1945 in Australia
overview of Australia-related events during the year of 1945
The following lists events that happened during 1945 in Australia.
Incumbents
Monarch – George VI
Governor-General – Alexander Hore-Ruthven, 1st Baron Gowrie (until 30 January), then the Duke of Gloucester
Prime Minister – John Curtin (died in office 5 July), then Frank Forde (until 13 July), then Ben Chifley
Chief Justice – Sir John Latham
State Premiers
Premier of New South Wales – William McKell
Premier of Queensland – Frank Cooper
Premier of South Australia – Thomas Playford IV
Premier of Tasmania – Robert Cosgrove
Premier of Victoria – Albert Dunstan (until 2 October), then Ian MacFarlan (until 21 November), then John Cain
Premier of Western Australia – John Willcock (until 31 July), then Frank Wise
State Governors
Governor of New South Wales – John Loder, 2nd Baron Wakehurst (until 6 June)
Governor of Queensland – Sir Leslie Orme Wilson
Governor of South Australia – Sir Charles Norrie
Governor of Tasmania – Sir Ernest Clark (until 4 August), then Sir Hugh Binney (from 24 December)
Governor of Victoria – Sir Winston Dugan
Governor of Western Australia – none appointed
Events
30 January – Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester becomes Australia's first royal Governor-General.
31 January – A Stinson aircraft crashes in Victoria, killing all 10 on board.
9 May – Germany surrenders to the Allies, ending World War II in Europe.
26 June – Dr H. V. Evatt signs the United Nations Charter on behalf of Australia.
8 to 30 June – Perth receives 18.74 inches (476.1 mm) of rain in twenty-three days, easily its heaviest monthly rainfall on record and unlikely to be approached due to anthropogenic global warming.
5 July – Prime Minister John Curtin dies in office from heart problems at The Lodge in Canberra.
6 July – Frank Forde is sworn in as Prime Minister of Australia, following the death of John Curtin. He will serve Australia's shortest term as prime minister, being replaced by Ben Chifley a week later.
7 July – The Australian 7th Division commences operations in the Battle of Balikpapan.
The public source identifies “1945 in Australia” as overview of Australia-related events during the year of 1945. 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 May 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4565615. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1945.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “1945 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.