Waving Goodbye to My Colonial Masters Quiz

Answer: Canada

In 1867, three North American provinces, the Province of Canada, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick became one federation called the Dominion of Canada in 1867. The province of Canada split into two separate provinces, Quebec and Ontario soon after. In 1931 Canada adopted the Statute of Westminster which was ratified by the British Parliament. It granted the Dominion of Canada full legal autonomy and was a crucial step in the development of the Commonwealth countries as separate states.

Canadian cuisine is difficult to define as the country is a melting pot of cultures: Certain dishes may be identified as "Canadian" because of the ingredients used or their geographical origins. Canada does have a strong affinity for Canadian produce but this does not translate into distinctly Canadian dishes. Dishes like Poutine and Beaver's Tails are obviously Canadian but too easy if included in this quiz. However, Ketchup Chips are a thing, a distinctly Canadian thing. They are uncommon in the US and if you do find some they will probably be imported from Canada. These chips are a flavour bomb. They are distinctly red-coloured chips and "taste like a bottle of ketchup was blown apart" with the individual components brushed onto the chips.

Answer: Australia

Six British colonies: New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia, Western Australia and Tasmania united on January 1 1901 to form a federation called the Commonwealth of Australia. It adopted the Statue of Westminster in 1941, cutting the last of its legal ties to its colonial master but retaining the British monarch as head of state.

The Matildas are the Australian National Women's soccer team. While Australia is a sports-mad nation, women's sport has struggled to be as well patronised as the equivalent men's sport. That all changed in 2023 when Australia and New Zealand hosted the FIFA Women's World Cup. Australia rated 13th in the world, was seeded 10th for the tournament, and did well, qualifying at the top of their group. They filled stadiums with every match they played including the 82000-seat Stadium Australia venue in Sydney. As well, the TV viewership numbers for Australia's matches were the highest viewed TV programs in Australian history. The team reached the semi-finals after beating the higher-ranked France in a heart-stopping quarter-final. England won the semifinal 2-1 (but lost 1-0 to Spain in the final) but Australia had found yet another group of sporting heroes to follow.

Answer: New Zealand

The Treaty of Waitangi was the founding document of New Zealand. It took its name from the place in the Bay of Islands where it was first signed, on 6 February 1840. The Treaty, written in Maori and English, pledged to protect Maori culture and to respect the Maori culture. Further, Maori could continue to live in New Zealand as Maori. Simultaneously, the Treaty gave the Crown the right to govern New Zealand and to represent the interests of all New Zealanders including Maori. This was one of the first documents, ever, to recognise indigenous rights by a colonising power. It became a key document in the establishment of New Zealand as a sovereign country:

In 1907 the New Zealand colony, once part of the colony of New South Wales, became the Dominion of New Zealand, though it did not achieve full legal autonomy until 1947 when the New Zealand Parliament passed the Statute of Westminster Adoption Act.

Answer: New Zealand

The All Blacks are the New Zealand Men's Rugby Union team, Rugby Union being the national sport of New Zealand. The first official All Blacks side was known as The Originals and wore black uniforms. They toured Britain, France, Canada and the United States in 1905. A New Zealand Native team that toured Great Britain and Australia in 1888-89 also wore black, so it is possible the colours (for the Originals) could have been adopted out of consistency.

The All Blacks name comes from the black uniform the players wore, including the jersey, shorts, socks and boots. (There is a myth that a British journalist commented the team played like "All backs" and their name was a typographical error).

The All Blacks are one of the most successful sports teams in history. When they won the World Cup in 2015, they were the first team to win it three times. By 2022 New Zealand has a 76 percent winning record in test match rugby. Between their international debut in 1903 and 2023 the All Blacks have played test matches against 19 nations. Twelve of these teams had never won a game against the All Blacks during this period.

Answer: Australia

Australian cuisine reflects its multi-cultural heritage which results in a huge variety of foods and styles, with no distinctly Australian dish but more a reflection of the abundance of foodstuffs available, with emphasis on fresh and local foods. Big meat and seafood eaters, Australians revere the humble BBQ grill and it is probably more associated with Australian cuisine than any other cooking method. The humble meat pie is an unofficial national dish. This is a concoction of poorly defined meat in a thick gravy surrounded by a thick pastry (so you can eat it one-handed at the footy).

In 1951, a boilermaker from Bendigo who became a football match caterer was inspired by a competitor selling Chinese spring rolls outside the Richmond Cricket Ground. Believing these to be small and flimsy, he wanted to make something bigger and more robust. His Chiko roll was the size of a hot dog and filled with cabbage and barley, carrot, green beans, beef, beef tallow, wheat cereal, celery and onion (but no chicken) which was pulped then encased in a robust thick egg and flour pastry tube. When imitations started to appear, he placed them in distinctive bags with the name repeated several times. Over 50 years later if you purchase a package of Chiko Rolls to cook at home, there will be the same number of bags enclosed as there are rolls in the package. It should always be eaten in its own bag.

A close relative of the humble meat pie is the sausage roll. Now sausage rolls are available in the UK but this vastly inferior product is simply a sausage surrounded by puff pastry. An Australian sausage roll is as thick as a woman's wrist. It is a large roll of uncased sausage meat, heavily spiced and mixed with onion then surrounded by flaky pastry. The flaky pastry will break off and cover your shirt. This occurs to novices from other countries who are unaware of how to eat a sausage roll. Like the meat pie, its top must be smothered with tomato sauce (this is like ketchup but less sweet and thicker) which reduces extraneous flaking. It takes experience to eat a sausage roll without spilling said sauce on your shirt but a novice will get the hang of it quickly as they are freely available in most takeaway shops and if necessary, service stations.

Answer: Canada

Lacrosse is a contact sport where teams use sticks to carry, pass, catch, and shoot the ball into the opposition's goal. The game can be traced back to Native Americans as far back as the 1100s. The game was played on fields several miles long with somewhere between 100-1100 players on each side. The game had a deeply spiritual significance and was called the Creator's game. Players were called warriors and games started at dawn and finished at sundown.

By the 17th century, Jesuit missionary priests in the territory of what was to become present-day Canada documented the aspects and rules of the game and adapted it to what is close to the modern version of the game. In 1931 an indoor version of lacrosse was developed and was called box lacrosse.

In 1994 the Canadian Parliament passed the National Sports of Canada Act which stated lacrosse was "Canada's National Summer Sport", (and ice hockey was designated "Canada's National Winter Sport").

Answer: New Zealand

The Hangi is a New Zealand Maori cooking method where rocks heated by fire are used to line a pit dug 50-100 cm into the ground. Food is then covered by leaves or wire baskets then the whole assembly (umu) is covered with earth and left for two to four hours for the food to cook. Someone is left to supervise the umu to ensure no steam escapes. Foods that are cooked in an umu include all meats, seafood (kaimoana), and vegetables such as potato, kumara (sweet potato), yams, taro, pumpkin and squash. Because of the long cooking times, this special and uniquely New Zealand way of cooking is usually reserved for special occasions.

If you are lucky there will be some L and P to drink. This also uniquely NZ drink is marketed as "World Famous in New Zealand". L and P is Lemon & Paeroa and is a lemon-flavoured soft drink manufactured originally in the town of Paeroa, New Zealand. The drink is made with lemon juice mixed with naturally carbonated mineral water from a nearby spring.

Answer: Canada

According to the Canadian Government's own website, "the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms sets out those rights and freedoms that Canadians believe are necessary in a free and democratic society."

The Charter has been incorporated into the Canadian Constitution, which in general terms is a set of laws stating the basic rules about how a country operates. In Canada (as in most countries), the Constitution is the supreme law. Therefore all other laws must be consistent with the rules that the Constitution defines. By making the Charter of Rights and Freedoms part of the Canadian Constitution, the Charter gives any person in Canada (not just Canadian citizens) certain rights and freedoms such as, for example, legal rights (ie life, liberty, and personal security) and equality rights for all, and defines the official languages of Canada. There are some exceptions, where the Charter gives some rights only to citizens of Canada. Some examples of these are the right to vote (section 3). and the right "to enter, remain in and leave Canada" (section 6).

This is a very powerful document. By encapsulating the rights and freedoms in the Canadian Constitution itself, this sends a very broad message to the world as well as guaranteeing inalienable rights and freedoms for its citizens.

Answer: Australia

The Mabo decision (Mabo vs Queensland 1982) changed the foundation of land law in Australia by overturning the doctrine of terra nullius (land belonging to no one) on which British claims to possession of Australia were based. This was brought about by Eddie Mabo and other indigenous leaders who believed they were the traditional owners of Mer, one of the Torres Strait islands at the very northern extremity of Australia. This recognition inserted the legal doctrine of native title into Australian law. The Court held that this title exists today (1992 when the decision was made) in any portion of land where it has not legally been extinguished.

This was a State of Queensland decision but the Commonwealth (federal government) quickly passed the "Native Title Act 1993". This act had far-reaching implications as it attempted to ratify the implications of the decision and defined a legislative framework with which Australia's Indigenous people were able to seek recognition of their native title rights.

Answer: Canada

Mt Logan is the highest mountain in Canada at 5,959 m (19,551 ft) and the second highest in North America after Denali. Mt Logan is part of the Saint Elias Mountains which are a subgroup of the Pacific Coast Ranges, which run through southeastern Alaska, southwestern Yukon, and the northwestern part of British Columbia.

Mount Logan is still rising in height (about 0.35 mm per year) due to tectonic uplifting. It is a very cold place with temperatures around -45 °C (-49 °F) in winter and rarely rising above zero in summer. There is a significant ice cap, almost 300 metres (980 ft) thick in places.

The mountain was ascended for the first time in 1925, notable because it required a 200-mile walk to reach the base from the nearest town.

Answer: Canada

Nellie McClung (1873 - 1951) was a Canadian social activist and author, later a politician who was one of Canada's most active suffragists. Whilst early in her career she was a prominent author, she had a leadership role in the women's suffrage movement in Canada. She was responsible for helping to grant women the vote in the provinces of Alberta and Manitoba in 1916. She was then elected, in 1921, to the Alberta Legislative Assembly of Alberta, serving until 1926.

She was a member of the Famous Five and was one of five women who took the Persons Case (Edwards v Canada (AG)), which was a Canadian constitutional case that eventually decided in 1929 that women were Persons, and eligible to sit in the Senate of Canada. This was taken by the Five firstly to the Supreme Court of Canada, and then to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, in London (at that time then highest court in Canada, ironically in the UK). McClung was the first woman appointed to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation Board in 1936. She also served as a delegate to the precursor of the United Nations, the League of Nations, in Geneva, Switzerland in 1938. Controversially, she also supported eugenics. She suffered ill health in 1942 and retired from public life.

Answer: Australia

The Murray River is the longest in Australia at 2,508 km (1,558 mi). Its tributaries include the Murrumbidgee, Darling, Lachlan, Warrego and Paroo Rivers which are five of the next six longest rivers of Australia. Collectively, the catchments of these rivers comprise the Murray-Darling basin, which covers 15 per cent of the area of Australia including much of NSW and inland Victoria and parts of southern Queensland. The river rises in the Australian Alps near the southeast coast and meanders northwest to South Australia where it turns southwest for 315 km (196 km) reaching Lake Alexandrina and the Coorong (a coastal lagoon) before emptying into the Great Australian Bight.

The Murray River is of great cultural significance for Indigenous Australians: the legend is that the Murray was created by the tracks of the Great Ancestor, Ngurunderi, as he chased Pondi, (the Murray Cod - a fish). The chase started in the mountains of what is now New South Wales. Ngurunderi chased the fish and continually threw spears at the fish. But Pondi was clever - it took a weaving path, carving out the river's various tributaries.

The river passes through the fruit and salad bowl of Australia and a great deal of the water in the river is taken for crop irrigation resulting in a much reduced flow and volume of the river - it dried up on three drought occasions. Nevertheless, the Murray River remains an important part of Australia's waterways system.

Answer: New Zealand

Aoraki / Mount Cook is the highest mountain in New Zealand. at 3,724 metres (12,218 feet). It sits within the Southern Alps, the mountain range that runs the length of the South Island. The Southern Alps arose by tectonic uplifting because the Pacific and Indo-Australian Plates collided along the island's western coast. The uplifting continues, raising Aoraki / Mount Cook an average of 7 millimetres (0.28 in) each year. Aoraki / Mount Cook lies in the centre of the Alpine Fault, a 650 km long active fault that runs down the centre of the Southern Alps. This fault caused the uplift of Aoraki / Mt Cook which moves every 300 years approximately but last moved in 1717.

Aoraki / Mount Cook consists of three summits: from south to north, the Low Peak (3,593 m or 11,788 ft), the Middle Peak (3,717 m or 12,195 ft) and the High Peak (3,724 metres 12,218 feet) The summits lie slightly south and east of the main divide of the Southern Alps, with the Tasman Glacier to the east and the Hooker Glacier to the southwest.

Answer: New Zealand

The Waikato River is the longest in New Zealand. It runs 425 kilometres (264 mi) from the central highlands of the North Island into Lake Taupo, New Zealand's largest lake, before heading northwest through the Waikato Plains before it empties into the Tasman Sea just south of Auckland, at a small village called Port Waikato.

The name Waikato comes from the Maori language which translates as 'flowing water'. The Waikato River has spiritual significance for surrounding Maori tribes. The river was an important transport route for New Zealand colonists. Later it became an important source of hydroelectricity with nine hydroelectric power stations built along the river's length that generated electricity for the national grid. Hamilton, in the mid-North island, is the fourth largest city in New Zealand and is situated on the river.

Answer: Canada

The Mackenzie River System is the largest in Canada. The river's main stream is 1,738 kilometres (1,080 mi) long and flows from Great Slave Lake in the Northwest Territories into a large delta in the Arctic Ocean. Whilst the main river stays entirely within the Northwest Territories (emphasising the territory's size), the Mackenzie's tributaries reach five other Canadian provinces and territories. The ultimate headwaters of the river is Thutade Lake, in northern British Columbia, which gives it a total length of 4,241 kilometres (2,635 mi) and the 13th longest river system in the world.

The river flows through dense forest and tundra and is thinly populated with no major settlements along its route. Oil and minerals have been discovered along its path but harsh weather and remoteness from any settlements have made their extraction difficult. However, hydroelectricity production along some of its tributaries has been economically viable.

Answer: Australia

Julia Gillard was the 27th Prime Minister of Australia and served in the role for three years. Her role as PM was often controversial. She had a running battle with former PM Kevin Rudd whom she deposed in a leadership spill in 2010; consequently he deposed her in 2013 when it appeared she could not win the next election for her party. She was often criticised, unjustly, for being unmarried and without children. This eventuated in her Misogyny Speech "Not now not ever" aimed at the Opposition Leader Tony Abbott. The speech went viral and was used in many forums as an example of modern feminism.

While she was criticised for her efforts to put a price on carbon (viewed by critics as a broken promise not to introduce a carbon tax) and her failure to break the deadlock over asylum-seeker policy, her time since she left office has treated her more kindly with her launching the Royal Commission into Child Sexual Abuse in Institutional Settings seen as a major and important initiative. Also, her policy of having a National Insurance Scheme for Australians with a disability was a world-leading policy. Political commentators often place her in the middle-to-upper tier of Australian prime ministers according to a 2021 Monash University study examining who were Australia's best prime ministers.

Answer: New Zealand

Jacinda Ardern was elected the 40th Prime Minister of New Zealand in 2017 when, at 37 she became the world's youngest female head of government. She gave birth to her daughter, Neve Te Aroha, on 21 June 2018, making her only the world's second elected head of government to have a child while in office after Pakistan's Benazir Bhutto in 1990.

Known for her compassion and empathy, she received worldwide plaudits for the way she steered New Zealand through the COVID-19 crisis and how she handled the Christchurch Massacre. She left office (and politics) after six years, on her own terms and has led a successful post-politics career.

Ms Ardern was appointed a Dame Grand Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit, for services to her country in the 2023 King's Birthday and Coronation Honours.

Answer: Australia

Mount Kosciuszko is Australia's tallest mountain, at 2,228 metres (7,310 ft) above sea level. It is located on the Main Range of the Snowy Mountains in Kosciuszko in Southern New South Wales New South Wales, Australia, near the border with Victoria. Mt Townsend, Australia's second highest mountain, lies just over a kilometre to the north. As befitting a peak of such modest elevation, until 1977, it was possible to drive from the village of Charlotte Pass to within a few feet of the summit. The road has been closed since then but you can still walk up to the summit and back to the village in a day.

In 1840, an exploration party led by Polish explorer Pawel Strzelecki and James Macarthur (founder of Australia's wool industry) and Indigenous guides Charlie Tarra and Jackey left on what was to be called Strzelecki's Southern expedition, looking for new pastures. Strzelecki named the mountain in honour of Polish-Lithuanian and American freedom fighter General Tadeusz Kosciuszko as he believed it resembled Kosciuszko Mound in Krakow, Poland.