Australian trivia for a pub quiz
Want some Australian trivia to use in a pub quiz? Well, here are 31 fascinating* facts about Australia to get you started. This list will be added to regularly until it gets completely out of hand. (*Disclaimer: Your mileage on what’s fascinating may differ)
32. The first non-Aboriginal child born on Groote Eylandt in the Northern Territory invented the black box flight data recorder.
31. New South Wales is only the fourth largest Australian state, but it has the longest land border with other states and territories.
30. Darwin Harbour was named after Charles Darwin 20 years before On the Origin of Species was published.
29. Western Australia is so big that, if it was an independent country, it’d be the 10th largest country in the world.
28. In the Kakadu National Park, there is a hotel shaped like a crocodile.
27. The oldest building in Melbourne is Cooks’ Cottage in Fitzroy Gardens. It was constructed in 1755 – long before Melbourne was founded. The home of Captain Cook’s parents, the cottage was shipped to Melbourne then reconstructed brick-by-brick in 1934.
26. The Nullarbor Links is the world’s longest golf course. It stretches 1,365km from Kalgoorlie in Western Australia to Ceduna in South Australia, with extremely rudimentary holes at the roadhouses en route.
25. The sand on Fraser Island is originally from south of the border. It was swept up from New South Wales by prevailing winds during the Ice Age.
24. Most rabbits in Australia are descended from just 24 which a Victorian man brought over for shooting practice in 1859. There are now over 300 million of them, and they cause over $6 million worth of damage to crops and property every year.
23. The Blue Mountains in New South Wales aren’t actually mountains. The name is a complete misnomer – the area is actually a plateau with a few deep incisions.
22. The record crowd crammed into the Melbourne Cricket Ground was over 130,000, but it wasn’t for a sporting event. It was for a religious rally led by Billy Graham in 1959.
21. The Nullarbor Plain is home to the longest stretch of straight railway track in the world, coming in at a whopping 478km.
20. The ‘town’ of Cook in Western Australia almost certainly has the most golf courses per head of population in the world. It claims to have four residents and one golf course, albeit one dominated by sand traps. Realistically, no-one lives there…
19. During the Second World War, Fraser Island was used as a secret training base for a crack commando unit. Deemed perfect for both jungle and amphibious training, over 900 Allied soldiers were put through a gruelling regime.
18. Every snake in Tasmania is venomous. So, if you’re bitten, there’s no point in wondering if it’s one of those harmless snakes.
17. In the language of the Ngunnawal people, Canberra supposedly means either “meeting place” or “women’s breasts”. The former is generally thought correct, although a look at Mt Ainslie and Black Mountain from the right angle would suggest otherwise.
16. Only two men have survived falling from Sydney Harbour Bridge. The first, Vincent Kelly, fell whilst working on the construction of the road level. He cheated death after dropping his toolbelt in the water to break the surface tension.
15. Schoolgear-clad rockers AC/DC were honoured by having a Melbourne street named after them in 2004, with city mayor John So saying: “As the song says, there is a highway to hell, but this is a laneway to heaven. Let us rock.” However, due to pedantic rules on street-naming, ACDC Lane, just off Flinders Lane, was not allowed to have the famous lightning bolt slash.
14. If you weighed all the termites in Australia, they would outweigh all the cattle and kangaroos put together.
13. When debris from the American Skylab space station showered over Balladonia, WA, in 1979, the local roadhouse owners received an apologetic phone call from President Jimmy Carter.
12. There are 461 species of flies in Australia. You will probably meet all of them if you go to the Northern Territory at the wrong time of year.
11. The Katoomba Scenic Railway in the Blue Mountains is, according to Guinness World Records, the steepest railway in the world. Its maximum gradient is 52 degrees.
10. Saltwater crocodiles can only travel at 3km/h on land. You can outrun them, but it’s probably not a race worth entering.
9. Whilst many of Canberra’s streets and suburbs are named after politicians, Callister Street in Theodore pays tribute to a true Australian legend. Dr Cyril Callister was the inventor of Vegemite.
8. The municipal pool in Glen Iris, Melbourne is tastefully named the Harold Holt Swim Centre. Harold Holt was the Australian prime minister who went missing, presumed drowned, from Cheviot Beach on the Mornington Peninsula.
7. The word kangaroo comes from an Aboriginal language and allegedly means “I don’t understand”.
6. The Nullarbor Plain is the world’s largest single piece of limestone, occupying an area of around 200,000 sq km.
5. The traditional Yulefest in the Blue Mountains is a surprisingly recent innovation. It began in 1980 after a group of Irish tourists complained about Christmas in Australia being too hot. A local hotel owner offered to recreate the tree and trimmings northern hemisphere Christmas, complete with a snowman.
4. The Crown Casino in Melbourne was the first place in the world to offer Rapid Roulette, which ditches the wheel and relies on a touch screen instead.
3. The 40 metre Douglas Fir that forms the national capital’s biggest flagpole was a rather cumbersome gift from Canada. For want of anywhere else big enough, it had to spend several days submerged in Sydney Harbour for quarantine reasons before being hauled up to Canberra on a train of big trucks.
2. The platypus and the echidna are the only two egg-laying mammals in the world, and when settlers first described a platypus, it was widely thought to be a hoax by an incredulous scientific community in London.
1. Whilst best known for cricket and AFL, the MCG in Melbourne also holds the record for the highest attended baseball match, which happened during the 1956 Olympic Games.