Australia is famous for its beaches, wildlife, and laid-back culture, but its real story is far stranger than most people realize. 25 Crazy Facts About Australia dives into the nation’s unexpected history, bizarre scientific discoveries, heroic moments, and unbelievable coincidences. From disappearing teaspoons and runaway ants to atomic tests and life-saving strangers, these facts reveal a side of Australia that is as fascinating as it is unpredictable.
Commonwealth Voters Can Participate
1. Citizens of the Commonwealth (Canada, Australia etc.) may vote in the United Kingdom.
2. An Australian research institute conducted a four-month study “to answer the age-old question, ‘Where have all the bloody teaspoons gone?'”. Results: 80% of the teaspoons in the study disappeared, with the half-life of the teaspoons calculated at 81 days.
3. Per capita cannabis consumption in the United States, Canada and Australia is more than double that of the Netherlands, despite it being legal in the Netherlands.
4. In 1878 an Australian bandit named Kelly Gang wrote an 8,000-word letter (the Jerilderie Letter) justifying his actions and gave it to a teller at a bank he robbed.
5. Highway 1 in Australia is the longest highway in the world. Measuring approximately 14,500 km (9,000 mi), it circumnavigates the entire country.
6. Rum was the main currency in early colonial Australia. Officers of the New South Wales Corps bought up all the imported rum and established a 17-year monopoly on its trade. When Governor William Bligh tried to end it, he was deposed in the only armed takeover of government in Australian history, known as The Rum Rebellion.
7. In 2004, a supercolony of ants 62 miles wide was discovered under Melbourne, Australia.
8. In 2006, thieves who planned to steal one of the koalas at Rockhampton Zoo in Queensland, Australia changed their minds after the animal proved too vicious, because ‘apparently [the koala] scratched the sh*t out of them,’ and they stole a crocodile instead, which was easier.
9. A large pizza in Australia (11″) is smaller than a medium pizza in the US (12″).
10. Fossilized human footprints about 20,000 years old were discovered in Australia, indicating the man who made them was running barefoot in sand at a speed comparable to a modern Olympic sprinter.
Maralinga Nuclear Test Legacy
11. During the 1950s and 1960s, the British government conducted atomic weapons tests in the rural South Australian town of Maralinga. Australian and British soldiers were used as human subjects to test the effects of radiation on people, and indigenous Australians also lived in the area at that time.
12. Cattle and sheep produce 11% of Australia’s greenhouse gases. Replacing them with kangaroos for meat production would eliminate that source of emissions.
13. In 2012, an Air Canada passenger flight diverted and descended from 37,000 feet to 4,000 feet to help locate a stranded yacht off the Australian coast. The passengers found the yacht 25 minutes after the emergency beacon was activated.
14. One of the most popular philosophical debates on debate.org is whether or not Australia actually exists.
15. Although they share the same spoken language, British, Irish, Australian, and American Sign Languages are all completely different languages.
16. In Australia, the cities of Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide observe daylight saving, while Perth, Darwin and Brisbane do not.
17. A 2012 episode of Peppa Pig was banned in Australia because its central message that spiders were not to be feared was deemed ‘inappropriate for an Australian audience.’
18. Australian speed skater Steven Bradbury won a gold medal at the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics because everyone ahead of him crashed in three races in a row.
19. An Australian man named Don Ritchie lived across the street from the most famous suicide spot in Australia, known as ‘the Gap.’ He lived there for 45 years and during that time he saved at least 160 people from committing suicide.
20. A 9-year-old Australian girl who received a liver transplant does not need lifelong immunosuppressants because her blood types spontaneously changed from O negative to O positive to accommodate the donor’s liver.
Only Western Democracy Lacking Rights
21. Australia is the only Western-style democratic government worldwide that does not have a Bill of Rights. ‘Western democratic government’ refers to a form of government, not a geographic label.
22. Indigenous Australian Aborigines inhale petrol, and in 2005 the Government of Australia and BP began introducing opal fuel in remote areas prone to petrol sniffing. Opal is a non-sniffable fuel (much less likely to produce a high) and has made a difference in some indigenous areas.
23. In 2005 three Mexicans, Lucio Rendon, Salvador Ordonez and Jesus Eduardo Vivand, became lost at sea and over nine months drifted from Mexico almost as far as Australia. They survived by eating raw fish and drinking rainwater.
24. In Australia ‘Black Friday’ denotes a series of bushfires that destroyed entire towns and caused 71 deaths.
25. Saudi Arabia imports both sand and camels from Australia.
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