Portal:Australia/Anniversaries/October/October 17

• 1854 – The Melbourne daily newspaper The Age was first published.
• 1898 – The Perth Zoo opens with two lions and a tiger.
• 1900 – Natural gas is found at Roma in Queensland.
• 1917 – The two halves of the Trans-Australian Railway meet.
• 1917 – Sumner Locke Elliott, Australian (later American) novelist, and author of Careful, He Might Hear You, was born in Sydney.
• 1938 – Les Murray, poet and essayist is born in Nabiac, New South Wales.