Weird facts about australia..?

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Food
In Australia, pancakes are served at dinner rather than breakfast.
The Aborigines of Australia call their native food â€œbush-tucker.â€ It includes game meat such as kangaroo, turkey, and goanna, which is a kind of lizard.
Aborigines
The native hunters and food gatherers of Australia are called aborigines, though the word refers to the first inhabitants of any region. Aborigines have lived in Australia for 40,000 years. Today most of them are of mixed descent. There are about 50,000 full-blooded aborigines left.
Capital City
The city of Canberra, Australia has an approximate population of 298,200.
Special Features
Ayers' Rock is a famous rock (a red monadnock) that is 1143 feet (348 m) high, located in central Australia, in the SW Northern Territory. It is also a major Australian tourist attraction.
Great Barrier Reef is the largest coral reef in the world. It stretches for 1,250 mi (2,000 km) in the Coral Sea, off the coast of Queensland, NE Australia. The Great Barrier Reef is actually a series of individual reefs separated from the mainland by a shallow lagoon. The reef is extremely beautiful and attracts thousand of tourists a year, which threatens to harm the delicate eco-system of the reef and its unusual marine life.
Australia

An Akubra is a special Australian hat with a broad rim, usually made of hide. Cattle farmers and other outdoor workers wear an Akubra for protection against burning by the sun.

The world's oldest Flower in the world was found in a fossil near Melbourne. It is called the Koonwarra plant, and it has two leaves and one flower. It is believed to be 120 million years old.

The world's fastest growing tree is the Australian Eucalyptus. It can grow up to 10 metres in one year.

Half the continent is given over to sheep rearing. In 1987, it was calculated that there were about 150 million sheep in Australia, about 10 sheep for every person living in the country. No wonder that Australia is the world's largest exporter of lamb and wool.

Australia is not connected by land to any other country and so it had developed its own wildlife. The kangaroo, the koala, the emu and the kookaburra are among the creatures found only in Australia.

Britain discovered Australia and as a result used it as a place of imprisonment for thousands of convicts and political prisoners. About 160,000 of Britain's unwanted were shipped out there. Many died on the high seas during the eight month journey.

Of the 160,000, about 45,000 were Irish, leaders of the rebellions and risings of 1848 and 1867. After serving their sentence many settled down to a life of farming in Australia. Today a large part of Australia's population is of Irish and British descent.

Australia has a "flying doctor" service, which provides emergency medical care to people who live in the "outback". Without such a service many isolated people would die.

There are actually four types of Boomerang - the "hook", the "hunter", "the club", "the V". All were used for hunting and warfare. Only one of the four will return when thrown - The Hunter.

Dideriedoos are instruments common to Aboriginal. The playing of the Dideriedoo has been proved to have definite health benefits . It stimulates the mind, enhances blood circulation, and is great for stress relief. It is played as background music in some doctors surgeries .

Australia is the smallest continent in the world but the sixth largest country in the world.

Ken E

Much of what ny writes is factual enough though some of it is a bit out of date.

Canberra population is more like 320,000

Here is where she is flat wrong -

The Akubra hat is a brand, not a style and the hat is made from rabbit fur, not hide.

At a guess, only about 5 -10% of Australia is under sheep. Most of the grazing land is under beef cattle. The last time people made really big money out of wool was the Korean war. At present sheep raising is just about a prescription for bankruptcy unless you have very good land and very good sheep.

Agricultural land is under wine grapes, sugar, cotton, canola, safflower, wheat, barley, olive trees, oranges, apples, bananas, peaches, you name it.

Coal is the most important single export form Australia.

Many convicts did NOT die on the voyage from Britain to Australia. The "First Fleet" was a government job and was run by the British Navy, who only about 15 - 20 years before had discovered how to keep sailors healthy during long voyages. The death rate on this fleet was remarkably low by 18th century standards.

The "Second Fleet" which was more scattered was run by private contractors who were more efficient. They crowded and starved the convicts with the result that the death rate was enormous and on arrival in Australia many convicts were too sick to get off the ships, so they were thrown overboard into the harbour. If it had happened these days the contractors would have been imprisoned themselves for negligent homicide.

The result was that later voyages were under strict government supervision and death rates fell again.

Weird facts . Many of the explorers who ventured into central Australia in the mid to late 19th century suffered terribly or died of thirst or starvation. In this Australia was totally unlike the USA. The most incredible tale is that of Burke and Wills who crossed from the south to the north.

They barely made it back to their base camp on Cooper's Creek. The people that they had left there to wait for them had finally given them up for dead and returned south. They had left the camp nine hours before.

If you want some more early stories look for Matthew Flinders, Sir John Franklin, Edward Eyre, Caroline Chisholm

More recently -
Dr. Barry Marshall, Sir Macfarlane Burnett, Frank Fenner, John Shine, General Sir John Monash, Alfred Traeger, John Flynn.

http://www.akubra.com.au/

http://www.haddonrig.com.au/

http://www.ulladulla.info/historian/ffstory.html

http://www.historyaustralia.org.au/ifhaa/ships/2ndfleet.htm

http://www.photophoto.com.au/Pages/3%20Australia/Australia%20INDEX.htm

http://www.burkeandwills.net.au/

http://www.australiancoal.com.au/

http://www.wilmap.com.au/people/traeger.html

http://www.flyingdoctors.org.au/Reverend-John-Flynn.html

http://www.asap.unimelb.edu.au/bsparcs/biogs/P000279b.htm

http://www.awm.gov.au/1918/people/genmonash.htm

http://jcsmr.anu.edu.au/about/fenner/index.php

The_Mouse

The word "Koala" means "No water" Because Koala do not drink water. They get all their food and liquid from the gum leaves they eat.

The pouch on a wombat faces backwards. Wombats are burrowing animals and pouch facing backwards means they don't get dirt into the pouch.

We have electricity, shopping malls, cars and ATMs in Australia (contrary to popular belief that we are still living in the dark ages)

Ayers Rock (see answerer ny above) is now called Uluru.

Jessie

Please ignore NYs answer. He/She has some 'facts', but there is no understanding of Australia or it's history there.

The rest are accurate (except about eating our tourists, we only tease them a little...). Oh and we don't only eat pancakes at dinner - I usually have them for breakfast *rolls eyes* - but have had them for lunch or a night snack.

Did you know that Australia wasn't only founded by convicts? South Australia was founded by free settlers. Also Australia was the second country to give women the vote.

In the yr 2007, its estimated that 22% of Aussies have a convict ancestor.

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.

Four out of 10 Australians are migrants or the first-generation children of migrants. I don't know anyone who considers themselves 'only' an Australian - we are always a mix - a mongral of races. For example, I'm Maltese/Irish Australian.

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.

The name Australia comes from the Latin Terra Australis Incognito which means the Unknown Southern Land.

(I love this one, it's so Australian:) Kangaroo - The name for the Australian marsupial Kangaroo came about when some of the first white settlers saw this strange animal hopping along and they asked the Aborigines what it was called. They replied with 'Kanguru', which in the native language meant 'I don't know' .

michinoku2001

No pennies

DollyMD

Like "ny" states, Australia is the smallest continent in the world, but also the largest island.
South Australia (one of the Australian states) is the driest state in the driest continent.
Australia is the only country whose people eat the animals on its national Coat of Arms (the kangaroo and emu).
As others have explained, convicts were originally transported to Australia from England as punishment for crimes. However, this only happened when the English were prevented from continuing to send convicts to America.

kllr.queen

The west coast was very nearly settled by the Dutch. It was often run into by lost east india ships ( the dutch east india trading company) lookinig for the spice islands to the north. The worst disaster for them was probably the sinking of the Batavia and the subsequent mutany. You were more likely to travel on the Titanic and reach your destination than on the Batavia! Some shipwrecked and marrooned sailors found there way to the mainland and it's inhabitants. This resulted in anecdotal evidence of a tribe of Blonde Aboriginies in the area of what is now Geraldton, however nobody investigated until it was too late to establish if this was due to the Dutch influence.

We once had a proffesional opera singer named Clara Butts - really! Dame Nelly Melba, our most famous opera singer named herself after her favourite city, Melbourne. She is supposed to have told an up and coming performer to "sing them rubbish it is all they understand"

Contrary to popular belief most Aborigines lived in the coastal regions with lotsd of water and vegetation. They used fire as a farming tool. They were still nomadic and would travel around to prevent deforrestion and "over grazing" in any particular area. They generally believedthey were coneced to their nativelands and both protected and were protected by it. Like Native Americans, Aboriginies are not just one people scattered across the country, but distinct individual tribes often with their own customs and languages.

Check this site about the Dreaming. It is important to understand what it was if you want to discuss native Australia

http://www.dreamtime.net.au/indigenous/spirituality.cfm

In Western Australia, Aboriginies who have died are not discussed by the tribe. Any footage of Noongahs has a disclaimer pointing out that some of the participants may no longer be alive.

Ummm.... Women are not allowed to play the Didjeridoo. However the circular breathing pattern the didjeridoo players use (breathing in through the nose while breathing out through the mouth) has been adopted by opera singers all over the world.

Drop bears are a very little know, but dangerous animal that you do not want to meet.

But Why??

we love to eat tourists.....

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