1803 in Australia

The following lists events that happened during 1803 in Australia.

Incumbents

 * Monarch - George III

Governors
Governors of the Australian colonies:
 * Governor of New South Wales – Captain Philip King

Events

 * 14 January – Lieut-Col David Collins commissioned in England to found a new settlement on Bass Strait, preferably at Port Phillip.
 * 5 March – George Howe publishes the first issue of the weekly The Sydney Gazette and The New South Wales Advertiser, Australia's first newspaper.
 * 19 April - Governor King proclaims toleration for Catholics and allows Fr James Dixon to say mass for Irish convicts.
 * 14 May - Illegal Masonic meeting held in Sydney and all participants arrested.
 * 25 November - William James Hobart Thorne is the first white child born in Victoria when he is born at Port Phillip, in what was then part of New South Wales but later became Victoria. He dies on 2 July 1872.
 * 27 December – Convict William Buckley escapes from Sullivan Bay, Victoria. He lives with the Wautharong Aboriginal people for 32 years.
 * 26 June – John Macarthur writes the Statement of Improvement and Progression of Fine Woolled Sheep in New South Wales.

Exploration and settlement

 * January–February – Acting Lieutenant Charles Robbins and NSW Surveyor General Charles Grimes survey Port Phillip in HMS Cumberland (1803)
 * 2 February – Charles Grimes discovered the Yarra River.
 * 9 June – HMS Investigator (1798) arrives in Port Jackson after circumnavigating Australia. On the voyage Matthew Flinders charted the coast and Robert Brown made an extensive collection of the flora of Australia.
 * 11 September – John Bowen with a party of forty-eight found the first settlement in Van Diemen's Land near the Derwent River.
 * 9 October – David Collins, on HMS Calcutta (1795) and Ocean, establishes the short-lived settlement at Sullivan Bay on Port Phillip

Births

 * 1 January – Daniel Egan, politician (died 1870)

Deaths

 * 26 August – Joseph Luker, police officer (born c. 1765)
 * 16 September – Nicholas Baudin, French explorer (born 1754)
 * 17 November – William Balmain, First Fleet surgeon (born 1762)