Australian Place Names- What Do They Mean? Quiz

Answer: Cockatoo

Cockatoos are very social and VERY noisy. They are good talkers as pets, but can be rather destructive, too- they can chew through almost anything!

There are several breeds of cockatoo in Australia, but the sulphur-crested, shown here, is one of the most common, and most widespread.

Cockatoo Island, in Sydney Harbour, used to be a convict gaol and ship-building facility, but is now a heritage-listed site. It is accessible by ferry, and well worth a visit. Cockatoo, in Victoria, is a pretty little town in the Dandenong Ranges, just to the east of the capital, Melbourne.

Answer: Waratah

This is the most common variety, Telopea speciosissima. The waratah is the state flower of New South Wales. They are very large- this one is bigger than my fist- and very showy.

The banksia is also a big, colourful flower, named after Captain James Cook's botanist, Joseph Banks. Acacia is the name of the many types of wattle, and Rosebud, south of Melbourne, is named after a shipwreck, not a flower.

Waratah, the suburb, is only about 6 km from the city centre of Newcastle, the second largest city in New South Wales, after Sydney.

Answer: Eucalyptus oil

The Blue Mountains can be seen from the western half of Sydney. The blue haze comes from the millions of gum trees in the area. Much of the area is classified as National Park, and it is a great day trip tourist destination. See koalas, kangaroos, wallabies, platypus, wombats and even dingoes, as well as many different types of flora.

The soil is not based on turquoise, but it is generally sandstone. There are many small streams in the area, and lots of waterfalls, but no lakes. While there are a couple of dozen small towns in the mountains, pollution could not be considered as a major problem.

Answer: Iron Knob

Iron ore has been mined in the area from the 1880s, and at one point the area supplied almost all the ore in Australia. Iron from Iron Knob was used in the construction of the Sydney Harbour Bridge in the 1920s and 30s.

To the best of my knowledge, the wrong answers do not exist in Australia.

Answer: Darwin

That friendly pooch is a beagle, the same name as Charles Darwin's ship. Darwin visited the port in 1837 on one of his voyages of discovery.

The town's original name, Palmerston, came from a then-future British Prime Minister, and the city was renamed in 1911. Darwin was bombed during WWII, with several hundred lives being lost, and it was destroyed by Cyclone Tracy on Christmas Day, 1974, but was totally rebuilt into the flourishing city of today.

Answer: Lightning Ridge

Lightning Ridge is a small outback town, near the Queensland border, and is generally very hot. It is the world's major supplier of black opals, and also the birthplace of Paul Hogan, star of 'Crocodile Dundee'. White Cliffs is another opal town, but produces white opals- it is about 700 km west of Lightning Ridge.

Bay of Storms is a location in the 'World of Warcraft' computer game and Thunder Bay is in Canada.

Answer: Hay

The original name came from a farming family that settled in the district. The newer name came from a NSW Government Minister named John Hay. The climate and land around Hay is not really suited to growing hay; there is limited irrigation and the rainfall is only around 14 inches per year.

Answer: Windsor

The fertile plains beside the Hawkesbury River supplied much of the food to the new colony of Sydney Cove. It is quite a historic town, with many buildings dating from the early 1800s.

The original Windsor, from which the British royal family took its name, dates back to time of Edward the Confessor, in the 12th century.

Many towns around the globe share the name, with four in Australia, one each in Ireland and New Zealand, three in Canada and a whopping twenty in US.

The hint? That is a type of Windsor knot, allegedly invented by George V.

Answer: Frederick Broome

Pearling began in Broome in the 1850s, with the divers mainly being Chinese, Japanese or Aboriginal. The work was dangerous, with the 'bends', shark attacks and cyclones ensuring a high mortality rate. Many changes over the decades have made the job a lot safer, and Broome is now one of the main pearl-producing areas in the world.

Tourism is also a big drawcard. The 'Staircase to the Moon' is a spectacular vision combining a setting moon and a low tide.

Basil Brush is a British fox puppet, and Jack Straw was a British Labour politician. George Handel was a German-born composer, probably best known for the oratorio 'Messiah'.

Answer: 1770

1770, or Seventeen-Seventy (its formal name), is on the Queensland Coast, inside the Great Barrier Reef. It was only the second place that Cook and his ship, HMS Endeavour, had landed on the mainland of what would later be known as Australia.

My photo is of a calendar, with the date of his landing, May 24, 1770, highlighted.

The other dates are all significant in Australian history. In 1616, the Dutchman Dirk Hartog got blown off course while heading for Batavia (now Jakarta, Indonesia), and landed on the west coast of the country. 1788 was when the First Fleet landed in Sydney Cove, with the first settlers, mainly convicts. In 1901, the six states combined to form the Commonwealth of Australia.