The Fact Book | ✓

111 - 186 (Australia special)

111. Australia is as wide as the distance between London to Moscow.

112. The biggest property in Australia is bigger than Belgium.

113. More than 85% of Australians live within 50km of the coast.

114. In 1880, Melbourne was the richest city in the world.

115. Gina Rinehart, Australia’s richest woman, earns $1 million every half hour, or $598 every second.

116. In 1892, a group of 200 Australians unhappy with the government tried to start an offshoot colony in Paraguay to be called ‘New Australia’.

117. The first photos from the 1969 moon landing were beamed to the rest of the world from Honeysuckle Tracking Station, near Canberra. 

118. Australia was the second country in the world to allow women to vote (New Zealand was first).

119. Each week, 70 tourists overstay their visas.

120. In 1856, stonemasons took action to ensure a standard of 8-hour working days, which then became recognised worldwide.

121. Former Prime Minister Bob Hawke set a world record for sculling 2.5 pints of beer in 11 seconds. Hawke later suggested that this was the reason for his great political success

122.The world’s oldest fossil, which is about 3.4 billion years old, was found in Australia.

113. Australia is very sparsely populated: The UK has 248.25 persons per square kilometre, while Australia has only 2.66 persons per square kilometre.

114. Australia’s first police force was made up of the most well-behaved convicts.

115. Australia has the hightest electricity prices in the world.

116. There were over one million feral camels in outback Australia, until the government launched the $19m Feral Camel Management Program, which aims to keep the pest problem under control.

117. Saudi Arabia imports camel from Australia (mostly for meat production)

118. Qantas once powered an interstate flight with cooking oil.

119.  Per capita, Australians spend more money on gambling than any other nation.

120. In 1832, 300 female convicts mooned the governor of Tasmania. It was said that in a “rare moment of collusion with the Convict women, the ladies in the Governor’s party could not control their laughter.”

121. Australia is home to the longest fence in the world. It is 5,614 km long, and was originally built to keep dingoes away from fertile land.

122. Australia was one of the founding members of the United Nations.

123. Melboure is considered the sporting capital of the world, as it has more top level sport available for its citizens than anywhere else.

124. Before the arrival of humans, Australia was home to megafauna: three metre tall kangaroos, seven metre long goannas, horse-sized ducks, and a marsupial lion the size of a leopard.

125. Kangaroos and emus cannot walk backwards, one of the reasons that they’re on the Australian coat of arms.

126. Speaking of, Australia is one of the only countries where we eat the animals on our coat of arm.

127. If you visited one new beach in Australia every day, it would take over 27 years to see them all.

128. Melbourne has the world’s largest Greek population outside of Athens.