Posts Tagged ‘Facts & Trivia’

The Australians have always been an inventive lot, not only did the Aboriginals invent some amazing things, in more recent history we have created some much needed things to make life easier and more comfortable. Here are more of our marvellous inventions.

1906 – Feature Film
The Story of the Kelly Gang was the world’s first feature length film.

1906 – Kiwi Boot Polish
The boot polish that could restore the faded colour of brown shoes was first available for sale.

1913 – Automatic Totalisator
Invented by George Julius, this was the ‘tote automated betting’ at horse races.

1922 – Rotary Hoe
Cliff Howard, with help from his brother Albert built the first full-size rotary hoe cultivator. It uses energy to turn the soil directly, rather than dragging a plough behind a tractor.

1924 – Car radio
The first car radio was fitted to an Australian car built by Kellys Motors in New South Wales.

1928 – Royal Flying Doctor Service
Reverend John Flynn was the founder of the world’s first Aerial Medical Service, now known as the Royal Flying Doctor Service (RFDS). In May 1928, Dr St Vincent Welch made the first official RFDS visit.

1928 – First Crossing of the Pacific
Sir Charles Kingsford Smith and his crew performed the world’s first air crossing of the Pacific Ocean.

1928 – Speedo Swimwear
This swimwear originated in Sydney when the MacRae Knitting Mills manufactured the company’s first swimsuit, the razorback, made from silk and joined in the middle of the back. Speedo introduced the world’s first nylon swimsuit in 1957.

The Australians have always been an inventive lot, not only did the Aboriginals invent some amazing things, in more recent history we have created some much needed things to make life easier and more comfortable. There are more to come so keep an eye on the blog.

1838 – Pre-paid postage
Colonial Postmaster-General of New South Wales, James Raymond introduced the world’s first pre-paid postal system.

1856 – Refrigerator
James Harrison, commissioned by a brewery to build a machine that cooled beer, produced the world’s first practical refrigerator. He used the principal of vapour compression.

1858 – Football
Tom Will and Henry Harrison wrote the first ten rules of Australian Football, thus becoming the first in the world to codify a kicking-ball game. These rules predate those of Rugby, Soccer and Gridiron. Australian Football may have been inspired by the Aboriginal jumping/kicking game of Marn Grook.

1879 – Refrigeration
After being credited with the manufacture of the first artificial ice, Eugene Nicolle and Thomas Sutcliffe Mort developed shipboard refrigeration that allowed the export of meat from Australia to Great Britain.

1889 – Electric Drill
Arthur James Arnot patented the world’s first electric drill on 20 August 1889. He was an employee of the Union Electric Company in Melbourne. Its design was primarily for drilling rock and digging coal.

1897 – Differential gears
David Shearer, South Australia built a steam car with a differential inside left rear wheel hub.

1900s – The ‘Australian Crawl’
For most of human history, humans didn’t know how to swim effectively. In the 1900s, Australians invented the Australian Crawl, since becoming known as the ‘overarm’ or ‘freestyle’ swimming stroke.

1902 – Notepad
For 500 years, paper had been supplied in loose sheets. J A Birchall decided to cut the sheets into half, back them with cardboard and glue them together at the top.

• Australia was first called that by a local explorer, Matthew Flinders, who decided to promote the name “Terra Australis”, or “South Land”. It was not officially recognised until the then governor of the country, Lachlan Macquarie named it as such in a dispatch to London in 1817.
• Australia has the largest sand island on earth, Fraser Island, which is off the Queensland coast, 200km north of Brisbane.
• The world’s largest structure created by living creatures is the Great Barrier Reef, of the Queensland coast. It’s over 2000km long, and covers an area of nearly 260,0002km.
• Possibly the world’s biggest state, (of any country) is Western Australia. Covering over 2,252,0002km’s, (the western 1/3 of the Australian continent) it is bigger than all but a handful of countries by itself.
• The area of Australia that is covered by snow in winter is larger than the area of Switzerland.
• Australia is the richest source of mineral sands in the world.
• The famous Aussie Akubra hat is named that, from the Aboriginal word, which means ‘head covering’. They are made from rabbit fur.
• The first life-saving club in the world was founded in Australia, Bronte, Sydney, in 1903. It has since saved the lives of many surfers.
• The first official world surfing championships were held at Manly, Sydney, in 1964 and won by an Australian, Bernard ‘Midget’ Farrelly.
• Since 1896, the beginning of the modern Olympics, only Greece and Australia have participated in every Game.
• Australians are the world’s biggest buyers of 4WD vehicles.
• In the mid 70′s, Australians were the 3rd biggest beer drinker in the world.  (behind Germany and Belgium) In the late 90′s, we don’t even get into the top ten! (fortunately)
• 70% of the world’s wool comes from Australia. We have over 126,000,000 sheep, which use fully half the continent for grazing.
• Australia is the world’s biggest exporter of beef and veal.
• Australia is one of the safest places in the world, with a murder rate of 2 per 100,000 people. The US is up around 8 per 100,000.
• The most dangerous ants in the world are the Australian Bulldog Ant, (which is up to 4 centimetres long!) and is responsible for at least three deaths.

The first Australian Aboriginal word in the English language was “kangaroo” and was used by Captain James Cook. The original spelling was “kanguroo”.

The so-called ‘dingo fence’ in Australia is the longest fence in the world, and is about twice as long as the Great Wall of China. It has a gate every 19kms along it’s length.

When driving around Australia, make sure that you circum-navigate the continent anti-clockwise, as it’s about 900 metres shorter going this way than clockwise.

There are over 21,000,000 people in Australia, of which 85% live within 50km of the coast.

The Australian federation consists of six States and two Territories.

In land area, Australia is the sixth largest nation after Russia, Canada, China, the United States of America and Brazil.Australia is the only nation to govern an entire continent and its outlying islands.

Australia has possibly the lowest population density of any country in the world, ie, 2 people per square km. Japan has 327 people/2km

Australia has an area of about 7,600,0002km. This is large enough to swallow all of Europe and Turkey and Scandinavia. This gives up a coastline of about 36,700km.

Australia has more beaches than any other country, about 7,000 of them.

Apart from Antarctica, Australia is the driest continent.

Since 1945, over six million people from 200 countries have come to Australia as new settlers.

The mining town of Coober Pedy in Australia got it’s name from the local Aboriginals. It means something like “White fella down a hole”.

The original fifty cent piece in Australian decimal currency had around $2.00 worth of silver in it before it was replaced with a less expensive twelve sided coin.

The first Europeans to discover Australia were the Dutch. The first documented evidence is that in March 1606, the Dutch ship Duyfken, captained by Willem Janz, landed in far north Queensland, but left very quickly when one of the sailors was speared by an Aborigine. The next visit was in 1616, by Dirck Hartog, who landed in Western Australia. He nailed a pewter plate to a tree, which is now in a museum in Holland. Captain Hartog named the new country “Eendrachtsland”, which fortunately we don’t use these days.