1848 in Australia

Incumbents

• Monarch - Victoria

Governors

• Governor of New South Wales – Sir Charles Augustus FitzRoy
• Governor of South Australia – Lieutenant Colonel Frederick Holt Robe then Sir Henry Fox Young
• Governor of Tasmania – Sir William Denison
• Governor of Western Australia as a Crown Colony – Lieutenant-Colonel Frederick Irwin, then Captain Charles Fitzgerald.

Events

• Letters patent of Queen Victoria declaring Melbourne a city are read on the steps of St Peters, Eastern Hill church.
• 13 February – The first non-British ship carrying immigrants to arrive in Victoria was from Germany; the Goddefroy. Many of those on board were political refugees and known as Forty-Eighters.
• 3 April – Explorer Ludwig Leichhardt was last seen on the Darling Downs. On that date he wrote a letter from MacPherson's Station, Cogoon. Leichhardt had set off for Swan River.
• 11 March – The Savings Bank of South Australia opens with a single employee, trading from a room provided rent-free.
• 29 August – The Cape Otway lighthouse in Victoria is lit for the first time.
• September – Between 9 and 11 Indigenous Australians are killed in the Avenue Range Station massacre.
• Undated - the Aboriginal Witnesses Act 1848. was enacted in South Australia.

Births

• 4 February – Sir John Winthrop Hackett, Western Australian politician and newspaper proprietor
• 17 February – Louisa Lawson, writer, poet and feminist
• 24 February – Andrew Inglis Clark, Tasmanian politician and judge
• 18 May – Sir John Henniker Heaton, postal reformer, journalist, and politician
• 27 May – David Charleston, South Australian politician
• 3 June – Alexander Leeper, educationist
• 8 September – Sir Edward Charles Stirling, South Australian politician and anthropologist
• 15 October – Sir Langdon Bonython, South Australian politician and journalist
• 18 October – Gregor McGregor, South Australian politician and trade union leader
• 3 December – William Shiels, 16th Premier of Victoria
• 6 December – Sir Edward Hutton, 1st General Officer Commanding Australian Military Forces
• 10 December – Frederick William Piesse, Tasmanian politician
• 16 December – Walter Madden, Victorian politician
• Unknown – John Mather, artist

Deaths

• 2 May – Frederick Garling, attorney and solicitor
• 25 May – Sir Maurice Charles O'Connell, New South Wales politician and military commander
• 4 June – William Sorell, 3rd Lieutenant Governor of Van Diemen's Land
• 18 July – Alexander Macleay, New South Wales politician and entomologist
• 12 November – John Cadman, convict and publican