1941 in Australia
overview of Australia-related events during the year of 1941
The following lists events that happened during 1941 in Australia.
Incumbents
Monarch – George VI
Governor-General – Alexander Hore-Ruthven, 1st Baron Gowrie
Prime Minister – Robert Menzies (until 28 August), then Arthur Fadden (until 7 October), then John Curtin
Chief Justice – Sir John Latham
State Premiers
Premier of New South Wales – Alexander Mair (until 16 May), then William McKell
Premier of Queensland – William Forgan Smith
Premier of South Australia – Thomas Playford
Premier of Tasmania – Robert Cosgrove
Premier of Victoria – Albert Dunstan
Premier of Western Australia – John Willcock
State Governors
Governor of New South Wales – John Loder, 2nd Baron Wakehurst
Governor of Queensland – Sir Leslie Orme Wilson
Governor of South Australia – Sir Malcolm Barclay-Harvey
Governor of Tasmania – Sir Ernest Clark
Governor of Victoria – Sir Winston Dugan
Governor of Western Australia – none appointed
Events
25 March – The Women's Auxiliary Australian Air Force (WAAAF) is formed.
31 March – The Siege of Tobruk begins.
7 April – The Women's Royal Australian Naval Service (WRANS) is formed.
10 May – A general election is held in New South Wales. The ALP led by William McKell defeats the incumbent United Australia Party and Premier Alexander Mair.
12 May – The Daily Mirror newspaper is first published in Sydney.
30 June – HMAS Waterhen sinks off Libya – the first Australian naval vessel lost in the war.
3 October – Prime Minister Arthur Fadden resigns following the rejection of his budget by two independent MPs.
7 October – John Curtin is sworn in as Prime Minister after Arthur Fadden's government loses majority support in the House of Representatives.
The public source identifies “1941 in Australia” as overview of Australia-related events during the year of 1941. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Australia, overview and Australia-related.
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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 Apr 23, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q4564973. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1941.
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This entry incorporates text from “1941 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.