1788 in Australia

Leaders

• Monarch - George III
• 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 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

• 4 January - Johann Menge, South Australian explorer and geologist
• 16 January - Hannibal Hawkins Macarthur, New South Wales politician and businessman
• 17 April - Charles Hervey Bagot, South Australian pastoralist, mine owner and parliamentarian
• 22 May - William Broughton, bishop
• 2 August - Charles Hardwicke, Tasmanian explorer
• 24 August - Osmond Gilles, South Australian colonial treasurer
• 24 October - John Burdett Wittenoom, Swan River Colony clergyman
• date unknown
• * Charles Fraser, botanist
• * Frederick Goulburn, first Colonial Secretary of New South Wales
• * Frederick Irwin, acting Governor of Western Australia
• * John Ovens, explorer
• * Thomas Pamphlett, convict and castaway
• * Henry Willey Reveley, Swan River Colony civil engineer
• * Edward Buckley Wynyard, New South Wales politician

  Deaths

• 5 June - Ruth Bowyer, convict