As its acronym suggests, the ACOLS conference series represents a meeting of several scientific disciplines in the area of optics.  The most recent 2001 conference incorporated the 14th Conference of the Australian Optical Society, the 10th Australian Laser Conference, and the 20th Australian Spectroscopy Conference.

The first "ACOLS" conference took place in Queensland at Surfers Paradise in May 1987.  Its was actual title was the "Australian Conference On Lasers and Spectroscopy", combining two of the above three conference series.

The first three-stranded ACOLS meeting, with its acronym standing for "Australian Conference on Optics, Lasers and Spectroscopy", was held in Adelaide in September 1989.  Subsequent ACOLS meetings have usually been timed to be in alternate years from stand-alone AOS conferences.  ACOLS '91 was held in Canberra in September/October 1991, and was followed by ACOLS'93 in Melbourne in December 1993.

The next ACOLS meeting was subsumed within IQEC '96, the International Quantum Electronics Conference
held in Sydney in July 1996 (the only IQEC ever held in the Southern Hemisphere).

In December 1998, ACOLS moved offshore for the first time to Christchurch, New Zealand and it was then that the word "Australian" in its original title was changed to "Australasian", to recognise the vital trans-Tasman links between Australian and New Zealand scientists.

The most recent ACOLS returned to Australia and was held in Brisbane on 3 - 6 December, 2001.

The next ACOLS meeting is likely to be held in Melbourne in July 2003, in a week adjacent to the International Conference on Laser Spectroscopy (ICOLS 2003) in Cairns, Australia (its first venture south of the Equator).  ACOLS 2003 will probably be colocated with ACOFT, the Australian fiber-optics and photonics conference.

A full list of the ACOLS conference series and associated conferences appears below.

ACOLS '87      May 11 - 15, Surfers Paradise, Queensland

• 5th Australian Laser Conference
• 15th Australian Spectroscopy Conference

ACOLS '89      September 25 - 29, Adelaide, South Australia

• 6th Conference of the Australian Optical Society
• 6th Australian Laser Conference
• 16th Australian Spectroscopy Conference

ACOLS '91      September 28 - October 4, Canberra, ACT

• 7th Conference of the Australian Optical Society
• 7th Australian Laser Conference
• 17th Australian Spectroscopy Conference

ACOLS '93      December 6 - 10, Melbourne, Victoria

• 9th Conference of the Australian Optical Society
• 8th Australian Laser Conference
• 18th Australian Spectroscopy Conference

IQEC'96      July 14 - 19, Sydney, New South Wales

• subsumed the ACOLS Conference for that year

ACOLS '98     December 14 - 17, Christchurch, New Zealand

• 12th Conference of the Australian Optical Society
• 9th Australian Laser Conference
• 19th Australian Spectroscopy Conference

ACOLS 2001     December 3 - 6, Brisbane, Queensland

• 15th Conference of the Australian Optical Society
• 10th Australian Laser Conference
• 20th Australian Spectroscopy Conference