Australia's only military coup overthrew the governor of New South Wales in 1808. The man they overthrew? William Bligh — yes, the one from the Mutiny on the Bounty.
In 1806, William Bligh — the same captain famously set adrift by his own crew during the Mutiny on the Bounty in 1789 — arrived in Sydney as the new Governor of New South Wales, the British penal colony in Australia. The British government specifically chose Bligh because they needed someone tough enough to clean up the corrupt power structure that had taken hold in the colony.
The New South Wales Corps, a regiment of soldiers who had been stationed in the colony for years, had effectively taken over the local economy. They had the monopoly on the rum trade — rum was the de facto currency of the colony, used to pay free settlers and convict laborers alike — and they were granting themselves enormous land allocations. Bligh's job was to end this.
On January 26, 1808 — Australia Day — armed soldiers of the New South Wales Corps marched to Government House and arrested Bligh. They claimed they had found him hiding under a bed, though Bligh contested this vigorously. The coup was led by Major George Johnston and orchestrated by John Macarthur, a wealthy merchant and landowner who had clashed repeatedly with Bligh over trade regulations.
Bligh was kept under house arrest for two years while Johnston governed the colony. When London finally sent a replacement governor in 1810, Major-General Lachlan Macquarie, the rebellion was ended. Johnston was court-martialed in London — but received only the minimum punishment of being stripped of his commission. He returned to Australia and lived comfortably on his farm.
The name 'Rum Rebellion' wasn't coined until 1855, nearly 50 years after the event, by an English historian. The coup wasn't really just about rum — it was about who controlled land, labor, and power in a convict colony at the end of the world. But the image of Australia's only military coup being fought over alcohol has stuck ever since.