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Australia Trivia

This is a subcategory of Geography

“Wet” means “simpleton” in Australian slang. The Wet is the rainy season in Northern Australia.

About one fifth of Australia is covered by its eleven deserts.

Arguably the largest state in the world, Western Australia covers one-third of the Australian continent. It spans over 2.5 million square kilometers (1 million square miles).

Australia is divided into two territories and six states.

Australia is the smallest, flattest, and driest inhabited continent in the World. It is the only country which is also a whole continent — 18.6 million people live here.

Australia's Ayers Rock is the largest rock in the world. It rises out of the middle of the country with a diameter of 5˝ miles around its base and a height of 1,000 feet.

Australia's Great Barrier Reef stretches for 1,242 miles along the coast of Queensland. It is a chain of small islands and more than 2,500 reefs.

Australia's city of Sydney began as a penal colony in 1788; for the next 60 years, it received the criminal and persecuted people of British society.

Australia's highest mountain is named for Thaddeus Kosciusko, the Polish general who fought in the American Revolution.

In Australia's metropolitan Melbourne, about 26 percent of the land is reserved for parks.

South Australia's city of Adelaide is unusual in that it was settled by free people. The city has no convict history.

Strangeray Springs cattle station in South Australia is the largest ranch in the world. Its area measures 30,029 square kilometers – only slightly smaller than the European country of Belgium.

Sydney is the largest city in Australia. It contains 4 million people.

The athletes from Iceland took 25 hours in the air to arrive in Sydney, Australia, for the 27th Olympic Games in September 2000.

The largest lake in Australia is Eyre, measuring 3,420 square miles (8,885 sq. km).

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