year will be absolutely dead in every way. I don't suppose a single thing will take place for months. I can't tell you how awestricken all England seems to be. Maisie, Her life in her letters from 1989 to 1902, 1992 p 374-6.

• China signs Peace of Peking with foreign powers.
• US President McKinley is assassinated.
• Marconi transmits across the Atlantic the letter "S" in Morse code. The New York Times reported on 15 December:

"This evening Guglielmo Marconi announced the most extraordinary scientific conquest of our times."