The Territory of Ashmore and Cartier Islands is an uninhabited Australian external territory consisting of four low-lying tropical islands in two separate reefs, as well as the 12-nautical-mile territorial sea generated by the islands. The territory is located in the Indian Ocean situated on the edge of the continental shelf, about 320 km (199 mi) off the northwest coast of Australia and 144 km (89 mi) south of the Indonesian island of Rote.
A coroner is a government or judicial official who is empowered to conduct or order an inquest into the manner or cause of death. The official may also investigate or confirm the identity of an unknown person who has been found dead within the coroner's jurisdiction.
SS Princess Alice, formerly PS Bute, was a British passenger paddle steamer that sank on 3 September 1878 after a collision with the collier SS Bywell Castle on the River Thames. Between 600 and 700 people died, all from Princess Alice, the greatest loss of life of any British inland waterway shipping accident. No passenger list or headcount was made, so the exact figure of those who died has never been known.
In late August 2001, the Howard government of Australia refused permission for the Norwegian freighter MV Tampa, carrying 433 rescued refugees and 5 crew, to enter Australian waters. This triggered an Australian political controversy in the lead-up to the 2001 federal election, and a diplomatic dispute between Australia and Norway.
HMAS Adelaide was the lead ship of the Adelaide class of guided missile frigates built for the Royal Australian Navy (RAN), based on the United States Navy's Oliver Hazard Perry-class frigates. She was built in the United States and commissioned into the RAN in 1980.
The Children Overboard affair was an Australian political controversy involving public allegations by Howard government ministers in the lead-up to the 2001 federal election, that seafaring asylum seekers had thrown children overboard in a presumed ploy to secure rescue and passage on 7 October 2001.
The Pacific Solution is the name given to the government of Australia's policy of transporting asylum seekers to detention centres on island nations in the Pacific Ocean, rather than allowing them to land on the Australian mainland. Initially implemented from 2001 to 2007, it had bipartisan support from the Coalition and Labor opposition at the time. The Pacific Solution consisted of three central strategies:
SIEV X was the name assigned by Australian authorities to an Indonesian fishing boat carrying over 400 asylum seekers en route to Australia, which capsized in international waters with great loss of life on 19 October 2001. SIEV stands for Suspected Irregular Entry Vessel and is the acronym used by the surveillance authority for any boat that has entered Australian waters without prior authorisation. The X is a designation used where a tracking number has not yet been assigned, in accordance with Australian Government orders.
The following lists events that happened during 2001 in Australia.
Mohammed Sagar is an Iraqi, who was detained on Manus Island and Nauru between 2001 and 2006. Sagar became the last of approximately 1,300 refugees from the Middle East to be detained on Nauru under the Australian Government's "Pacific Solution" after an adverse security assessment was issued by the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO). He resettled in Sweden in 2007 after the UN High Commissioner for Refugees' efforts to secure asylum in a third country finally met with success.
The Coroner's Court of New South Wales is the court in the Australian state of New South Wales where legal proceedings, in the form of an inquest or inquiry, are held and presided over by the State Coroner of New South Wales, a Deputy State Coroner of New South Wales, or another coroner of the state of New South Wales.
Kaz II, dubbed "the ghost yacht", is a 9.8-metre catamaran which was found drifting 88 nautical miles off the north-eastern coast of Australia on 20 April 2007. The fate of its three-man crew remains unknown, and the mysterious circumstances in which they disappeared have been compared to that of Mary Celeste in 1872.
The Eyre Peninsula bushfire of 2005, an event also known locally as Black Tuesday and by South Australian Government agencies as the Wangary bushfire, was a bushfire that occurred during January 2005 on the lower part of the Eyre Peninsula, a significant part of South Australia's wheat belt, where most of the land is either cropped or grazed. The fire resulted in 780 square kilometres (301 sq mi) of land being burnt, the loss of nine lives, injury to another 115 people, and huge property damage. It was South Australia's worst bushfire since the Ash Wednesday fires of 1983. Heat from the fire reached 1,000 °C (1,830 °F), with speeds up to 100 kilometres per hour (62 mph).
The Marine Unit, formerly the Australian Customs Service National Marine Unit, is a division of the Australian Border Force which acts as a Coast Guard in guarding Australia's coast. The Marine Unit focuses on surveillance and response activities within the Australian Economic Exclusion Zone, and the operation and training of ships and crews to do so.
The Greycliffe disaster occurred in Sydney Harbour (Australia) on 3 November 1927 when the harbour ferry Greycliffe and the Union Steamship Company mail steamer Tahiti collided. The smaller ferry was cut in two and sank with the loss of 40 lives, the deadliest incident on Sydney Harbour.
SIEV 36 was a vessel from Indonesia that exploded and sank off Ashmore Reef, Australia on 16 April 2009. The vessel, carrying 47 refugees and two crew, was intercepted by the Royal Australian Navy patrol boat HMAS Albany early on 15 April. A boarding party secured the vessel, but failed to locate two canisters of petrol. Although it was intended to take the crew and passengers to Christmas Island for processing, a notice informing the crew that their vessel may be returned to Indonesia was presented, and the passengers were kept in the dark about their destination. While waiting for transportation to arrive, Albany and SIEV 36 sailed in a holding pattern, with the Indonesian boat taken in tow overnight. A second patrol boat, HMAS Childers, arrived that evening, and was directed to provide a boarding party and take care of the vessel starting at 06:00 on 16 April.
Anthony John Jones was an Australian man who disappeared while backpacking in North Queensland in November 1982. The case garnered substantial media attention, with critics charging that police mishandled the investigation into Jones' disappearance.
On 15 December 2010, an Indonesian fishing boat carrying 89 asylum seekers and 3 crew members sank after being dashed against the rocks near Rocky Point, Christmas Island, an external Australian territory. 50 people died and 42 were rescued. The incident was the worst civilian maritime disaster in Australia in more than a century.
The 2012 Indian Ocean migrant boat disaster occurred on 21 June 2012, when a boat carrying more than 200 refugees capsized in the Indian Ocean between the Indonesian island of Java and the Australian external territory of Christmas Island. 109 people were rescued, 17 bodies were recovered, and approximately 70 people remain missing. The boat's passengers were all male and were mostly from Afghanistan.
The Matchless was a British sailing boat which sank in Morecambe Bay, off north west England, in 1894 with the loss of 25 lives.