1788 in Australia

← 1787 1786 1785 1788 in Australia → 1789 1790 1791
Decades:	1780s 1790s 1800s
See also:	Other events of 1788 Timeline of Australian history

Leaders

• Governor of New South Wales – Captain Arthur Phillip
• Governor of Norfolk Island – Philip Gidley King
• Commanding officer of the colony's marine presence – Major Robert Ross

Events

• 18 January – HMS Supply of the First Fleet arrives in Botany Bay.
• 26 January – The First Fleet lands in Port Jackson, Australia from Portsmouth, England, and establishes the English penal colony of New South Wales – the first European settlement in Australia.
• 6 February – The first female convicts arrive at Port Jackson.
• 9 February – The colony of New South Wales is formally proclaimed. Phillip is sworn in as Captain-General and Governor-in-Chief.
• 18 February – Lord Howe Island is discovered by Henry Lidgbird Ball on HMS Supply.
• 27 February – A seventeen-year-old convict, Thomas Barrett, receives the first death sentence in the colony.
• 6 March – Philip Gidley King is sent from the Port Jackson colony to settle Norfolk Island with a party of fifteen convicts and seven men.
• 15 April – Phillip King explores northwards to Manly, and sights the Blue Mountains.
• 23 April – Governor Phillip explores the area now known as Parramatta, west of Sydney.
• 29 May – Two convicts are killed by Aboriginals at Rushcutters Bay; Phillip leads a punitive attack on the Aborigines on 31 May.
• 5 June – All the settlement's cattle brought from Cape Town escape; they are not recaptured until November 1795.
• 21 July – First sitting of the Court of Civil Jurisdiction.
• September – Sydney's first road, from the Governor's House to Dawes Point, is completed.
• October – Due to poor conditions, scurvy breaks out. Phillip orders strict rationing and sends HMS Sirius to Cape Town for supplies.
• 2 November – A second settlement is established at Rose Hill, which will later become Parramatta.

Births

• The first white child in Australia is born.
• 4 January – Johann Menge, South Australian explorer and geologist (d. 1852)
• 16 January – Hannibal Hawkins Macarthur, New South Wales politician and businessman (d. 1861)
• 17 April – Charles Hervey Bagot, South Australian pastoralist, mine owner and parliamentarian (d. 1880)
• 22 May – William Broughton, bishop (d. 1853)
• 2 August – Charles Hardwicke, Tasmanian explorer (d. 1880)
• 24 August – Osmond Gilles, South Australian colonial treasurer (d. 1866)
• 24 October – John Burdett Wittenoom, Swan River Colony clergyman (d. 1855)
• date unknown
  • Charles Fraser, botanist (d. 1831)
  • Frederick Goulburn, first Colonial Secretary of New South Wales (d. 1837)
  • Frederick Irwin, acting Governor of Western Australia (d. 1860)
  • John Ovens, explorer (d. 1825)
  • Thomas Pamphlett, convict and castaway (d. 1838)
  • Henry Willey Reveley, Swan River Colony civil engineer (d. 1875)
  • Edward Buckley Wynyard, New South Wales politician (d. 1864)

Deaths

• 5 June – Ruth Bowyer, convict (b. c. 1761)