Oceania World Heritage Sites Trivia Quiz

Answer: Cockatoo Island

Cockatoo Island is the largest island in Sydney Harbour. Approximately 166,000 convicts were sent to Australia from Great Britain between 1787 and 1868. The island was an ideal location to hold some of these convicts because it was surrounded by dangerous waters. Prisoners were put to hard labour there, quarrying sandstone to build their accommodation and staff buildings. This sandstone was also used in constructing part of the sea wall at Circular Quay. Convicts built Fitzroy Dock on the island as well, the first dry dock in Australia. All of this labour was carried out with men shackled in irons and living under incredibly harsh conditions.

Other old penal colonies and constructions in or surrounding Sydney include the Great North Road, Hyde Park Barracks and the Old Government House.

The island today is a cultural venue and part of the Sydney Harbour Federation Trust. Tourists can visit Cockatoo Island, take guided tours or even camp out there overnight. It is also an ideal location to watch the Sydney New Years Eve firework display which has become a popular attraction throughout the world. Oh, and the coat-hanger bridge? That's the famous Sydney Harbour Bridge which, so the locals say, bears a remarkable resemblance to a coat-hanger.

Answer: Royal Exhibition Building, Melbourne

The Royal Exhibition Building with its surrounding Carlton Gardens was designated a World Heritage Site because of its "historical, architectural, aesthetic, social and scientific (botanical) significance".

It was created by Joseph Reed and completed in 1880. It was once the tallest building in Melbourne, with the central dome influenced by the design of Florence Cathedral in Italy. The citizens of Melbourne wanted to make their city more prominent in the world, so they hosted two World Fairs there. The first of these in 1880 attracted more than 1.3 million people during an eight month period, and the second in 1888 attracted even more. The building today is one of the oldest remaining exhibition halls in the world.

The Royal Exhibition Building is surrounded by the beautiful Carlton Gardens, designed during the Victorian period. It features many exquisite European trees, including oak, elm, cedar and poplar. The wildlife couldn't be more different to an English country garden however, as it is a natural habitat for Australian animals such as possums and kookaburras, just to name a few. And of course, the odd bunyip or two.

Answer: Kakadu

Kakadu is enormous at almost 8,000 square miles or 20,000 square kilometres. Comparatively speaking, it's half the size of Switzerland. Included in its boundaries are four river systems, major landforms, and (for which it is most famous) an astounding variety of beautiful wild life. Some of these include almost 300 species of Australia's lovely wild birds, 1,600 different plant species and 60 different species of mammals. It's also replete with thousands of aboriginal cultural sites dating back over 40,000 years. These represent for all Australians today a link between the past and the present.

Unfortunately, Kakadu contains large deposits of uranium, gold and other minerals as well. These proved an overwhelming lure for large mining companies which had a devastating effect on parts of this beautiful site over the years. Though only one uranium mine still remains, tourists have now discovered Kakadu and come there in their thousands from all over the world. Though less dramatic, they too have an impact on the land. Fortunately the fear of crocodiles, huge poisonous snakes and death adders are somewhat of a deterrent. Don't go in the water!

Answer: Western Australia

Of course we could be facetious and say every state in Australia has bays full of sharks, but fortunately, not all are listed as world heritage sites

The bay is full of dolphins, dugongs, sharks, manta rays, whales (don't tell the Japanese!), turtles, a huge variety of fish, and the largest seagrass bank in the world. The immediate surrounds include 250 species of birds, 26 species of mammals and - shudder - 150 species of reptiles. Hamelin Pool, located within the bay, contains the "world's most diverse and abundant colony of living stromatolites, providing some of the earliest records of life on earth". Wow!

The coastline of this striking area is over 1,500 kilometres long. Overlooking 300 kilometres of this are haunting limestone cliffs. And what do you think the population numbers are in this entire area? Fewer than 1,000 - so the area is relatively untouched by man. Isn't that impressive? The entire bay is dotted with beautiful islands. One of these is the historic Dirk Hartog Island, so named because of the landing there in 1616 by the Dutch explorer of the same name. Just to keep that in perspective for you, Captain Cook didn't land in Australia till 1770. However, from Cook's visit sprang Australia's settlement by Europeans. All that sprang from Hartog's visit was a pewter plate which he nailed to a tree, marking his landing. And since then, the Dutch have taken that back. The nerve of them. Our first piece of crockery too.

Answer: Timber

Port Arthur is one of Australia's most significant historical sites from the days of early European settlement. It's a strange and eerie place to visit today. It only existed as a timber station for three years. Then, from 1833 to 1853, it became the site to which Australia's most hardened and vicious convicts were sent. Build along the lines of English philosopher Jeremy Bentham's ideals of welfare and the abolishment of physical punishment, Port Arthur was the exact opposite of those ideals.

Located on a narrow peninsula, it was fenced off and guarded by soldiers and vicious half-starved dogs. The building itself was a model design, but within its walls, it was renowned for a chilling new method of punishing convicts - that of psychological torment and torture. Known as the "Silent System" of punishment, prisoners were hooded, isolated and deprived of all light and sound for months at a time. Many were driven insane as a result. Though held up as the model prison system of the time, Port Arthur's inmates were also treated more harshly than in any of the many penal colonies dotted around the nation, with the daily lash never ceasing.

Even more pitiful today, located on a tiny islet not far from the prison, are the remains of the unmarked graves holding all that is left of all the prisoners who died there in that terrible time. It's called the Isle of the Dead. Port Arthur totally closed down in 1877. If you listen carefully today, as you walk through its dark, eerie and deserted stone corridors, you can still hear the despairing cries of its inmates echoing around its walls.

Answer: Marshall Islands

Sixty-seven of these fearsome weapons were detonated on these islands during this period - including the largest nuclear test ever carried out by the US. By 1956, the Nuclear Atomic Commission stated that this sorrowful area was "by far the most contaminated place in the world". One of the islands was destroyed altogether. Today the negative effects on this area are still being experienced, with many islanders developing cancer, and babies born with dreadful birth defects.

Indeed, this site really does deserve its listing on the world heritage site - as a warning for all mankind.

Answer: Vanuatu

Roy Mata lived in the 13th century in this area. He was a very powerful chief whose grave was discovered in 1967, along with remnants of his settlement and residence. Such was their importance to the people of this nation that this site has been included on the World Heritage listing. Roy Mata united the islands under one rule, and a peaceful rule at that. Evidence of his life and rule can be seen on the nation's islands of Efate, Lelepa and Artok. Today all the social reforms that this great leader instigated way back all those centuries ago are still seen in everyday life of modern Vanuatu.

Answer: Rapanui

Easter Island is the most south eastern point of the Polynesian triangle, and technically is one of the external territories of Chile. Some 887 of its magnificent statues can still be seen there today. Several of these weigh over 80 tons, and each one represented the dead patriarch of a family line. The Rapa Nui people who build these mysterious guardians of their island were a Stone Age people, but very considerably advanced on other Stone Age groups world wide of the same period. In addition to their mighty monuments, they also constructed large public buildings of stone as well, and residential houses, complete with chicken coops out the back!

But even more amazingly, this so called Stone Age people, the Rapa Nui, had even developed their own script. Now that is really astonishing for that time period, and on an island so far away from all other known civilisations. Let's not get too enraptured by these early civilised people though. At one stage they were also cannibals.

The history of the Rapa Nui people degenerated over time as one disaster after another hit the island and its inhabitants. Today all that remains of perhaps one of the most developed advanced early people of the world are its frightening statues glaring menacingly out over the ocean. The island, with its intriguing and mysterious history, has been described on the world sites listing as "a remarkable cultural phenomenon". And indeed it is.

Answer: Bennelong Point

Bennelong was the name of an aboriginal man whom our first governor, Arthur, had kidnapped, so that he could act as an interlocutor between the first European settlers and the native population. He and Governor became good friends along the way, but that still didn't stop Bennelong eventually escaping and having Phillip speared in the shoulder. Done in the friendliest way possible of course.

UNESCO has described the Sydney Opera House as "one of the 20th century's most distinctive buildings and one of the most famous performing art centres in the world". Designed in 1957 by the Danish architect Jorn Utzon, following an international competition to do so, it took the arguing bureaucrats of our nation almost another twenty years to come to a decision about it and commence the building. It was completed in 1973, but by then the architect was so fed up with us that he had resigned in disgust.

Apparently, because of the building's unique roof design, which is said to be in the shape of sails blowing in the wind, this uniqueness was so confusing that the builders tried to install them back to front. Quite possibly this is an urban legend, and Australians do love to pull a leg or two, but at any rate, it still makes a good yarn. The first performer at the still incomplete building was the American great, Paul Robeson. That was in 1960 and why they had the poor man performing in half a building is anybody's guess. Gosh, designed by a Dane, first performed in by an American, dyslexic builders, arguments galore between the committees, the architect and the builders, a kidnapped aboriginal spearing the first governor - can you guess the name of the first opera performed there? It was Sergei Prokofiev's "War and Peace". Very appropriate.

Answer: Cremation

This area comprises 2,400 square kilometres in size, and is located in the south west of the state. It's dry, dry, dry. All the lakes are dry. The Lake Mungo remains are three sets of fossilised skeletons - almost 40,000 years old - said to be the "oldest anatomically modern human remains found in Australia". And they were cremated. On the death of one poor fellow, he was firstly burned, then cooled off, smashed up, and burned again. This was to ensure he didn't come back to haunt his people. I'd say that was a certainty by the time they finished with him. Two unusual features about his skeleton that surprised archaeologists when it was found, were his age (quite old), and, at 6 foot 5 inches, his unusual height for that period of time.

Because it is believed by scientists today that all mankind descended from a common ancestry in Africa that eventually spread all over the world, here is something even more interesting: DNA testing of the bones found indicate that Mungo Man was not a distant ancestor of modern Australian aboriginal, or any of the human race anywhere in the world, but an entirely DIFFERENT sub-species that existed prior to us all. Oh my goodness, and what a controversy this has caused!