1899 in Australia

Incumbents

January 22 - Leaders of six Australian colonies meet in Melbourne to discuss confederation.
March 4 - Cyclone Mahina strikes Bathurst Bay in Queensland. Approximately 400 persons are killed, and the pearling fleet is sunk. A storm surge of up to 14 metres sweeps 5 kilometres inland.
April 24 - The 1,280 ton barque Loch Sloy hits rocks off Kangaroo Island and sinks, killing 31 persons.
Colonial soldiers leave to fight in the Second Boer War.

October 8 - The word "wowser" is first used by John Norton, editor of the Melbourne Truth newspaper.
George Washington Lambert wins the Wynne Prize for landscape painting or figure sculpture for his landscape Across the Blacksoil Plains
Dot and the Kangaroo, a children's book by Ethel Pedley, is published
On Our Selection by Steele Rudd is published

January 7 - John Collins (d. 1989), Chief of Naval Staff and High Commissioner to New Zealand
January 17 - Nevil Shute (d. 1960), writer
January 21 - Ernestine Hill (d. 1972), travel writer
February 22 - Ian Clunies Ross (d. 1959), scientist
March 7 - Eddie Ward, politician (d. 1963)
September 3 - Frank Macfarlane Burnet (d. 1985), biologist and Nobel Prize winner
September 24 - Sir William Dobell, artist, sculptor and painter (d. 1970)