What was happening in the English-speaking world?

1801

The first census is held.
Another Act of Union joins the Kingdom of Ireland to England and Scotland, and the Union Flag sees the addition of the diagonal red cross.

1802

The first practical steamboat towed two barges along the Forth and Clyde Canal.

1803

Matthew Flinders completes the first circumnavigation of Terra Australis.

1804

A settlement is founded at Risdon on the Derwent River in Van Diemen's Land. Later the settlement (to become Hobart) is moved across the river to Sullivan's Cove.
At Sydney, the Castle Hill convict rebellion, also known as the Second Battle of Vinegar Hill.

1805

The battle of Trafalgar.

1807

The slave trade is abolished.

1808

The Rum Rebellion.

1811

Prince George becomes Prince Regent.

1812

Charles Dickens is born.
The United States declares war on Britain.

1813

The Duke of Wellington defeats the French army at the battle of Vitoria in Spain.
Blaxland, Lawson and Wentworth cross the Blue Mountains.
Matthew Flinders calls the continent 'Australia'.

1814

The Burning of Washington.

1815

The Battle of Waterloo.
Humphrey Davy invents the miners' safety lamp.

1816

Year Without a Summer: Unusually cold conditions wreak havoc throughout the Northern Hemisphere, likely caused by the 1815 explosion of Mount Tambora.

1817

Jane Austen dies.
The Bank of New South Wales opens.

1818

Queen Charlotte dies.
Third Anglo-Maratha War ends with the East India Company in control of almost the whole of India.

1819

The Peterloo Massacre; cavalry charge unarmed people holding a meeting; eleven people are killed.
Stanford Raffles founds Singapore.

1820

George III dies; George IV becomes king.

1821

John Constable paints The Haywain.

1823

Oxley enters Moreton bay and finds Pamphlett, Finnegan and Parsons, who had been living with the Bribie Island people after wrecking on Moreton Island several months earlier.
Oxley enters and charts the Brisbane River for the first time.

1824

Oxley charts the Brisbane River as far as Colleges Crossing.
Later in the year a penal colony is founded at Redcliff, before moving upriver to the present site of Brisbane.
Lord Byron dies.

1825

The first public passenger railway, the Stockton and Darlington Railway opens.

1829

The Catholic Emancipation Act gives Catholics civil rights.
Sir Robert Peel forms the police force.
The whole of Australia is claimed as British territory.
The settlement of Perth is founded.

1830

Sturt charts the Murray River.

1830

George IV dies; William IV becomes king.

1832

The Great Reform Act; seats in parliament are distributed more fairly, and the vote is extended to middle class men.

1833

Slavery is abolished throughout the British Empire.

1834

Alison's great, great, great grandfather Ryan Brenan, with his wife and two sons, migrates from Limerick to Sydney.

1835

Bull baiting is banned.
John Batman and John Pascoe Fawkner establish a settlement at Port Phillip, now Melbourne.
John Ryan Brenan, Esq. appointed Coroner for the Town of Sydney.

1836

Charles Darwin on 'The Beagle' visits Sydney, Hobart, and Albany.
In Hobart he crosses the Derwent by a steamboat made in Sydney.

1837

William IV dies; Victoria becomes queen.