12 April – British ship George III, transporting male convicts from Woolwich to Hobart sinks in D'Entrecasteaux Channel with the loss of around 134 (128 convicts) of the 294 people on board.
13 May – British barqueNeva, transporting female convicts from Cork, Ireland, is wrecked in the Bass Strait with the loss of 224 people and only 15 survivors.[1]
6 August – Proclamation of Governor Bourke, a document which formally declared that the British Crown, relying on the doctrine of terra nullius, owned the whole of the continent of Australia.
13 September - John Bede Polding, the first Catholic bishop in Australia, arrives in Sydney.
10 October – The Proclamation of Governor Bourke is approved by the Colonial Office. Bourke's proclamation implemented the doctrine of terra nullius by proclaiming that Indigenous Australians could not sell or assign land, nor could an individual person acquire it, other than through distribution by the Crown.
29 December – Mary Gilbert gives birth to her son, James Port Phillip Gilbert, the first European child born in the Port Phillip settlement of Melbourne.
