💡 Interesting Facts
the 1994 production of The Pirates of Penzance by Essgee Entertainment became the top-selling music video in Australian history.the "Victory Tests" were a series of cricket matches between a team of Australian servicemen and an English national side played just two weeks after World War II ended.southern African vine Acetosa sagittata is a weed in Australia and New Zealand, and may smother vegetation it grows upon.since the introduction of antivenin in 1956, only one person has died from the bite of the Australian red-back spider, a cousin of the black widow.the 1622 wreck of the British East India Company ship, the Tryall is the oldest shipwreck in Australia.the Australian hard rock band AC/DC has never won a Grammy Award despite receiving four nominations during their career.the Australian Test cricketer "Ranji" Hordern played for Philadelphia while studying dentistry at the University of Pennsylvania.the Australian Test cricketer Colin McCool bowled his leg spin deliveries with a round arm action so pronounced that his arm was almost parallel to the pitch.the Australian steamer TSS Kanowna (pictured) was requisitioned twice during World War I, first as a troopship and then as a hospital ship.the Australian legal doctrine of Persona designata allows a judge to exercise non-judicial power, if it has been conferred to the judge personally, rather than to his or her court.seven Cornish fishermen sailed to Australia in the lugger Mystery in 1854–55, a journey which is being recreated today by the Spirit of Mystery.remnants of defensive walls and stone shelters on West Wallabi Island, constructed by survivors of the 1629 Batavia shipwreck, are the oldest known European-built structures in Australia.many streets in Coconut Grove, Northern Territory, Australia are named after victims of the shipwreck of SS Gothenburg off the coast of Queensland in 1875.in two decades Australian record producer, audio engineer and mixer Tim Whitten has worked with artists including Powderfinger, The Go-Betweens, and Hoodoo Gurus.in the case of Sue v Hill, the High Court of Australia decided that the United Kingdom was a "foreign power" to Australia, recognising Australia's complete independence.in the book Beyond Capricorn Peter Trickett claims that the Portuguese were the first to discover Australia, between 1519-24.model Rebecca Twigley became a household name in Australia after wearing a revealing dress to an event in 2004.more than 13.5 tonnes of gold were extracted in 13 months at Poverty Reef, near the Australian town of Tarnagulla, Victoria (pictured) from an area only 3 metres wide and 120 metres deep.only five Australians have led the general classification in the 95 editions of the Tour de France to date.of the twenty-five clipper ships owned by the Loch Line, which operated between the United Kingdom and Australia, seventeen were lost at sea.new evidence has revealed that Australian artist Tom Roberts painted much of his masterpiece Shearing the Rams on location en plein air, not in his Melbourne studio.most historians believe stories about Dutch shipwreck survivors of the Concordia, settling at a desert oasis in Australia in 1708, were a hoax.the Australian war memorial at Mont St. Quentin was not replaced for over 30 years after its destruction by the German Army in 1940.the Australian Blue Ant is not an ant at all, but a large solitary wasp.the English nurse Lucy Osburn was chosen by Florence Nightingale to train Australia's first nurses.the dog called the Miniature Fox Terrier (or Mini Foxie) originated in Australia.the Black-eyed Susans of Eastern and Western Australia (pictured) are members of the tropical Elaeocarpaceae and unrelated to their namesakes of Europe and North America.the barque Parma (pictured) recorded the fastest ever time for a sailing ship from Australia to the United Kingdom.the extinct Australian dromornithids, which included the largest birds known, are related to ducks and geese.the extinct New Zealand Musk Duck was becoming more sedentary than its closest relative, the Australian Musk Duck.the International Cricket Council awarded Australia and New Zealand the hosting rights to the 2015 Cricket World Cup because they were sufficiently impressed with their 2011 bid which lost to Asia by 7 votes.the Aborigines regarded the corms of the Bulbine Lily (pictured) as the sweetest of the Australian lily-like plants to eat.the oil and gas exploration company WAPET struck Australia's first flowing oil in 1953, and Western Australia's first commercial natural gas field in 1964.the original specimen of the mauve splitting waxcap, a fungus from eastern Australia, found its way from Melbourne to Budapest but disappeared during the First World War.the Ballarat Botanical Gardens in Victoria features a collection of busts of all 25 predecessors of the recently elected Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.the ballad Mulga Bill's Bicycle by Australian bush poet Banjo Paterson was inspired by an outback worker who purchased a bicycle when drought meant there was no feed for horses.the Australian Ambassador to Chile, Crispin Conroy, once proposed marriage to Bollywood actress Manisha Koirala.the Australian White-naped Honeyeater derives its Latin epithet lunatus from the crescent-shaped markings on its nape.the Australian Harvey family includes the leading Australian batsman of the 1950s Neil Harvey as well as his grandnephew Robert Harvey, who won consecutive Brownlow Medals as the best player in Australian Football.the Australian Giant burrowing frog does not croak, but rather hoots like an owl.the Australian Federal Division of Macarthur is considered to be a bellwether as it has been held by the ruling political party in every election since 1949.the Australian band Spy vs Spy had to change its name to avoid legal action from the publishers of Mad magazine.the Australian Army adopted the Pentropic organisation in 1960, but returned to its previous unit structures in 1965 as the new organisation was found to be unsuited to Australia's strategic environment.the Australian town of Thangool, Queensland produces over 60% of the Australian market for squab.the Australian legal case of D'Emden v Pedder followed United States legal precedent in holding that state and federal governments were immune from each other's laws.the Australian common Leaf curling spider is unusual in that pairs cohabit in the same leaf, though at opposite ends, even before mating at maturity.in the United Kingdom and Australia a tuck shop is a small food retailer found in schools.in the 1930s, Australia was home to a paramilitary Fascist organization called the New Guard.all eleven stories in Australian Patrick White's The Burnt Ones have a real or metaphorical reference to burning.airman Timothy Tovell smuggled a French orphan adopted by his squadron as a mascot back to Australia in an empty sack of oats.after travelling to Australia in 1888 aboard the Rynda (pictured in Sydney) for the colony's 26 January centenary, Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich supported expanding relations between Russia and Australia.after his company struck oil, William Walkley stopped traffic in the middle of Sydney, Australia, wearing a red ten gallon hat.almost the entirety of the Australian stout whiting catch is exported to various Asian countries.although Brendan Nash was born and grew up in Australia, he qualifies to play international cricket for the West Indies because his father, who represented Jamaica at the Olympics, is of Jamaican origin.applying potassium hydroxide to the blue and yellow Australian mushroom Cortinarius rotundisporus will turn it pinkish-purple.an opponent of Australian politician Ian West suggested he was better known by "seagulls" than by the constituents of Manly.an Australian violist Richard Goldner founded Musica Viva Australia in 1945, the world's largest entrepreneurial chamber music organization.although the first specimen of the smallmouth scad, a tropical fish endemic to northern Australia, was already taken in 1984 and deposited in the Queensland Museum, it was not officially named till 1987.after being sentenced to a 14-year deportation in 1845, Norwegian Knud Bull became a pioneer in Australian landscape painting.a specimen of Australia's largest mushroom Phlebopus marginatus from Western Victoria weighed in at 29 kg, and caps can sometimes reach 1 metre across.David Nash, the managing director of Nash Timbers, single-handedly stopped the Australian Government's practice of burning down old railway bridges, thus saving timber up to 400 years old.Women of the Sun was the first Australian television series to portray the lives of Aboriginal women in 19th-century Australia.S. graminifolium was one of only four Stylidium species collected by Joseph Banks and Daniel Solander from Botany Bay in 1770 on their voyage to Australia with James Cook.Sale of the Century was Australia's longest-running game show.Dr. Andrew Rochford, a presenter on the popular Australian television show What's Good For You, got his break after he won the popular show The Block.Major General John Paton commanded the rear party during the evacuation of Anzac Cove in World War I and was one of the last Australian soldiers to leave the beach.a series of storms in south-east Queensland spawned two of the most powerful tornadoes in recorded Australian history.a USAAF B-17 Flying Fortress aircraft crashed shortly after take-off at Bakers Creek, Queensland in 1943, killing 40 of the 41 service personnel on board and making it Australia's worst aviation disaster.a mountain ash growing in the small Australian town of Thorpdale, Victoria once held the record for the tallest tree in the world.Sister Pearl Corkhill was one of only seven Australian military nurses to win the Military Medal in the First World War.at age 20, cricketer Cameron White (pictured) became the youngest ever captain of the Australian state-side, the Victorian Bushrangers.at the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow, basketballer Danny Morseu was the first Torres Strait Islander to represent Australia at the Olympic games.in 2004, the Children's Court of Victoria in Australia granted a teenager a "divorce" from his mother.in 1964, units of No. 81 Wing RAAF were deployed to Darwin, Northern Territory as contingency in the event of an air attack on Australia during the Indonesia–Malaysia confrontation.had the Endeavour Strait not prevented the Dutch from proceeding further southward, they might have found the eastern coast of Australia 150 years before James Cook did.for his part in the Bangladesh Liberation War, Dutch Australian commando officer William Ouderland is the only foreign recipient of Bir Pratik, Bangladesh's fourth highest gallantry award.in 2008 Australian judge Betty King referred to herself as the "queen of banning things".in Australia many unions and employers are working around the WorkChoices law by using side letters to reach agreement on non-workplace-related matters.in spite of its similar appearance to the European Robin, the colourful Rose Robin (pictured) of southeastern Australia is more closely related to the crow family.in order to stem a population decline a "dollar block" promotion was held in the Australian town of Jandowae, Queensland where 38 parcels of land were sold for one dollar each.in April 1999, Australian Justice Carolyn Simpson joined Margaret Beazley and Virginia Bell to form the first all-female bench to sit in Australia, England or New Zealand.in New South Wales, a Sentencing Council which is the first of its type in Australia, conducts research to improve the consistency of sentencing of criminals.eight of Australia's top fighter pilots attempted to resign their commissions in the final months of World War II, in the so-called Morotai Mutiny.during the first six years of the Australian edition of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? nobody won the top prize of one million dollars.dead yellow patches in suburban Australian lawns are often the work of Christmas beetle larvae.cartoonist Ken Emerson wrote the second-longest running comic strip in Australia.businessman John Young migrated to Australia as a Ten Pound Pom, but was worth AU$184 million in 2006, although the company that made him rich is now insolvent.before working as biomechanist to the Indian cricket team, Ian Frazer helped Australian cricketer Greg Chappell develop a patented cricket training program.despite $170m spent on security, Australian comedy group The Chaser managed to enter the restricted zone of the 2007 APEC Summit in a fake motorcade.despite its name, the Australian Mathematics Competition receives entries from 38 countries and that the students are ranked with respect to other students in their states, not all of Australia.during the Boonah crisis in October 1918, 31 people died of the Spanish flu aboard the Australian troopship the HMAT Boonah (pictured).during a 1942 air attack on the Koolama, an Australian merchant ship, a man survived a direct hit to his head by a bomb, dropped by a Japanese aircraft.during World War II, Australia produced almost 500,000 barrels of shale oil by operating the Nevada–Texas–Utah type of oil-shale retorts.due to the reputation of its founder, Jan Groenveld, the Cult Awareness and Information Centre of Australia became used as a resource in publications on cults soon after its founding.the outback town of Tilpa, New South Wales claims to have the only cemetery in Australia with no burials.the RTÉ television series The Great Escape follows families as they relocate to countries such as South Africa, Australia, Austria, Italy, France and Spain.the actions of Australian soldiers at the Battle of Epehy during World War I led to German officers in the area saying that they would not fight Australian troops.the Yellow-tufted Honeyeater (pictured) of Eastern Australia was initially described as a thrush or a flycatcher, though related to neither.the Westfield Brandon is one of five shopping malls in the U.S. state of Florida managed by the Australian Westfield Group.the Truro murders are among the earliest reported serial killings in Australia.the bright red mushroom Hygrocybe miniata is found in rainforest and eucalypt forest in Australia and meadows in Europe and North America.the brother of Australian rugby player Dean Mumm was assistant coach to the Fijian rugby team, whilst their grandfather played for the All Blacks.the current Australian prime minister and treasurer both attended Nambour State High School.the commands to fire the first Allied shots in World War One and the first Australian shots in World War Two came from Fort Queenscliff (pictured), Australia.the city of Hobart in Australia had the first fully electrified tram network in the Southern Hemisphere, and the entire fleet was double-decker.the champion of the new Australian Baseball League will be awarded the Claxton Shield (pictured), given to the top Australian baseball team since the first national tournament held in 1934.the Beaumont Children disappeared without a trace from a beach near Adelaide, Australia in 1966.the Supreme Court of Civil Judicature of New South Wales was the first Supreme Court in Australia and that its first judge evaded hearing any cases.the salt industry sector of Ghana aims to compete with Brazil and Australia in supplying salt to western Africa.the SS Ferret was stolen from Scotland and reappeared several months later in Australia under a new name.the Rural City of Marong, a local government in Victoria, Australia, voted itself out of existence in 1994.the Rufous Songlark (pictured) is an Australian songbird that sometimes ends up as roadkill.the South Seas Evangelical Church, the third-largest religious affiliation in the Solomon Islands, traces its history to a mission for Kanakas in Queensland, Australia.the Southern black bream (pictured), a species endemic to Australia valued for its flavorsome and moist flesh, has a high tolerance to salinity and is of possible use for inland aquaculture in saline dams.the Supreme Court of Christmas Island once said the islanders live in a "legal twilight" because ancient Singaporean law applies to an Australian island.the Statute of Westminster Adoption Act 1942 was seen as formally demonstrating Australia's independence to the world.the Spinifex people are the last Aboriginal nomadic people in Australia, taking their name from the Spinifex grass that survives in the desert.the Spinifex People are the last Aboriginal nomadic people in Australia, taking their name from the Spinifex grass that survives in the desert.the entire board of directors of Australian mining company Sundance Resources was killed in an airplane crash in the Republic of Congo in June 2010.the first Australian national sporting team to wear the now traditional green and gold team colours were the Australian cricket team that toured England in 1899.the strong, dark red timber of the Australian hardwood tree the Narrow-leaved Ironbark was used in Elizabeth Farm, Australia's oldest surviving European dwelling.the repertoire of the Australian passerine, the Red-capped Robin includes "tinkle" and "blurt" calls.the remnants of defensive walls and stone shelters built by shipwreck survivor Wiebbe Hayes and his men on West Wallabi Island in 1629, are Australia's oldest known European structures.the remains of Mungo Man are the oldest anatomically modern human remains found in Australia.the support that Australian author Mary Grant Bruce gave to racial stereotypes and social Darwinism in her books was redacted from later editions.the voyages of the Otter crossing the Pacific Ocean from Australia and becoming the first vessel of the United States to enter a Californian port in 1796 were chronicled by French traveler Pierre François Péron.when wrestler George Scott and his brother Sandy were in Australia, they won the IWA World Tag Team Championship three times between 1966 and 1968.underwater visibility can reach 80 metres (260 ft) in the limestone sinkholes of Australia's Ewens Ponds.the world's most extensive deposits of eolianite (example pictured), rocks formed by the lithification of sediments deposited by wind, are located on the southern and western coasts of Australia.the winners of the Twenty20 Champions League, a tournament between Twenty20 cricket champions from Australia, England, India and South Africa, will collect a prize estimated at £2.5 million.the regional newspaper of Wagga Wagga, The Daily Advertiser, was first published in 1868, making it one of the oldest in Australia.the rarely seen Rufous Scrub-bird occurs on Mount Banda Banda in New South Wales, Australia.the guns at Fort Nepean (pictured) in Victoria, Australia fired the first Allied shots of both World War I and World War II.the fruit of the apple dumpling was one of the first bushfoods to be commonly eaten by Europeans in Australia.the fish known as the snapper (Chrysophrys aurata; pictured) in Australia and New Zealand does not belong to the snapper family of tropical fish.the first shot fired by British Empire forces in World War I was targeted at the German ship Pfalz which was departing Melbourne, Australia as Britain declared war on Germany.the insanity of Australian serial killer Catherine Birnie is believed to have been caused by the death of her son.the isolation of antibodies and flu viruses from birds on Tryon Island, a coral cay off the coast of Queensland, Australia, led to the development of antiviral drugs, such as Tamiflu.the percentage of Sudanese-born persons living in the Australian electoral district of Yeerongpilly is twelve times the national average.the name of Lake Burrumbeet, a large but shallow eutrophic lake in Victoria, Australia, derives from the local aboriginal word burrumbidj, meaning "muddy or dirty water".the military career of Australian Air Marshal Sir Alister Murdoch spanned 40 years, including seaplane flying in the 1930s and a tenure as Chief of the Air Staff during the Vietnam War.the largest native land slug species in Australia is the red triangle slug, which can be yellow, cream, pink, red, grey or olive green (pictured).the obscure mealybug, a pest of vineyards in New Zealand and California, is believed to have been introduced from Australia or South America.the Port of Geelong, located on the shores of Corio Bay in Geelong, Victoria, Australia, is the sixth largest in Australia by tonnage.the Community Services Appeals Tribunal was the first tribunal in Australia to use alternative dispute resolution.the Community Court of Australia's Northern Territory aims to reduce re-offending by involving the indigenous community in the sentencing process.the Chief Industrial Magistrate's Court heard the first Australian criminal prosecution of a bank for failing to protect its employees from armed holdups by improving safety at branches.the Channel-billed Cuckoo (pictured) of Australia, New Guinea and Indonesia is the world's largest brood parasite.the Court of Civil Jurisdiction was the first civil court established in New South Wales, Australia.the Court of Criminal Jurisdiction, the first criminal court in Australia under British rule, operated more like a court-martial than a court of law.the Desert Tree Frog is one of Australia's most widely distributed frogs.the Democratic Association of Victoria, the first Australian socialist organisation founded in 1872, lasted only ten months.the crown lands of the United Kingdom are different than crown lands in Canada and Australia, the latter being more like the public lands of the United States.the Coyote Gold Mine in the remote Tanami Desert of Australia was opened in 2006 by the then Governor-General of Australia, Michael Jeffery.the Bukit Batok Memorial was built by Australian POWs to honor the war dead of the Japanese and Allies from Singapore's Battle of Bukit Timah.the Blue-winged Kookaburra (pictured) of northern Australia is also known as the Howling Jackass.the 1999 Sydney hailstorm is the costliest natural disaster in Australian history, causing over A$1.7 billion in insured damages.the 1868 Aboriginal cricket tour of England predated, by 12 years, the first tour of England by white Australians.the sloop-of-war Victoria became the first Australian warship to be deployed overseas by fighting in the First Taranaki War.the Royal Australian Navy auxiliary patrol boat HMAS Vigilant was the first aluminium ship built in Australia.the 1st Special Squadron of the Imperial Japanese Navy was tasked with defending Australia and New Zealand during World War I.the Aboriginal Community Court is an Australian court which aims to reduce the overrepresentation of aboriginal criminal offenders in the justice system.the Birdsville Races in Queensland, Australia used to have separate races for horses that ate grass and those that ate corn.the biodiversity of New Zealand is dominated by bird families that flew in from Australia and insects, frogs and plants that were on the island when it broke off from Gondwana.the Australian White Ibis (pictured) has invaded Sydney and other urban centres of Australia's east coast since 1978, and is now commonly seen in parks and garbage dumps.the Arafura Swamp in Australia, the filming location for Ten Canoes, is an important breeding site for crocodiles.the Eastern Spinebill of Australian forests has adapted to urban gardens and can feed from Fuchsias as well as native banksias and grevilleas.the Eastern Whipbird (pictured) of the Australian wet forests is so named for its loud call which resembles the cracking of a whip.the murder of Celia Douty was the first murder in Australia to be solved using DNA profiling, after remaining unsolved for 18 years.the Mount Rennie rape case in the 1880s in Sydney, Australia was likened by one newspaper to the British oppression of the Irish.the Melbourne Gay and Lesbian Chorus, founded in Australia in 1990, was the first organisation of its kind in the Southern Hemisphere.the Macleay's Swallowtail (pictured) is one of the most widely distributed Swallowtail butterflies in Australia.the North West Shelf Venture liquefied natural gas project is Australia's largest resource development.the Northern Barred Frog of Australia (pictured) has a tadpole which reaches 12.5 centimetres (4.9 in) in length.the Perth Mint is the oldest operating mint in Australia and that it has produced over 4,500 tonnes of refined gold which represents about 3.25 percent of the total tonnage of gold ever produced.the Pensacola Convoy, which in 1941 carried the first United States soldiers to be based in Australia, was planned initially to reinforce Allied forces defending the Philippines.the ghost fungus (pictured) from southern Australia is so named as it is bioluminescent.the Adelaide O-Bahn is a guided busway in Australia that runs from Adelaide CBD to the Tea Tree Plaza shopping centre in Tea Tree Gully.the Olive python, Australia's second largest snake, can eat prey as large as a wallaby.the Kent Music Report was a weekly table of Australian music singles and albums which was the primary record chart in that market from 1974 to 1988.the Goulburn Valley region of Australia is home to the oldest and largest plantings of the little used Marsanne grape variety.the freshwater whipray is the only Australian stingray restricted to fresh and brackish water.the Eneabba Stone Arrangement is an Aboriginal stone arrangement once thought to have been associated with survivors of the Vergulde Draeck, a Dutch galleon wrecked on the coast of Australia in 1656.the Edmund Barton Building, named after the first Prime Minister of Australia, is the largest example of the late 20th-century International Style of Australian architecture in Canberra.the sinking of the ferry Greycliffe with the loss of 40 lives in 1927 was the deadliest shipping accident ever in Sydney Harbour, Australia.the Gulf Snapping Turtle was described as "Australia's first living fossil freshwater turtle, an extant population of a Pleistocene taxon".the Illawarra Steam Navigation Company carrying passengers and freight from Sydney to the south coast of New South Wales, Australia, between 1850 and 1955, was known as the 'Pig and Whistle line' because it was said that the fleet ships would wait an hour for a pig but not a minute for a passenger.the Hill 50 Gold Mine was Australia's most profitable mine between 1955 and 1961.the semaphore crab is the most abundant crab species in mangroves on Australia's east coast.Robbery Under Arms by Rolf Boldrewood, a classic Australian novel, hasn't been out of print since it was edited into a single volume in 1889.Out of the Blue, a BBC Television series, is set in Manly, near Sydney, Australia.Australian singer Lana Cantrell, a 1968 Grammy Award nominee for Best New Artist, later became an entertainment lawyer in New York City.Australian pop singer Lynne Randell was the first Australian recording artist to shoot a colour music video for her 1967 hit "Ciao Baby".Australian politician Mick Clough defeated a sitting member of parliament at three different elections.Australian politician Lynda Voltz's step-father and grand step-father were also politicians.Australian soldier Ringer Edwards survived 63 hours of crucifixion by Japanese soldiers during World War II.Australian-born lumber executive John A. Campbell was said to have introduced surfing on the Cornwall coast of England.botanist Leonard John Brass was born and died in Australia, served in the Canadian Army, became an American citizen and did most of his fieldwork in New Guinea.aviator Jack De Garis faked his own suicide by drowning before being the subject of an Australia-wide search in 1925.Australian Olympic swimming gold medalist Neil Brooks retired after being suspended for drinking 46 cans of beer on a flight from Britain back to Australia.Australian-born American actor Marc McDermott joined an acting troupe to support his mother and sister after his father's death.Australian politician Greg Pearce was a director of Clean Up the World.Australian politician Christine Robertson once addressed a "Dorothy Dixer" question to the wrong Minister in Parliament.Australian deputy judge advocate Richard Dore once ordered several hundred lashes be given to suspected Irish insurrectionists before a verdict had been made.Australian criminal Dennis Ferguson was forced to relocate to numerous locations around Australia due to public hostility and news media attention.Australian cricketer Ernie Toshack, tired of signing autographs, had a friend sign for him, who incorrectly signed Toshak.Australian band The Sundance Kids was formed in a shopping centre car park over takeaway pizza.Australian fishermen often refer to the Western school whiting as "bastard whiting" because its presence in the catch reduces the presence of targeted species.Australian male singing duo Bobby & Laurie had a national number-one hit with Hitchhiker for five weeks in 1966.Australian politician Charlie Lynn held the New South Wales 24-hour Ultra Marathon record in 1985 and 1986.Australian poet and writer, Dame Mary Gilmore recorded her childhood memories of the dispossession of the Wiradjuri people and the destruction of native habitat by European settlers around Wagga Wagga.Australian musician Monique Brumby (pictured), who has won two ARIA Awards, was selected for the national under-19 women's soccer team.Australian musician Jim Keays, who fronted The Masters Apprentices during 1965–1972, was diagnosed with myeloma in 2007 and is in remission after stem cell transplants.Canadian water slide manufacturer ProSlide's first water coaster driven by linear induction motors opened at Australia's WhiteWater World in 2006.Captain (later Air Vice Marshal) Henry Wrigley (pictured) piloted the first trans-Australia flight, from Melbourne to Darwin, in 1919.Olivia Newton-John made at least 16 appearances on The Go!! Show, an Australian popular music television series which aired between 1964 to 1967, before she found international success.New Zealand moved 30 centimetres (12 in) closer to Australia during a recent 7.8 magnitude earthquake.New Zealand currently has free trade agreements with Australia, Singapore, Thailand, Brunei, Chile and China.New Zealand and Australian soldiers massacred the adult males of a village in Palestine during the Surafend affair of 1918.Paul Coe attempted to bring an aboriginal title class action claiming the entirety of Australia.pop entertainer Cathy Wayne was the first Australian woman killed in the Vietnam War, when a US Marine shot her on stage while she was performing.VFL footballer Charlie Moore, the first Australian to die of gunshot wounds in the Boer War, played in the 1898 VFL Grand Final against Stan Reid, who died in the same war six weeks later.suffragist Louisa Lawson (1848–1920), publisher of Australia's first female-run journal, The Dawn, was also the mother of the great Australian poet Henry Lawson.South African Jean-Michel d'Avray played football in England and Holland before becoming the last ever National Soccer League Coach of the Year in Australia.Scottish botanist Robert Kaye Greville has a mountain named after him in Queensland, Australia.Milsons Point, a suburb on the North Shore of Sydney, Australia, was named in honour of James Milson.Mayo hurler Adrian Freeman played in England, Scotland, North America and the Middle East before his recent death in an Australia car crash.German naturalist Amalie Dietrich, who spent 10 years working in Australia, was the first person to collect the highly venomous snakes known as taipans.Flying Officer Les Clisby (pictured), Australia's first fighter ace of World War II, once landed beside a German bomber he had forced down and captured the crew at gunpoint.Dorothea Mackellar wrote her patriotic Australian poem "My Country", which contains the line I love a sunburnt country, while she was homesick when travelling in Europe.Derbyshire M.P. George John Venables-Vernon who enthused about Italian literature is the namesake of Vernon County in Australia.Indian historian V. R. Ramachandra Dikshitar believed that ancient South Indians may have known of Australia and Polynesia before their discovery by Europeans.Irish poet John Keegan Casey was released from prison on the condition he leave for Australia, but instead he stayed in Dublin in disguise.Los Angeles-based hip hop group Black Eyed Peas have released two number one albums in both Australia and Switzerland, but have yet to achieve the same on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100.Lithuanian artist Vytautas Kazimieras Jonynas designed interiors for over sixty churches in the United States, Europe and Australia.labour law expert Ron McCallum is the first totally blind person to have been appointed to a full professorship at any university in Australia or New Zealand.Jack Donaghy calls the state of Florida "America's Australia" in the 30 Rock episode "The Natural Order".Australian aviator Captain Thomas Baker (pictured) was credited with the destruction of 12 German aircraft between July and October 1918, before he was shot down and killed.Australian author Ion Idriess wrote an average of one book every ten months for 42 years.Australian composer Raymond Hanson, a teacher of music composition at the Sydney Conservatorium, was himself largely self-taught.Australian bishop Sydney James Kirkby, who presided at the synod to elect the successor of Archbishop John Charles Wright, actively worked to not be given the job himself.Australian basketball player Patrick Mills is only the third Indigenous Australian male to ever play for his country's national team.Australian author Duncan Ball worked as an industrial chemist and as an editor before he became a full-time author.Australian composer and ABC broadcaster William G. James dedicated his Six Australian Bush Songs to Dame Nellie Melba.Australian cricketer Keith Miller, while attending high school during his teenage years, had Test captain Bill Woodfull as his mathematics teacher, who gave him a zero on a geometry exam.Australian cricketer Arthur Morris (pictured) was the batsman at the other end when Don Bradman was bowled for a duck in his last Test innings.Australian cricketer Trevor Chappell was reprimanded by the Prime Ministers of Australia and New Zealand when he rolled an underarm delivery to batsman Brian McKechnie to stop him from lofting the ball for six.Australian cricketer Karen Rolton has scored the most runs for the Australian women's cricket team in women's Test cricket.Australian cricketer John Gleeson attributed the finger strength used in his two-finger bowling action to a childhood of milking cows.Australian amateur astronomer Gregg Thompson has been acknowledged by supernova hunters for publishing comparison charts of the brightest galaxies.Australia's worst maritime disaster of the 20th century was the sinking of the Koombana (pictured) in a cyclone off Port Hedland, Western Australia.Adelaide was the first city in Australia to introduce horse trams and the last to discard them for more modern public transport.67 Australian, Canadian, and New Zealand Article XV squadrons were formed during World War II from graduates of the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan.20-year-old Ryan Gregson is the current Australian record holder in men's 1500 metre run, having broken Simon Doyle's old mark from 1991."Heavy Harry", the only working example of the Victorian Railways H class (pictured), was the largest non-articulated steam locomotive ever built in Australia.Air Chief Marshal Sir Charles Burnett was born in the United States to a Scottish father, educated in England and eventually became the Australian Chief of the Air Staff.Anglican archdeacon Kay Goldsworthy will be Australia's first woman bishop when she is consecrated on 22 May 2008.Australia's second largest gold mine is located in Telfer, Western Australia.Australia's first uranium mine (pictured) opened in 1906 and initially produced radium for Marie Curie and Ernest Rutherford.Australia has a National Public Toilet Map, allowing users to locate the 14,000 public toilets across the country to four decimal places of latitude and longitude.football midfielder Evan Berger was nominated for an informal Australia Day award by his local council for representing Australia in the national under-20 team.Australian cricketer John Elicius Benedict Bernard Placid Quirk Carrington Dwyer was the great-grandson of transportee Michael Dwyer, a leader in the Irish Rebellion of 1798.Australian flying ace Charles Scherf (pictured) was credited with 14½ aerial victories from 38 operational sorties during the Second World War, with an additional nine aircraft destroyed on the ground.Australian veterinary student Barry Larkin carried a fake Olympic Flame in the 1956 Summer Olympics as a protest, because he thought the flame was given too much reverence.Australian Test cricketer Keith Miller once broke from his air force flying formation to fly over Beethoven's birthplace of Bonn.Australian tennis players Todd Woodbridge and Mark Woodforde, known as The Woodies, are the most successful men's doubles pair in history, winning a record six Wimbledon titles.Australian Olympic swimming champion Faith Leech grew up on a diet of carrot juice and beetroot after refusing all other food as a baby.Australian Frederick Hamilton March was awarded the Empire Gallantry Medal for his conduct during the assassination of the Governor-General of Sudan, Sir Lee Stack.Australian Ingo Renner has won the World Gliding Championships four times and set two world gliding records.Australian Olympic medal-winning swimmer Gary Chapman died in a fishing accident, after retiring from swimming to pursue this very hobby.Australian Stanley Frederick Gibbs was awarded the Albert Medal in 1927 for his rescue of a boy during a shark attack, during which he punched and kicked the shark until it released the youth.Australian Sir Noel Power became Acting Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Hong Kong in 1996.Australian James Blair introduced laws to protect children by establishing a children's court, and by preventing unjust disinheritance in parents' wills, before he became chief justice of Queensland.Australian swimmer Fanny Durack was considered to be the world's greatest female swimmer from 1910 until 1918.Australian singer-songwriter Tamas Wells produced his second and third albums while working in Rangoon, Burma, on a community health HIV/AIDS education project.Australian painter Jeffrey Smart initially wanted to become an architect instead of an artist.Australian ophthalmologist Sir Norman McAlister Gregg discovered the link between rubella and congenital disorders in newborn infants after overhearing several of his patients discussing their illness during pregnancy.Australian naturalist and botanical artist Rica Erickson wrote her first book Orchids of the West in 1951.Australian jazz singer Grace Knight, ex-Eurogliders, organised a nude protest of 750 women against the 2003 invasion of Iraq.Australian photographer Olive Cotton captured her childhood friend, photographer Max Dupain, in Fashion shot, Cronulla Sandhills, and married him in 1937.Australian physicist, Sir Kerr Grant studied with Nobel Prize winning chemist and physicist, Irving Langmuir at the University of Göttingen.Australian Second World War flying ace Virgil Brennan shot down 10 Axis aircraft over Malta in a five month period during 1942.Australian Second World War flying ace Adrian Goldsmith was credited with shooting down 12¼ Axis aircraft over Malta between the months of February and July 1942.Australian rugby union player Steve Williams was selected to play for the German national rugby union team while backpacking around Europe.Australian rock band Small Mercies first encountered their producer, Matt Wallace, when he left a message on their MySpace.Wing Commander Stanley Goble and Flying Officer Ivor McIntyre, piloting a single-engined seaplane (pictured), became the first men to circumnavigate Australia by air in 1924.Yothu Yindi's song "Treaty" was the first song by a predominately-Aboriginal band to chart in Australia and the first in any Aboriginal Australian language to gain international recognition.Meredith Burgmann claims to be the only Australian sent to prison after running onto a sports field during a major sporting event.Mandora Marsh contains the most inland occurrence of mangroves in Australia.Kennaquhair was an Australian-bred Thoroughbred racehorse that won the Sydney Cup and the AJC Metropolitan Handicap.Julian Howard Ashton, a prominent figure of media and art in Britain and Australia in the 19th and 20th century, won the Sydney sesquicentenary prize for landscape drawings for his art work.Mina Wylie won silver at the 1912 Summer Olympics in Stockholm, Sweden, and was one of the first two women to represent Australia in Olympic swimming.Mujahedeen KOMPAK has diverted charitable donations from Australia to produce recruitment videos for militant Islamic groups.Peter Shergold is currently Australia's most senior public servant.Penelope Wensley, who will become the next Governor of Queensland this month, was the first female Permanent Representative of Australia to the United Nations in New York.one-room schools were commonplace throughout rural portions of the United States, Canada and Australia until the early 20th century, and that they continue in some parts of Ireland today.Ninety Mile Beach in Victoria, Australia is the longest uninterrupted stretch of sandy coastline in the world.Joseph Jukes, an English-born colonial Australian geologist, sketched the very first complete map of Australia.John Roberts was an Australian businessman who founded the construction company Multiplex, which is currently building the new Wembley Stadium in London.Jessie Webb, an Australian academic and historian, was the first female teacher at the University of Melbourne.Jessie Vasey was helping Australian war widows before she became one herself when her husband, George, died in an air crash.Jason Castro, who was recently signed by the Singapore Slingers, is slated to become the first Filipino player in Australia's National Basketball League.Ivor McIntyre (pictured) was lead pilot in two pioneering aviation feats, the first circumnavigation of Australia by air, and the first international flight by an RAAF plane and crew.John Davies, the U.S. District Court judge who presided over the trial of a group of LAPD officers in the Rodney King incident, won gold for Australia in the 200m breaststroke at the 1952 Olympics.John Downer, Premier of South Australia from 1885 to 1887, is the grandfather of Alexander Downer, the current Australian Minister for Foreign Affairs.John Lavarack was the first person born in Australia to be an Australian State Governor.John Knatchbull was the first person to plead moral insanity in Australia.John Harber Phillips, the legal counsel who defended Lindy Chamberlain, later became the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Victoria, Australia.John "Willy" Williams , the Australian World War II air ace who later took part in the "The Great Escape", became a POW merely three days after being promoted to command No.450 Squadron RAAF.Philip Whistler Street was a Chief Justice on the Supreme Court of New South Wales, Australia -- as were his son Kenneth and his grandson Laurence.Polar dinosaurs could have walked to Australia, because during the early Cretaceous the continent of Australia was still linked to Antarctica.Victor Chang AC was a famous Australian heart surgeon and was murdered on 4 July 1991, following an extortion attempt on his family.USS General S. D. Sturgis was the transport ship assigned to deliver officials of the United States, Australia, Canada, Dutch East Indies, China and the Philippines to Tokyo Bay for the Japanese surrender ceremonies at the end of World War II.Toolibin Lake supports 25 species of breeding waterbirds, which is the greatest number for any wetland in southwestern Australia.Tommy Dunderdale is the only Australian-born player to be inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in Canada.Victoria Hotel in Darwin, Australia, has survived three major cyclones and Japanese air raids during World War II.whipcracking (pictured), the art of using a whip to create a miniature sonic boom, is a competitive sport in Australia, where it was also elaborated into whipboxing.Ctenomorphodes chronus (pictured) is an Australian stick insect that resembles a eucalyptus twig, and the female lays 3-mm elliptical eggs that resemble plant seeds.yellowtail trumpeter, a coastal marine fish tolerant to a very wide salinity range, because of its poor taste is considered a nuisance in Australia by many fishermen who target bream in estuaries.Wollongong Head Lighthouse is the only place in eastern Australia to have two lighthouses within close proximity.Whistling Kites in Australia primarily hunt live prey, while those in New Guinea are principally scavengers.the Tuggerah Lakes (pictured), located on the Central Coast of New South Wales, Australia, cover a total area of 77 square kilometres yet have an average depth of less than two metres.The Legarde Twins are a country act from Australia consisting of two twins, Tom and Ted, who left home in 1945 to become cowboys, then started playing country music, and are still performing—64 years later.Richard Whitaker's research into the correlation between surface temperature in the Pacific Ocean and rainfall in Australia contributed to the discovery of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation.Ray Lindwall (pictured) was Australia's equal-leading Test wicket-taker on the 1948 Invincibles tour of England.Raine Island, a vegetated coral cay located off the North coast of Australia, harbours the largest population of Green Turtles (pictured) in the world and is the most significant seabird rookery in the Great Barrier Reef.Princes Pier (pictured) in Port Melbourne, Australia, suffered fourteen fires from 2001 to 2004.Robert Raymond founded Australia's longest running current affairs television program.Roger Vanderfield, an Australian doctor, rugby union referee and administrator, was instrumental in establishing the first Rugby World Cup.Sydney Deane, who narrowly missed representing Australia in cricket, was the first Australian to appear in a Hollywood film.Shane Warne Cricket '99, a Playstation cricket game is endorsed by the Australian bowler, Shane Warne.Sebastian Hardie were Australia's first symphonic rock band and released their debut album Four Moments in 1975.sandwich toasters are sometimes called "jaffle irons" in Australia.Ilsa Konrads, former editor of Belle, was an Australian Olympic swimmer who set 12 world records.Hugh Main, an Australian politician, was a member of the Progressive Party's rural "True Blues" faction that evolved into the Country Party.Clarrie Isaacs, one of the founders of the Aboriginal Provisional Government, travelled to Libya on what he claimed was a valid Aboriginal passport but was denied re-entry to Australia with it.Chester Wilmot, the Australian War correspondent and military historian of the Second World War, was killed in an air crash in 1954.Celia Rosser, Australian botanical illustrator has the Banksia species Banksia rosserae and the cultivar Banksia canei 'Celia Rosser' named in her honour.bush ballads are a folk music and poetry tradition in the Australian Outback.Clontarf Aboriginal College in Australia has at various points in its history served as an orphanage, a convent, an RAAF training facility, a boarding school and a day school.Closer Economic Relations is a free trade agreement between the governments of New Zealand and Australia.Cyril Tenison White, who authored a 42-part series on weeds, was awarded the Mueller Medal for his important contributions to Australian botanical science.Cyclone Rona of 1999 uprooted trees that survived a 1934 cyclone that hit the same area in Queensland, Australia.Colin McDonald and George Thoms were Australian cricketers who, uniquely, opened the batting for their club, state and national teams in the same season.Cockle Creek in Tasmania is the furthest point one can drive south in Australia.Brown Mountain forest in East Gippsland, Victoria, is home to mainland Australia's largest marsupial carnivore, the Spotted Quoll.Bridgecorp Holdings, a former Australian real estate development group, collapsed in 2007 owing 14,500 investors a total of A$467 million.aussieBum, an Australian swimwear manufacturer, was founded by Sean Ashby in 2001 when he couldn't find the "Aussie cozzie" style of swimwear he grew up with.Ansett Airlines Flight 232 from Adelaide to Alice Springs in 1972 was the first aircraft hijacking to take place in Australia.Alexander Brodie Spark, influential merchant, magistrate, investor and exporter in Australia during the 19th century, entertained in excess of 800 different guests in his home solely in 1839.Acacia leprosa 'Scarlet Blaze' (pictured), a rare red-flowering form of Acacia, was discovered by bushwalkers in Australia in 1995.Barzillai Quaife has been described both as "New Zealand's first public anti-racist" and "Australia's first philosopher".Bess Thomas, a former Australian librarian, became the first female to be given the position of "Chief Librarian" in New South Wales.Boxcar is an Australian electronic band that sometimes performed wearing gas masks.Boans, a department store in Perth, Australia, was once the largest private employer in Western Australia.Blanche Cave, in Australia's Naracoorte Caves National Park, used to exhibit an indigenous man's mummified remains, which were stolen in 1861 and never returned.Bill Johnston was the last Australian to take 100 wickets on an Ashes tour of England, being the leading wicket-taker during the 1948 Invincibles tour.Daddy Cool’s 1971 single "Eagle Rock" remained at #1 on the Australian National charts for a record ten weeks before being replaced by the single "Daddy Cool" by another band cashing in their success.David Tweed is an Australian share market trader who has attempted to purchase shares from small investors for less than the market price.goanna oil was sold amongst early European settlers of Australia as a panacea much like snake oil was in the Old West.Frederick Mann was the first Australian-born Chief Justice of Victoria.Frederick Augustus Hely, a justice of the peace and public servant in colonial Australia, was the first man to settle permanently at Narara, Brisbane Water.Fred Walker boosted sales of his new spread Vegemite, now an Australian cultural icon, by giving away free jars.Gordon Dam (pictured), a 140-metre (460 ft) tall arch dam on the Gordon River, is the tallest in Tasmania, Australia.Greg Urwin was the first Australian and first non-Pacific Islander to become Secretary General of the Pacific Islands Forum.Hazelwood power station is the single largest source of carbon dioxide emissions in Australia, although it is only the sixth-largest power station.Harold Hardwick, an Australian swimming gold medallist at the 1912 Olympics, was also a national boxing champion and later an army colonel.Hans Freeman introduced protein crystallography to Australia and determined the structure of plastocyanin, the first protein to be structurally characterised in the southern hemisphere.Grunge Lit is an Australian literary genre which features gritty depictions of urban and suburban life revolving around a nihilistic pursuit of sex, drugs and alcohol.Frank Loughran played for the Socceroos at the 1956 Summer Olympics in Melbourne, scoring a goal in the first game his adopted country of Australia ever played in Olympic soccer.Frank Hansford-Miller, founder of the English National Party, emigrated to Australia.Emily McPherson College of Domestic Economy, an Australian domestic science college for women, was officially opened on April 27, 1927 by Her Royal Highness Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon.Ellyse Perry played both cricket and soccer for Australia at the age of sixteen.Ellis Bent was the first barrister appointed as a judge in Australia.Deborah Lawrie became the first female pilot with an Australian airline after winning a landmark sex discrimination case against Ansett Airlines.Eurythmic was a versatile Australian-bred Thoroughbred racehorse who won over distances ranging from 5 furlongs (1,000 metres) to 2 miles (3,200 metres).Evelyn Scotney, an Australian coloratura soprano, sang opposite Enrico Caruso in his final appearance on the opera stage.Fort Pearce, a former defensive facility in Point Nepean, Victoria, Australia, was active during World War I but never fired its guns in anger.Florence Mary Taylor was the first female architect in Australia.Ewan Crawford of the Supreme Court of Tasmania is the first Australian chief justice to stop using ceremonial court robes."Gizzie" and "Slit" are two alternative common names for the Little Lorikeet of eastern Australia.