1973
- 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.
- 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.
† Nobel e-Museum
- 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.
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.
