Our leaders in 1965

• Prime Minister – Robert Menzies

• Governor General – Viscount De L'Isle, succeeded by Lord Casey

• Premier of New South Wales – Jack Renshaw (to 13 May); Robert Askin (after 13 May)

• Premier of South Australia – Sir Thomas Playford (to 6 March); Frank Walsh (after 6 March)

• Premier of Queensland – Sir Frank Nicklin

• Premier of Tasmania – Eric Reece

• Premier of Western Australia – Sir David Brand

• Premier of Victoria – Sir Henry Bolte

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Major Events in 1965

January

• Actor, dancer, producer and choreographer Sir Robert Helpmann is named Australian of the Year

• The Kinks and the Rolling Stones tour Australia

• The first hydrofoil service begins on Sydney Harbour

• The bodies of two 15-year-old girls, Christine Sharrock and Marianne Schmidt, are found at Wanda Beach in southern Sydney. Despite the offer of an unprecedented £10,000 reward, the murders are never solved

February

• Margaret Court wins the Australian women's tennis singles title for the sixth consecutive year

• Freedom Ride participants including Charles Perkins are ejected from the Moree municipal swimming baths after protesting against its policy of not admitting Aborigines

March

• The Amateur Swimming Union of Australia stuns the nation with its decision that Olympic champion and 1964 Australian of the Year Dawn Fraser will be banned from all amateur competition for ten years. The decision follows an inquiry into Fraser's alleged misbehaviour during the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo

• The first drawing of the national service conscription lottery

• Merle Thorton and Rosalie Bogner chained their ankles to the front bar of the Regatta Hotel in Brisbane in protest against the Queensland liquor laws that banned women from pubs

• Some 3,500 United States Marines arrive in South Vietnam, becoming the first American combat troops in Vietnam.

April

• Prime Minister Robert Menzies announces that an Australian combat force will be sent to South Vietnam in response to a request for military aid from the South Vietnamese government

May

• The 1st Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment leaves for Vietnam on HMAS Sydney

June

• The official opening of the Captain Cook Bridge, which spans the Georges River

• At a speech to the Australian Club in London, PM Sir Robert Menzies declares that Australia is in a state of war in Vietnam

July

• Snow is recorded as far north as the Clark Range in Queensland, killing drought-weakened livestock. At the same time, extremely heavy rainfall in the North Coast turns drought into flood, with Brisbane having its wettest-ever July day with 193.2 millimetres

August

• At the Auschwitz trial in Frankfurt, 66 ex-SS personnel receive life sentences, 15 others smaller ones

• Bob Dylan releases his influential album Highway 61 Revisited, featuring the song "Like a Rolling Stone"

November

• Man of La Mancha opens in a Greenwich Village theatre in New York and eventually becomes one of the greatest musical hits of all time

December

• The Beatles release Rubber Soul