10 Amazing facts about Australia

Here are 10 amazing facts about Australia – The Land of Kangaroos

10. The largest cities in Australia are Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, and Adelaide. Australia is the world’s 6th largest country by area. Due to its large size and isolation from the rest of the world, Australia is sometimes known as the ‘island continent’.

Australia is the biggest island and the smallest continent in the world. It is the only nation to govern an entire continent and its outlying islands. The mainland is the largest island and the smallest, flattest continent on Earth.

9. The Sydney Opera House gets 10.9 million visitors every year. Builders expected the construction of the Sydney Opera House to take 4 years. But it eventually took 14 years to build with over 10,000 construction workers.

8. Dingo Fence of Australia is the world’s longest fence in the world , which is 5,331 kilometers in length. The Dingo Fence is a ‘pest-exclusion’ fence built in the 1880s and completed in 1885. Its main purpose is to shield the fertile south-east part of Australia from dingoes. The Dingo fence is even longer than the Great Wall of China!

7. Some of the world’s deadliest animals live in Australia. Such as Common Death Adder, Coastal Taipan, and Blue-Ringed Octopus. The world’s largest coral reef system, the Great Barrier Reef, is in Australia. It stretches for 2,300 kilometers over an area of approximately 344,468 square kilometers. The Great Barrier Reef is the biggest coral reef system in the world. The reef is off the coast of Queensland, Australia, in the Coral Sea.

Australia is also known for Kangaroos. Australia also has the world’s happiest animal, the quokka. This animal has become the most popular tourist attraction at Australia’s Rottenest Island. Quokka is part of the kangaroo and wallaby family.

6. The Emu War of Australia is the war of man vs the birds. Emus are very big birds with heights at an average of no less than 5.7 feet, the second-largest living birds. They have long legs and necks with short wings less than 8 inches. When the emus grew in numbers, they started to wreak havoc on crops and that started The Great Emu War of Australia. The government hired former World War I soldiers to fight the emu.

The soldiers used the Lewis machine gun, a light machine gun that was widely used in the first world war. They used that gun against emus in Australia, more than a decade later. However, interestingly, Emus won the war!

It took about 10 bullets to kill a single emu, hence the officials decided that it is not worth it. Major Meredith was the leader of the war, but in the end, the emus won! Moreover, one of the soldiers quoted “The emus have proved that they are not so stupid as they are usually considered to be.”

5. Tourists in Australia tend to overstay.  An average of 70 tourists overstays their visa in Australia every week. Reports have shown that most of them are Malaysians and Chinese. While the Americans, British, and Indian also add a small part of it.

4. Australia is the 5th largest wine exporter in the world. The wine industry of Australia stimulates its economy through employment, tourism, and export. The Australian wine industry ranks 5th in the world as the largest wine exporter. It has an estimate of 780 million liters per year to the international export market. Locals consume 40% of the wine.

3. An Australian man tried to sell New Zealand in an auction at a starting price of 00.01 AUD on eBay. There are 22 bids in total and it went as high as 3,000 AUD. Even though everyone knew that it was just made for fun, the foreign Minister of New Zealand did not like it.

2. Australia has 160 spoken languages. Although Australia has no official language, English is the most widely spoken language. The majority of the population speaks English. Canberra became the capital of Australia on January 1, 1911. Melbourne and Sydney had a ‘historic rivalry’ and that is why Canberra became the tiebreaker. Australia is the world’s highest proportion of migrant settlers in a developed country. 27% of Australians were born abroad. 46% of Australian households had at least one parent born overseas.

1. Christmas is summertime in Australia. Christmas in Australia comes at the beginning of summer. The summer holidays start from mid-December to early February. Thus, some people go camping at Christmas. Since it is so hot during Christmas time, there are often massive bush fires across the country.

So now you have it! These are some of the interesting facts about Australia. Do let us know how did you find these facts in the comments section below!

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