May 16 - NSW Premier Neville Wran steps down, in response to allegations raised by ABC program Four Corners that he attempted to influence the NSW Magistracy.
August 18 - Five people are killed and 18 others injured when a road train is deliberately driven into a motel at Ayers Rock (Uluru), NT (The driver, Douglas Edward Crabbe, is convicted in March 1984).
September 25 - Maze Prison escape. 38 Irish republican prisoners, armed with 6 handguns, hijacked a prison meals lorry and smashed their way out of HMP Maze. The largest prison escape since WWII and in British history.
October 21 - At the 17th General Conference on Weights and Measures, the metre is defined in terms of the speed of light as the distance light travels in a vacuum in 1/299,792,458 of a second.
November 26 - Brinks Mat robbery: In London, 6,800 gold bars worth nearly UK£26 million are taken from the Brinks Mat vault at Heathrow Airport. Only a fraction of the gold is ever recovered, and only 2 men are convicted of the crime.
December 2 - Michael Jackson's world famous music video for "Thriller" is broadcast for the first time. It will become the most often repeated and famous music video of all time and increase his own popularity and the record sales of the album "Thriller".
December 5 - ICIMOD established and inaugurated with its headquarters in Kathmandu, Nepal, and legitimised through an Act of Parliament in Nepal in the same year.
December 9 - The Australian Dollar is floated, by Federal treasurer Paul Keating. Under the old flexible peg system, the Reserve Bank bought and sold all Australian dollars and cleared the market at the end of the day. This initiative is taken by the government of Bob Hawke.
December 29 - The Reverend Jesse Jackson travels to Syria to secure the release of U.S. Navy Lieutenant Robert Goodman, who has been in Syrian captivity after being shot down over the country on a reconnaissance mission.