Come and Visit us Down Under Trivia Quiz

Answer: January 1, 1901

The Commonwealth of Australia came into being on January 1, 1901 when the British Parliament allowed the six separate states to govern as one. Edmund Barton (1849-1920) became our first Prime Minister. January 26, 1788 is the date in which Capt. Arthur Phillip landed at Sydney Cove with the First Fleet from Great Britain. December 3, 1854 is the date of the battle of the Eureka Stockade in Ballarat, Victoria when gold miners rebelled against colonial authority installed by Great Britain.

The miners fought against colonial forces and the rebellion resulted in 27 deaths. April 25, 1916 is commemorated as ANZAC Day when Australian and New Zealand forces stormed ashore in Gallipoli, Turkey during WWI. ANZAC Day is a public holiday throughout Australia and New Zealand when we remember those that lost their lives in all conflicts.

Answer: Don Bradman

Don Bradman (1908-2001) is considered the greatest batsman to have played the game of cricket. Upon retirement in 1948 after 20 years of test cricket his batting average was 99.94. In over 140 years of test cricket the nearest batting averages to him are in the 60s.

In 1949 he became Sir Donald Bradman. Dawn Fraser was the first swimmer to win the same event at three consecutive Olympic Games winning gold for the 100m freestyle in 1956, 1960 and 1964. Rod Laver won the tennis grand slam (Wimbledon, French, US and Australian) on two occasions, the first in 1962 as an amateur and in 1969 during the open era. Ian Thorpe won five Olympic and thirteen World Championship swimming gold medals during 1999-2003.

Answer: Golden wattle

Our national tree is the golden wattle; when in flower it is green and gold which are also our national sporting colours. The golden wattle also appears on our Coat of Arms and is native to southeastern Australia. Most of the 700 varieties of eucalyptus trees are native to Australia.

The koala's entire diet is based on only a few species of the eucalyptus tree. The eucalyptus is one of the tallest plants in the world reaching up to 200 feet(60m) in height. They are more commonly known as "gum trees".

The bottlebrush is native to Australia and has been cultivated in many other countries. The waratah is mainly a rainforest tree and better known as the Queensland waratah tree.

Answer: Vegemite

First produced in 1923, Vegemite is a food spread which you put on toast, crumpets, sandwiches and dry biscuits. It is an iconic product that has been in Australian kitchens for decades. However, it is one of those products that you either like it or dislike it.
Mortein is a commonly used Australian brand of an insecticide. Hills Hoist is a common height-adjustable clothes line found in most Australian backyards in the 1950s and 1960s. Tim Tam is a chocolate coated biscuit and went on the market in Australia in 1964. Ironically it is named after the winner of the Kentucky Derby in 1958.

Answer: 6

The two predominant animals seen on the Coat of Arms are the red kangaroo and the emu supporting the shield. These two native animals cannot walk backwards so they project the nation going forward.
The shield also depicts the symbols of the six states of the country. On the shield are four other animals, being two lions (NSW and Tasmania) a piping shrike (SA) and a black swan (WA). There are no animals on the badges of Victoria and Queensland.

Answer: K'gari

K'gari, formerly known as Fraser Island, is the largest sand island in the world with dimensions of 120km in length and approximately 24km in width. It lies off the southern coast of Queensland about 250km north of the state capital, Brisbane. The island has an abundance of fauna (mammals, dingoes, reptiles and amphibians and birds).

It also has diverse flora with over 865 species of plants on the island. Kangaroo Island is 4,405 sq. km and lies off the south west coast of Adelaide, South Australia.

The island is home to many species of wild life and striking rock formations. Over one third of the island is protected nature reserves. Rottnest Island is a small island of 19 sq. km off the coast of Perth, Western Australia. The island is accessible by ferry and is a protected nature reserve.

It is home to the quokka, a small wallaby marsupial. Phillip Island is a day trip from Melbourne and is most popular for the Penguin Parade when small penguins come ashore in groups.

Answer: Advance Australia Fair

"Advance Australia Fair" was composed by Scottish born Peter Dodds McCormick (1834-1916) and was first performed in 1878. It was sung by a choir at the inauguration of the Commonwealth of Australia on January 1, 1901. It replaced the national anthem of "God Save the Queen" as our national anthem in 1984.
"Waltzing Matilda" is our best known bush ballad, written in 1895, and considered by many as our "unofficial national anthem". "My Country" is a patriotic poem written by Dorothea Mackellar (1885-1968) about Australia, first composed in 1904 and published in 1908.

Answer: Sydney Harbour Bridge

The Sydney Harbour Bridge is known locally as "The Coathanger" due to its arch based design. The bridge connects the Sydney CBD and the North Shore. The bridge carries motor vehicle, train, bicycle and pedestrian traffic and was opened in 1932. The Sydney Opera House is located at Sydney Harbour and is one of our most famous buildings, having opened in 1973.

The West Gate Bridge is located in Melbourne and during construction in 1970 some piers collapsed and 35 construction workers were killed. Construction resumed but the bridge was only completed and opened for traffic in 1978.

The MCG has been on the same site since 1853 and over the years it has developed into one of the largest stadiums in the world (the largest in Australia) which has a capacity for 100,000 spectators.

Answer: Wild dog

The dingo is a type of dog which is wild and native to Australia; the earliest known skeletons of the dingo date back 3-5000 years. The head is the widest part of the body and is quite large compared to the rest of the body. They still roam wild across the continent, however, many have been domesticated. A baby kangaroo is known as a "joey".

At birth it is only about 2cm long and weighs less than a gram. It climbs into the mother's pouch and stays there for about nine months. The most famous indigenous musical instrument is the didgeridoo.

It is a wind instrument which dates back 1,500 years. The outside toilet is commonly known as a "dunny" or "dunny can" and has also been referred to as a "thunder box".

Answer: Geoffrey Rush

Geoffrey Rush was born in Toowoomba, Queensland in 1951. He is one of a select band of actors to have won the Triple Crown of Acting being an Academy, Emmy and Tony Award. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his leading role in the 1996 film "Shine". Errol Flynn (1909-1959) was born in Battery Point, Tasmania and achieved fame for his swashbuckling roles in Hollywood movies during the 1930s and 1940s. Errol Flynn never won an Academy Award. Nicole Kidman was born in Honolulu, Hawaii in 1967 when her Australian parents were temporarily working in the USA.

She won the Academy Award for Best Actress in the 2002 drama film "The Hours". Peter Finch (1916-1977) was born in London, England. From the age of ten years he was bought up in Sydney, Australia and served in the Australian Army during WWII.

He went to England in 1948 to pursue an acting career. He was the first actor to receive a posthumous Academy Award for Best Actor role his role as Howard Beale in the 1976 film "Network". Ironically the second actor to receive an acting Academy Award posthumously was also an Australian, being Heath Ledger in 2008 for his role in "The Dark Knight".

Answer: A monolith

A monolith is a single mass of stone or rock of which Uluru is one of the largest in the world. It stands 348 metres high and has a circumference of 9.4 kms. It is a sandstone formation with most of its bulk laying underground. A batholith is a large mass of rock which could be a mountain or mountain range. Examples could be Stone Mountain (USA), Kosciusko (Australia) and Sugarloaf Mountain (Brazil).

A fault- block mountain is made up of large blocks of rock that can be hundreds of kilometres in length that have rifted because of the earths crust. Death Valley (USA) is a smaller version but the East African Rift zone is a larger example.

A volcano is an opening in the earth's crust that spews out molten rock and gases.

Answer: Andrew "Banjo" Paterson

Andrew "Banjo" Paterson (1864-1941) was an Australian poet, journalist and author. His poems include "Clancy of the Overflow", "The Man from Snowy River" and the poem considered to be the unofficial Australia national anthem "Waltzing Matilda". He mainly wrote about the outback and rural areas of Australia. Henry Lawson (1867-1922) is considered one of Australia's greatest short story writers. Dorothea MacKellar (1885-1968) was a writer and poet and her greatest poem which is well known in Australia is "My Country". Oodgeroon Noonuccal (1920-1993) born Kathleen Jean Mary Ruska was an Australian Aboriginal artist, poet, educator and political activist.

Answer: Box jellyfish

All of the animals mentioned above are very dangerous, along with many others not listed here.
The box jellyfish is normally found in the waters of Northern Australia during October to May which is known as the "stinger season". It is estimated that the box jellyfish contains enough venom to kill 60 adult humans. In the past 150 years between 60-80 deaths have been recorded.
The Sydney funnel web spider has a very strong venom and is very aggressive. The venom is considered twice as strong as cyanide. The Eastern brown snake is rated alongside the inland taipan snake as our most deadly. However, being fast and aggressive, the Eastern Brown snake results in at least half of snake deaths in Australia. The Salt Water crocodile is the largest living reptile in the world and is known as a "saltie". It terms of mass weight it can reach 1,000kgs. In relation to other deadly animals in Australia it averages about one death per year.

Answer: Ned Kelly

Edward "Ned" Kelly (1855-1880) is our most famous bushranger, outlaw, bank robber and gang leader. He and his gang killed three policemen in the late 1870s. He famously wore a suit of bullet proof armor in his final shootout with the authorities. He was captured and sentenced to death by hanging. Ben Hall (1837-1865) was also a bushranger and was killed by police at Billabong Creek in May 1865. Joseph Theodore Leslie "Squizzy" Taylor (1888-1927) was a Melbourne gangster and died of gunshot wounds in a fight with a rival gangster. Ronald Ryan (1925-1967) was a petty thief and robber and during an escape from the Melbourne Pentridge Prison he killed a prison warden.

After 19 days on the run he was finally captured and was the last person to be legally executed in Australia.

Answer: The Melbourne Cup

All of the above events take place in the city of Melbourne. The Melbourne Cup is an annual thoroughbred horse race that takes place on the first Tuesday in November. The race dates back to 1861. The Australian Open tennis tournament and the first Grand Slam Tennis event of the year, takes place annually in January.

The AFL Grand Final is the final game of the season in Australian Rules Football. It takes place at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) in later September or early October and the ground has a capacity of 100,000.

The Formula 1 Grand Prix takes place on the road circuit around Albert Park Lake in March each year.

Answer: All of these

Those mentioned make up the three elements of our national flag. The Union Jack is in the top left corner of the flag and represents our British heritage as a country. The Commonwealth Star has seven points which represent our six states and territories. The Southern Cross is a constellation of five stars that can only be seen in the Southern Hemisphere. All of the six stars represented on the flag are in white against the blue background.

Answer: 1967

In 1967 an Australian Parliamentary referendum voted 90.8% in favour to amend the Constitution to allow Indigenous Australians the right to vote and the right of citizenship. Prior to 1967 and after, we have had many Indigenous Australians who have performed bravely on battle fields in many overseas conflicts, many who have also successfully competed on the world sporting stage and also the arts including painting, literature, theatre and film.

Answer: Melbourne

Melbourne has a public tram network that consists of 250kms of track, nearly 500 trams, 24 routes and over 1,700 tram stops. Moscow (Russia) has 208kms of tram track. The Gold Coast has a canal system which is bigger than both Venice and Amsterdam together.

There are 890kms of constructed water frontage for over 80,000 residents. Sydney is the largest city of Australia with a population of just over five million. Because it could not be decided which of Melbourne or Sydney was to be the capital city of the country, it was decided to build a city between the two.

Therefore Canberra was built to be the capital city of the country. The city was established in 1913 and means "meeting place" from the indigenous language, Ngunnawal.

Answer: Murray River

The Murray River is 2,508kms in length and a large portion of it is the border between the states of Victoria and New South Wales.

The Swan River is 72kms in length and flows through Perth, the capital city of our largest state, Western Australia. The River Torrens is only 85 kms in length but flows through the city of Adelaide which is the capital city of the state of South Australia. The Yarra River is 242 kms in length and runs through the city of Melbourne which is the capital city of the state of Victoria. The locals refer to it as "the river that runs upside down" as they say the mud is on the top and the water below as the river is continually brown in colour.
Note: We do have quite a few rivers that exceed 1,000kms, but I chose to mention some of those in our state capital cities.

Answer: 90%

90% of the nations population of approximately 25 million live in coastal regions. This is mainly due to the fact that the majority of the interior is non habitable.

As of 2012 approximately 25% of the population were born overseas. This is expected to climb over the coming years. I used the number 20, simply because that is approximately the number of hours per day that a koala sleeps. It is estimated that 80% of the population participate in some form of gambling.