• Pig-Iron Bob:

"The Christmas Ham: for workers at Port Kembla the Christmas of 1938 is a bleak time. Thanks to watersiders' refusal to load a cargo of pig-iron for Japan, steelworks have been closed and unemployment looms. As Attorney-General, Menzies has to handle the dispute for the Commonwealth Government, which contests the right of a union to make national foreign policy. As the issues become muddied, Menzies wins the well-known soubriquet of 'Pig-Iron Bob'."
A W Martin, Robert Menzies A Life Vol 1 1894-1943, 1993 p 253.

• 26 January: The 150th anniversary of white settlement when Captain Arthur Phillip took 'formal possession' of the Colony of New South Wales.
• 26 January: The 'March of Nationhood' parade through the streets of Sydney is watched by almost one million people. Streets and buildings are decorated with bunting, flags and illuminations and the city is alive with colour and excitement.
• President of the Aborigines' Progressive Association, Jack Patten, announces at the Day of Mourning Congress on 26 January: "The conference is called to bring home to the white people of Australia the frightful conditions in which the native aborigines of this continent live. We ask for full citizen rights, including old age pensions, maternity bonus, relief work when unemployed, and the right to a full education for our children."
• February: Sydney hosts the British Empire Games in Australia for the first time.
• Qantas begins air service to Europe.
• The Federal government Ministry resigned and was reconstructed in response to public criticism of defence policy and administration.
  The Macquarie Book of Events, 1983 p 347.
• Strikes in protest over export of pig-iron to Japan.
• Population 7 million.

• Hungarian Lajos Biro invents the first practical ballpoint pen.
• Germany invades and annexes Austria, the first overt act of aggression by Hitler. The world waits, hoping that Hitler will be satisfied with the German-speaking parts of Europe.
• Munich Pact: Hitler, Mussolini, Chamberlain and Daladier agree that Germany should take the German speaking Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia.
• Qantas begins air service to Europe.
• Orson Welles' vivid radio production of H G Wells' War of the Worlds causes a sensation and widespread panic because of its realism.