15 Fun Facts about Australia

An orthographic satellite photo of Australia by Wikimedia commons

15 Fun Facts about Australia

Australia is officially the Commonwealth of Australia. It is a sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands.

With an area of 7,617,930 square kilometres, Australia is the largest country by area in Oceania and the world’s sixth-largest country.

Australia is the oldest, flattest, and driest continent with the least fertile soils. In the article are the 15 fun facts about Australia.

1. Until the early 19th century Australia was best known as New Holland

New Holland is a historical European name for mainland Australia. The name was first applied to Australia in 1644 by the Dutch seafarer Abel Tasman. The name came for a time to be applied in most European maps to the vaunted “Southern land” or Terra Australis even after its coastline was finally explored.

New Holland continued to be used semi-officially and in popular usage as the name for the whole land mass until at least the mid-1850s.

2. Indigenous Australians comprise two groups

The first group is the Aboriginal people. Aboriginal Australians are the various Indigenous peoples of the Australian mainland and many of its islands, such as Tasmania, Fraser Island, Hinchinbrook Island, the Tiwi Islands, and Groote Eylandt, but excluding the Torres Strait Islands. Aboriginal Australians comprise many distinct peoples who have developed across Australia for over 50,000 years.

The second group is the Torres Strait Islanders. They are the Indigenous Melanesian people of the Torres Strait Islands, which are part of the state of Queensland, Australia.

Ethnically distinct from the Aboriginal people of the rest of Australia, they are often grouped with them as Indigenous Australians. Today many more Torres Strait Islander people are living in mainland Australia (nearly 28,000) than on the Islands (about 4,500).

3. Whitsunday Islands are the most loved and visited islands in Australia

A photo of tourists at Whitsunday Island by eyeintim – Wikimedia commons

The Whitsunday Islands are 74 continental islands of various sizes off the central coast of Queensland, Australia, 900 kilometres (560 miles) north of Brisbane. The northernmost of the islands are off the coast by the town of Bowen, while the southernmost islands are off the coast by Proserpine.

The island group is centred on Whitsunday Island, while the commercial centre is Hamilton Island. The area’s traditional owners are the Ngaro people and the Gia people, whose Juru people have the only legally recognised native title in the Whitsunday Region.

The islands are within the locality of Whitsundays and the local government of Whitsunday Region. In 2009, as part of the Q150 celebrations, the Whitsunday Islands became one of the Q150 Icons of Queensland for their role as a natural attraction.

4. Macquarie Island is home to the majority of penguins

Macquarie Island is an island in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, about halfway between New Zealand and Antarctica. Regionally part of Oceania and politically a part of Tasmania, Australia, since 1900, it became a Tasmanian State Reserve in 1978 and was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1997.

It was a part of Esperance Municipality until 1993 when the municipality was merged with other municipalities to form Huon Valley Council. The island is home to the entire royal penguin population during their annual nesting season. Ecologically, the island is part of the Antipodes Subantarctic Islands tundra ecoregion.

5. There are more than 15 strange animals in Australia

A photo of a Plains-Wanderer by JJ Harrison – Wikimedia commons

While animals throughout the Americas, Europe, Asia and Africa have migrated long distances over time and during various major climate shifts, that hasn’t been an option for Australian species. As a result, many of the animals in this place exhibit unique characteristics and survival techniques.

Some of the strangest animals in Australia include; Tiny Pouch Babies, Koala Crisis, Antechinus, Monjon, Australian Bustard, Sawfish, Pygmy Rock-wallaby, Western Gobbleguts, Plains-wanderer, Rakali, Euro, Woylie, Pademelon, Giant Panda Snail, Mulgara, Common Spotted Cuscus, and Angasi Oyster.

6. Australia has the world’s largest coral reef

Have you ever heard of the Great Barrier Reef? The Great Barrier Reef is the world’s most extensive coral reef system composed of over 2,900 individual reefs and 900 islands stretching for over 2,300 kilometres (1,400 mi) over an area of approximately 344,400 square kilometres.

The reef is located in the Coral Sea, off the coast of Queensland, Australia, separated from the coast by a channel 100 miles wide in places and over 200 feet deep. The Great Barrier Reef can be seen from outer space and is the world’s biggest single structure made by living organisms.

This reef structure is composed of and built by billions of tiny organisms, known as coral polyps. It supports a wide diversity of life and was selected as a World Heritage Site in 1981.CNN labelled it one of the world’s seven natural wonders in 1997. Australian World Heritage places included it in its list in 2007. The Queensland National Trust named it a state icon of Queensland in 2006.

7. Cape York Peninsula is the largest unspoiled wilderness in northern Australia

A photo of Cape York Peninsula by Pathncath – Wikimedia commons

The land is primarily flat and about half of the area is used for grazing cattle. The relatively undisturbed eucalyptus-wooded savannahs, tropical rainforests and other types of habitat are now recognised and preserved for their global environmental significance.

8. Ayers Rock is the most famous sandstone monolith

A photo of Ayers Rock 9 Uhulu) by Thomas Schoch – Wikimedia commons

Ayers Rock is also called Uhulu. Uluru is one of Australia’s most recognisable natural landmarks and has been a popular destination for tourists since the late 1930s. It is also one of the most important indigenous sites in Australia.

It is a large sandstone formation in the centre of Australia. It is in the southern part of the Northern Territory, 335 km southwest of Alice Springs.

Uluru is sacred to the Pitjantjatjara, the Aboriginal people of the area, known as the Aṉangu. The area around the formation is home to an abundance of springs, waterholes, rock caves, and ancient paintings. Uluru is listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It is the main feature of Uluṟu-Kata Tjuṯa National Park.

9. Australia’s high-income mixed-market economy is rich in natural resources

It is the world’s thirteenth-largest by nominal terms, and the 18th-largest by PPP. As of 2021, it has the second-highest amount of wealth per adult, after Luxembourg. Also, it has the thirteenth-highest financial assets per capita.

10. Australia is highly urbanised

A photo of Sydney skyline at dusk by Dilif – Wikimedia commons

67 per cent of the population is living in the Greater Capital City Statistical Areas as of 2018. Metropolitan areas with more than one million inhabitants are Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide. Australia has 8 capital cities; Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne, Canberra, Adelaide, Hobart, Darwin and Perth. There are many other cities though.

11. Majority of the population is made up of the old people

Population ageing presents economic, fiscal and societal challenges for countries around the world. In common with many other developed countries, Australia is experiencing a demographic shift towards an older population, with more retirees and fewer people of working age.

In 2018 the average age of the Australian population was 38.8 years. In 2015, 2.15% of the Australian population lived overseas, one of the lowest proportions worldwide.

12. Australia has no official language!

Ever heard of a country with no official language? Today we are breaking news that Australia has no official language despite ts a democratic language. Even though British Colony colonized Australia, Australia did not adopt the English language of Britain as other British colonies such as Nigeria and Kenya officiated the language.

All in all, English is the de facto national language. Australian English is a major variety of languages with a distinctive accent and lexicon and differs slightly from other varieties of English in grammar and spelling. General Australian serves as the standard dialect.

At the 2021 census, English was the only language spoken in the home by 72% of the population. The next most common languages spoken at home are Mandarin (2.7%), Arabic (1.4%), Vietnamese (1.3%), Cantonese (1.2%) and Punjabi (0.9%).

13. Australia has no state religion

Section 116 of the Australian Constitution prohibits the federal government from making any law to establish any religion, impose any religious observance, or prohibit the free exercise of any religion.

At the 2021 Census, 38.9% of the population identified as having “no religion”, up from 15.5% in 2001. The largest religion is Christianity (43.9%). The largest Christian denominations are the Roman Catholic Church (20%) and the Anglican Church of Australia (9.8%).

Multicultural immigration since the Second World War has led to the growth of non-Christian religions, where the are Islam (3.2%), Hinduism (2.7%), Buddhism (2.4%), Sikhism (0.8%), and Judaism (0.4%).

14. Health is an issue of concern in Australia

Australia’s life expectancy of 83 years. It is the fifth-highest in the world. It has the highest rates of skin cancer in the world, while cigarette smoking is the largest preventable cause of death and disease, responsible for 7.8% of the total mortality and disease.

Ranked second in preventable causes is hypertension at 7.6%, with obesity third at 7.5%. Australia ranked 35th in the world in 2012 for its proportion of obese women and near the top of developed nations for its proportion of obese adults; 63% of its adult population is either overweight or obese.

15. Australia is home to a diversity of cultures

This is a result of its history of immigration. Since 1788, Australian culture has primarily been a Western culture strongly influenced by early Anglo-Celtic settlers.

Other influences include Australian Aboriginal culture, the traditions brought to the country by waves of immigration from around the world, and the culture of the United States.

The cultural divergence and evolution that has occurred over the centuries since European settlement has resulted in a distinctive Australian culture.