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1799 in Australia

overview of Australia-related events during the year of 1799

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 9, 2026
Entity authorityQ4553498 ↗
Source-derived summary

The following lists events that happened during 1799 in Australia.

Leaders

Monarch - George III

Governor of New South Wales – John Hunter

Lieutenant-Governor of Norfolk Island – Philip Gidley King

Inspector of Public Works – Richard Atkins

Events

7 January – Bass and Flinders complete their circumnavigation of Van Diemen's Land in sloop Norfolk.

11 February – The jail in Sydney is burned by arsonists.

3 March – Hawkesbury River floods, killing one.

12 March – Isaac Nichols is accused of stealing stolen goods and sentenced to 14 years on Norfolk Island; his sentence is suspended by Governor Hunter on 1 April

8 July – Matthew Flinders leaves Port Jackson to explore the East coast in sloop Norfolk; he surveys Moreton Bay between the 15th and 31st and charts Hervey Bay on 2 August. He returns to Sydney on 20 August.

18 October – Five settlers are found guilty of killing aborigines in the Hawkesbury, they are later pardoned.

5 November – Hunter is recalled and Philip Gidley King is named as his successor

28 December – The jail in Parramatta is lost to arson.

Births

25 August – John Dunmore Lang

2 October – William Lonsdale

15 October – Archibald Mosman

Deaths

26 January – Thomas Muir

References

Barker, Anthony (1996). What Happened When.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “1799 in Australia” as overview of Australia-related events during the year of 1799. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Australia, overview and Australia-related.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1799, 1996—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Australia, overview and Australia-related providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “1799 in Australia”, the useful work is to connect “overview of Australia-related events during the year of 1799” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 9, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4553498. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1799 and 1996.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “1799 in Australia” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.