Australian Cities Trivia Quiz

Perth is the capital city of Western Australia, one of the largest national subdivisions in the world. Only the Sakha Republic in Russia is larger; Canada's Yukon Territory used to be larger before Nunavut was created out of part of that territory. As is suggested by the map, Perth is one of the most isolated capital cities in the world.

It was established on the land of the Whadjuk people, of the Noongar nation, in 1829 and named after the Scottish city at the request of the British Secretary of State for War and the Colonies, Sir George Murray.

The Noongar name for the area, Boorloo, is now also being used.

Alice Springs is not a state or territory capital, but it is the third largest city in the Northern Territory, and the town located closes to Uluru (formerly given the name Ayers Rock by European settlers). This makes it a place that will be visited by many visitors to Australia, as the place they join a tour to visit this attraction. The local Arrente people call the area Mparntwe.

Darwin, the capital of the Northern Territory, is Australia's smallest and wettest capital city, located as it is in the tropics. It is connected by the Stuart Highway and the Ghan passenger train to Adelaide, with the routes running through Alice Springs. The Aboriginal people of the area called it Garramilla, meaning white stone, because of the rocks in the nearby cliffs.

British settlers arrived in 1839, naming the port after the British naturalist Charles Darwin, but the nearby town was called Palmerston when it was officially named in 1869. In 1911 the official name was changed to reflect the everyday usage that had already conflated the names of the town and the port. The contemporary accepted native name for the city is Gulumurrdgen.

Although Cairns is not the capital of Queensland, it is a major tourist destination because it is close to two major attractions: the Daintree Rainforest and the Great Barrier Reef. The Gimuy Walubara Yidinji people who lived in the region before British settlement called it Gimuy, their name for themselves, identifying it as their land, a claim they continue to make. Europeans established a port town in the late 19th century, to give easy access to the goldfields that had been discovered in the inland area, naming it after the Governor of Queensland at that time.

Brisbane is the largest city in Queensland and its state capital. It is situated on land whose name in the Turrbal language of the original owners is a matter of some dispute, as both the word and its meaning have been recorded differently. One suggestion is Meeanjin (currently the name favoured for use when recognising Aboriginal settlement of the land), which might mean 'place of blue water lilies' or might mean 'place shaped like a spike' (describing the way the Brisbane River flows through the area). It may also have been a similarly-pronounced Yagara name, Magandjin, describing the tulipwood trees that grew there.

In any case, when a penal colony was established there in 1842, it was called Moreton Bay, after the body of water into which the Brisbane River flows. When Queensland separated from New South Wales in 1859 to become a separate colony, the city was renamed Brisbane, after the river which had itself been named for Sir Thomas Brisbane, Governor of New South Wales between 1821 and 1825.

Sydney, the capital of the state of New South Wales, was the site of the first British colony, established in 1788. The first governor of New South Wales, Captain Arthur Phillip, named the water on which it stood Sydney Cove (in honour of the Home Secretary of the time, who was Viscount of Sydney). He thought the settlement should be called Albion, a name which never took on, and it was quickly known as Sydney.

The area that is now encompassed by Sydney was inhabited by a number of different indigenous groups belonging to the Gadigal clan of the Eora people, so there were multiple names for various parts of the city, but they all called Sydney Cove Warrane, which has become the accepted Aboriginal name for Sydney.

Australia's national capital was built in the early 20th century at a location between Sydney and Melbourne, the two cities vying for recognition as the capital of the newly-established Commonwealth of Australia. The land selected had long been inhabited by native Australians, including the Ngunnawal and Ngambri clans from whom the name was taken. Early British settlers had referred to these tribes with several names that included Canberry and Nganbra, but the actual word Canberra is thought to have come from one of the local languages - exactly which language, and what the word means, is unclear. One suggestion, which seems to be an attempt to rationalise the use of a local tribe's name for the capital of a new nation, was that it meant meeting place. It may have.

In any case, the Federal Capital Territory was established in 1911, and construction of Canberra began in 1913. Following an international design competition, a plan created by the America architects Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony Griffin was selected. They ultimately resigned from overseeing the project, as much of their vision was disputed with the bureaucrats who had to pay for it. In 1927 the national seat of government moved from its temporary location in Melbourne, and Canberra became the national capital.

Hobart is by far the largest city in Tasmania, but still the least populous state capital of Australia. It was settled in 1804 as a British penal colony, and later became a significant whaling port. The Muwinina people, who had been in the region for over 35,000 years, used the name nipaluna for the entire region around the city. This region included Mount Wellington (kunyani), which looks over the city's skyline, and the River Derwent (timtumili minanya) on whose banks it sits.

The establishment of Hobart was one of the more violent in Australia's colonisation, with a long list of massacres (and the introduction of new diseases) leading to the almost total extinction of Tasmanian Aboriginals by 1832.

When European colonists arrived (illegally, even if one considers the colonial government to have been legitimate in its claim to control the land) in the 19th century, there were already thousands of members of the five clans of the Kulin nation both living in the area and using it as a major meeting site. They included the Wurundjeri, Bunurong and Wathaurong settled in the area that is now Melbourne. They all had their own names for their parts of the city, but Narrm is commonly used, as it comes from the traditional name for the region that is now the CBD.

In 1835 John Batman led a group of people trying to set up a trading post outside the areas controlled from Sydney and Hobart. He may or may not have negotiated a purchase of the land he intended to use. The settlement of Batmania, renamed in honour of the British Prime Minister, William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne, forcibly dispossessed the indigenous residents, forcing them away from the coast. When Victoria separated from New South Wales in 1851, Melbourne was named its capital. The discovery of gold at that same time led to the city's population more than doubling within less than a year.

Adelaide was established in 1836, planned to be the capital of Australia's only free-settled (as opposed to convict-settled) state, South Australia. It was named after Queen Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen, wife of King William IV, the ruling British monarch. The early settlers tended to be wealthy, and their general religious tolerance led to the establishment of multiple large churches of various denominations, leading to its nickname as the 'City of Churches'.

Before the arrival of European settlers, the area was inhabited by the Kaurna people, whose name for it, Tardannya, meant 'male red kangaroo rock' - referring to a rock structure which no longer exists. Within a few decades, the Kauna culture had been almost completely destroyed; extensive documentation of their culture and language by early missionaries has made it possible to revive the language, and dual-naming of localities has become a government policy in the 21st century.