Original Title reads: “Australian Specials: A Mosaic of Extraordinary Features”
In case you’ve forgotten, we are special aren’t we? … says a Dinky-die Aussie
- The Australian Alps get more snow than the Swiss Alps.
- 90% of Australians live on the coast.
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AND
- Tasmania has the cleanest air in the world.
- The Great Barrier Reef is the largest ecosystem in the world. It is made up of nearly 3,000 individual reefs and can be seen from space.
- Australia has over 60 separate wine regions.
- Fraser Island is the largest sand island in the world.
- The Indian Pacific train has the longest straight section of train track in the world.
- The Great Ocean Road is the world’s largest war memorial.
- 80% of Australian animals are unique to Australia.
- 5 km of Ayers Rock (Uluru) is underground.
- Australia has the world’s longest golf course measuring more than 1,350kms long.
- Australia is home to 21 of the world’s 25 most venomous snakes.
- Perth is the only city in the world which can have aircraft land in its CBD.
- Australia is bigger than we realise, it’s almost the same size as mainland USA.
- The largest cattle station in the world is located in Australia, Anna Creek Ranch in South Australia, and it’s bigger than Israel.
- The first Police Force in Australia was made up of the most well-behaved convicts.
- It would take around 29 years to visit one new Aussie beach every day – there are 10,685 of them!
- AFL invented to keep cricketers fit in the off season, there are claims that the game may have been influenced by Indigenous Australians.
- The world’s largest rock is not actually Ayers Rock (Uluru), but Mount Augustus in Western Australia & actually twice the size of Ayers Rock.
- Australia is the 6th largest country in the world
- There are 1 million camels that roam wild in Australia’s deserts, the largest number of purebred camels in the world, they are exported to the Middle East.
- You can fly from Perth to Melbourne faster than you can fly from one end of Western Australia to the other.
- There are over 60 different types of kangaroos, and a baby kangaroo when born is only about 2 centimetres long.
- Aboriginal culture is the oldest on Earth – it is estimated that the continent’s original inhabitants, the aboriginal people, have been in Australia for between 40,000-60,000 years.
- Australia has 19 World Heritage Listed sites.
- 91% of the country is covered by native vegetation.
- 33% of Australians were born in another country.
- Over 300 different languages and dialects are spoken in Australia including 45 Indigenous languages. In fact, 21% of Australians don’t speak English at home!
- WA is home to what is believed to be the oldest evidence of life on Earth – the Stromatolites.
- Australia is the only continent in the world without an active volcano.
- In Australia, sheep out number people 2.5 to 1 (in 2020).
- Australia was the second country in the world to give women the right to vote in 1902.
- Per capita, Australians spend more money on gambling than any other nation, with over 80 percent of Australian adults engaging in gambling of some kind.
- Canberra was selected as the capital because Sydney and Melbourne could not stop arguing which city should be the capital.
- Australia is home to the longest fence in the world, the Dingo Fence. Originally built to keep dingos away from fertile land, the fence is now 5,614 km long.
- The Australian dollar is considered to be the most advanced currency in the world – its waterproof, made of polymer and notoriously hard to counterfeit.
- Australia is the only continent covered by a single country.
- The world’s oldest fossil was discovered in Australia – 3.4 billion years old.
- Australia has around 600 varieties of eucalypt trees.
- Australia was one of the founding members of the United Nations.
- Stonemasons in Australia instituted the 8-hour working day back in 1856.
- In Aboriginal culture women are not allowed to play to the didgeridoo.
- The venom of the elusive platypus can kill a small dog.
- Australia’s most deadly marine animal is the Box Jellyfish, and is responsible for more deaths per year than snakes, sharks and saltwater crocodiles.
- The only two mammals in the world that lay eggs are found in Australia – the echidna and platypus.
- Before the arrival of humans, Australia was home to megafauna, three-metre tall kangaroos, seven-metre long goanna’s, horse-sized ducks, and a marsupial lion the size of a leopard.
- Both kangaroos and emus lack the ability to walk backwards. This was the reason they were chosen for Australia’s coat of arms – to symbolise a country always moving forward.
- The termite mounds that can be found in Australia are the tallest animal-made structures on earth.
- Australia is home to more than 1,500 species of spiders.
- The Great Victoria Desert is bigger than the whole of the United Kingdom.
Mackenzie Falls in the Grampians
PINNACLES ancient desert structures
The Three Sisters, Blue Mountains
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EMAIL; COMMENT from Prof Gerald Peiris in Kandy, 31 October 2022: …… “Thanks, I have had a few glimpses of that grandeur – for instance, at Kalgoorlie to a subterranean depth of 1000 meters was it?) on a memorable day with a Japanese prof named Kawasaki, being hosted by the ‘Westerrn Mining Corporation, and in that beautiful city of Adelaide as a guest of Michael and Shona.”