Fun Facts About Australia
The name Australia comes from the Latin Terra Australis Incognito which means the Unknown Southern Land.
Australia is the smallest, flattest, and driest inhabited continent in the world. It is the only country which is also a whole continent.
Urban dwellers - Australia is one of the world's most urbanised countries, with about 70 per cent of the population living in the 10 largest cities.
The average world population density is 117 people per square mile, that of the United States 76 and that of Macao is 69,000. Australia's is only 6.
One in every four persons is either a first or second generation settler to Australia, a trend started after World War II.
People: 92% Caucasian descent, 7% Asian descent, 1% Aboriginal descent.
Emus and kangaroos cannot walk backwards, and are on the Australian coat of arms for that reason.
When a specimen of the platypus was first sent to England, it was believed the Australians had played a joke by sewing the bill of a duck onto a rat.
Box Jelly fish - The box jellyfish is considered the world's most venomous marine creature. The box jellyfish has killed more people in Australia than stonefish, sharks and crocodiles combined.
Lung fish - Queensland is home to lung fish, a living fossil from the Triassic period 350 million years ago.
A 10kg Tasmanian Devil is able to exert the same biting pressure as a 40kg dog. It can also eat almost a third of its body weight in a single feeding.
The Salt Water Crocodile is the worlds largest reptile. They can be found living in the northern coastal regions of Australia. They normally grow to around 4 metres in length but have been recorded up to 7 metres (23 feet).
The Australian Lyre Bird is the world's best imitator; able to mimic the calls of 15 different species of birds in their locality and string the calls into a melody. Also been known to mimic the sound mobile phones.
The echidna is such a unique animal that it is classified in a special class of mammals known as monotremes, which it shares only with the platypus. The echidna lays eggs like a duck but suckles its young in a pouch like a kangaroo. For no apparent reason, it may decide to conserve energy by dropping its body temperature to 4 degrees and remain at that temperature from 4 to 120 days. Lab experiments have shown that the echidna is more intelligent that a cat and it has been seen using its spikes, feet and beaks to climb up crevices like a mountaineer edging up a rock chimney.
Sydney - Australia's first and largest city. Also known as Sin City. Wanted to be Capital of Australia but its convict stigma counted against it.
Melbourne - Wanted to be the Capital of Australia on the basis that it was the home to the Australian establishment and was not founded by Convicts. (Founded by John Batman; son of a Convict)
Canberra - Because Sydney and Melbourne kept bickering over which city should be the capital of Australia, it was decided that neither of them would be capital and instead, a new capital would be built in the middle of them both.
Bludger - Australians refer to lazy people as 'bludgers'. The word is derived from 'bludgeoner' which is a prostitute's standover man.
Lost Prime Minister - In 1967, Harold Holt, the Prime Minister of Australia went for a swim at the beach and was never seen again. Theories about his disappearance include kidnapping by a Russian submarine, eaten by a shark or being carried away by the tide.
Kalgoorlie in Western Australia is the largest electorate spanning 2,225,278 square kilometres.
The Anna Creek cattle station in the South Australian Outback is by far the largest working cattle station (ranch) in the world. It covers a huge area of some 34,000 square kilometres. This makes the station bigger than the country of Belgium. By comparison, the largest ranch in the USA is around 6,000 square kilometres.
The population of Australia is more sheep than people; in fact, there are roughly ten sheep in Australia for every person. As a result, Australia is the largest exporter in the world of lamb meat and wool.
Australia's most famous animals are unique to Australia only.
When many people think of wildlife in Australia, they think of such animals as koala bears and kangaroos. Because Australia is an island and not connected to any other land, it has developed its own wildlife. The kangaroo, koala bear, emu, and kookaburra are animals that are only found in the wild in Australia.
Australia is a smart country.
Presently, Australia claims to have a 100% literacy rate, one of the highest in the world. Perhaps this is why they read more newspapers per capita than any country in the world.
Another one of the interesting Australia facts is that Western Australia, the largest state in the country, is almost the same size as the entire Western Europe.
The Great Victoria Desert, the largest desert in the continent, is about one and a half times the size of the United Kingdom.
Australia is the only continent that does not have an active volcano on it.
When the British began settling in Australia in the late 1700's, it was mainly to maintain a land to send their prisoners to. Currently, about 25% of the Australian population are direct descendants of those convicts that were transported to Australia.
Despite this fact, the homicide rate in Australia is 1.8 for every 100,000 people. The United States, formed by the religious missionaries, has a homicide rate of 6.3 per 100,000. This is around 400% greater than Australia.
There are around 20 million people living in Australia. Strangely, there are around 150 million sheep in Australia. Due to this, the country is the largest exporter of sheep wool and meat in the world.
After Athens, the second most Greek populated area in the world is Melbourne.
Australia has over 700 different species of reptiles.
The World's largest reptile, the Saltwater Crocodile, is found in the Northern coastal regions of Australia. An adult male saltwater crocodile's weight is 600 to 1,000 kilograms (1,300–2,200 lb) and length is normally 4.1 to 5.5 metres (13–18 ft), though mature males can be 6 metres (20 ft) or more and weigh 1,300 kilograms (2,900 lb) or larger.
There are about 1500 species of spiders found in Australia. Owing to this, on an average a person living in Australia ends up swallowing 3 spiders every year!
Australia also boasts of the most amount of venomous snakes in the world.
The Australian Eucalyptus is the fastest growing tree in the world.
