I Love a Sunburnt Country Trivia Quiz

Answer: About a third

The Tropic of Capricorn passes through five countries in southern Africa and four countries in South America as well as Australia. In Australia about a third lies north of this marker, obviously in the tropics while the other two thirds of the country is either sub-tropical or temperate in latitude.
Notable towns or cities the marker passes through are Rockhampton, Emerald and Longreach in Queensland and Alice Springs in the Northern Territory. The mining towns of Newman and Paraburdoo in Western Australia are near but not on the Tropic of Capricorn.

Answer: Yes

Australia is the smallest continent. It is also the lowest. The interior has one of the lowest rainfalls in the world and three-quarters of the land is arid or semi-arid. However the tropical coasts are monsoonal and receive heavy seasonal rains in summer. Also the temperate and subtropical coastal areas (where most of the people live) receive adequate rainfall.

This is perhaps demonstrated best by these fertile areas being used very effectively to help feed the world: Australia exports far more food than it imports.

Answer: Flattest

In 2000 after four years satellite surveillance work, NASA announced that officially that Australia was the flattest continent in the world. "Its low average elevation (300 metres) is caused by its position near the centre of a tectonic plate, where there are no volcanic or other geologic forces of the type that raise the topography of other continents". The good thing about this fact is that Australia is not susceptible to earthquakes (The 1989 Newcastle earthquake notwithstanding)

"Prominent features of Australia include the Lake Eyre Basin, ... 16 metres below sea level. This depression is one of the largest inland drainage systems in the world, covering more than 1.3 million square kilometres.

"The Nullarbor Plain, a low-lying limestone plateau, is so flat that the Trans-Australian railway runs through it in a straight line for more than 483 kilometres."

It is a bit ironic, if like most Australians you live on the eastern seaboard, you will nearly always see mountains on the horizon as the Great Dividing Range runs the length of the east coast.

Answer: Poland

In 1840, Mt Kosciusko was named by Pawel Edmund Strzelecki, a Polish explorer discovering inland New South Wales, to honour of a Polish national hero, General Tadeusz Kosciuszko This gesture was because Mr Strzelecki believed there was a resemblance to the Kosciuszko Mound, a man-made hill near Kraków. In Australia, the pronunciation has been "Australianised" to Coz-i-oss-co.
There are several native Aboriginal names for the mountain, such as Jagungal, and Tackingal, both of which mean "Table Top Mountain."

Answer: Brisbane

Brisbane, in South-East Queensland, is the largest city and capital of the state. It has a population of 2.4 million people spread along the flood plain of the Brisbane River for which the city is named. Major flooding events occurred in 1893, 1974, and 2011.
The city, notable for its Queenslander architecture, was seen as a large country town until 1982 when it hosted the 1982 Commonwealth Games. Its ability to hold world class events such as the World Expo '88, the final Goodwill Games in 2001, and the 2014 G-20 summit confirms Brisbane's ranking as a Beta world city.

Answer: Cook Strait

One of Australia's strengths and also its greatest weaknesses is that it is completely surrounded by water. As such it has much greater control over what harmful items can reach Australia. Many complain that Australia has some of the toughest quarantine laws in the world. Because it is an island country, Australia has one of the longest coastlines around the world, certainly in the top ten. Of the three Australian coastal waterways listed here, all are beautiful in their own way: The Gulf of Carpentaria sits between the North Queensland peninsula and eastern Northern Territory. It is known for its clear water and saltwater crocodiles. The Coral Sea, off the Queensland Coast, contains the beautiful Great Barrier Reef. The Bass Strait is the rugged channel separating mainland Australia from Tasmania. It contain two large islands: King and Flinders - both have spectacular scenery.

The Cook Strait separates North and South Island in New Zealand.

Answer: England

To Australians, the wide brown land we call our own is totally different to the geography of the Mother Country. By comparison, England is very green and appears very damp due to the constant supply of rain. As such it has a verdancy rarely seen in Australia.

The poet's author appears to have described England very well. Certainly when this Australian visited England, he could not help but think, Dorothy Mackeller has got the exposition of England spot on. The author's home town of Brisbane averages 2881 hours of sunshine every year compared with 1461 hours for London. Perth and Townsville receive even more sunshine than Brisbane with 3212 and 2839 hours per annum respectively.

Answer: Zinc Cream

With the combination of a hot climate and fair skin, sun protection in Australia is both a major health issue and a thriving industry. Sun Protection Factor 30+ is recommended. An SPF of 30 means it takes 30 times as long to burn skin with protection than without. SPFs of up to 50 are commercially available but offer little more than SPF 30 products. While zinc paste has been known and used for medicinal properties including sun protection since 500 BC, it wasn't until 1940 that the F.H. Faulding Company of Adelaide released a sun block based on zinc oxide.

This chemical does not exist naturally in nature and must be manufactured. Whilst the term 'sunblock' can no longer be used, it differentiates physical blocking of Ultra-Violet A and B rays by physically blocking (reflecting) the harmful rays whilst commercial sunscreens like Coppertone developed around the same time concentrated on chemical (absorption) of the harmful rays.

Some sunscreens only block UVB rays. Zinc oxide paste is not water soluble and therefore is visible.

The most common use of zinc oxide sunscreens in Australia is to daub the face with the coloured zinc cream of your favourite sporting team when attending their events (even when a game is playing at night).

Answer: False

It IS hot, but it's known as The Red Centre because of the red soil.
The Red Centre is one of the hottest regions of Australia and is the lower part of the Northern Territory centred around the town of Alice Springs, the only reasonably sized town. It is sometimes called Central Australia. It is poorly defined but roughly spans the huge area between the two Northern Territory north/south boundaries, the South Australian Border to the south and somewhere south of Tennant Creek to the north. This is a culturally sacred part of the country as it contains both Uluru and Kata Tjuta.
The land here is ancient and the redness of the soil is due to the high concentration of ferric oxide.

Answer: Great Victoria Desert

The ten deserts in Australia are nearly all interconnected occurring in western Queensland, most of southern Northern Territory, North and west South Australia and the eastern half of Western Australia. Australia's smallest desert, the Pedirka Desert, the only one not connected to another desert, is its most central but it is surrounded by the Red Centre which is classified as arid but not desert.

The two largest deserts are predominantly in Western Australia: The Great Sandy Desert and the Great Victorian Desert occupy collectively 238 000 square kilometres or 3.5 and 4.5% of the Australian land mass respectively.