Australian Geography Trivia

1. Which two cities fought for the title of 'Capital of Australia'?

From Quiz Angelic Australia

Answer: Sydney and Melbourne

Sydney and Melbourne were fighting for the title in 1901. Canberra was named the capital by Lady Denman in 1913, announcing 'I name the capital of Australia Canberra'.

From Quiz A Trip Down Under

Answer: Cascades Female Factory

This workhouse was built partly as a segregated prison where women could be put to useful work, partly to separate them from the ordinary population whom it was feared that the convict women would corrupt. The regime was harsh and the death rate among inmates was high. It was closed in 1856 but its site is now a National Heritage Place which is well worth a visit.

From Quiz The Land Down Under

Answer: January

Australia celebrates Australia Day on January 26. On January 26, 1788, the first British settlers arrived in Australia. This became known as Australia Day. Every year in January, one person is chosen to be Australian of the Year.

From Quiz Extreme Australian Geography

Answer: Mount Kosciuszko

One of the so-called "Seven Summits" (a term from mountaineering to indicate the feat of scaling the highest points of each continent), Mount Kosciuszko at 2228 m (7310 ft) is by far the shortest and easiest to scale. One can simply park close to the summit and hike a smooth 5-mile path to the top. Many mountaineers have proposed replacing Mount Kosciuszko on the Seven Summits list with Puncak Jaya, the highest point in Oceania, which is a very difficult mountain to climb. The "mountain" was named because of its similarity to Kosciuszko Mound in Poland. That feature was in turn named after a Polish war hero, Tadeusz Kosciuszko, who led American troops in the American Revolution and also fought against Russia in the Polish-Russian Wars. Of the wrong answers, Mt. Townsend is the second-highest mountain on the Australian mainland; Mawson Peak is the highest mountain when Australian island holdings are included; and Dome Argus is the highest point when Antarctic claims are included.

From Quiz A Trip Around Australia

Answer: Gold and Sunshine Coasts

The Gold Coast (which is a city) is 42 kms south-east of Brisbane, and the Sunshine Coast is located 100 kms north of the capital. Both areas are huge tourist attractions and holiday areas. Noosa and Coolangatta are beach resorts north and south of Brisbane respectively. Fraser and Whitsunday are both islands. Fraser Island is a World Heritage site and the largest sand island in the world being 1,840 sq. kms in area. The Whitsunday Islands are a group of islands about 900 kms north of Brisbane. The Great Barrier Reef is the world's largest coral reef and stretches over 2,300 kms along the coast of Queensland and is also a World Heritage site. Cape York is a peninsula in the far north of the state. It is in this area, around Weipa on the Gulf of Carpentaria, that the Dutch explorer Willem Janszoon was the first European to site the mainland of Australia in 1606.

From Quiz Australia: Not Just One (or Two) Islands.

Answer: Latvia and Panama

Tasmania is the 26th biggest island in the world and if it was a country, it would be around the 123rd largest. Argentina, Mexico, Chile and France are the 7th, 14th, 42nd and 63rd biggest countries respectively. Monaco and Singapore are much smaller; in fact, they are two of the smallest countries in the world. Latvia (64559 sq. km) and Panama (75417 sq. km) are very close to Tasmania in size. Tasmania as a state has an area of 68401 sq. km because it has a large number of smaller islands associated with it including King Island which is among the top ten largest islands in Australia.

From Quiz A Tour Down Under

Answer: Melville Island

Darwin is the capital city in the Northern Territory of Australia, as well as the most populated city in this territory. The port of Darwin is situated on the Timor Sea. Melville Island has a quite large area, but is thinly populated. It was named after Robert Dundas (1771-1851), second Viscount of Melville, and not after the author of "Moby Dick" (about a captain obsessed with the hunt for a white whale). Stewart Island is one of the smaller islands of New Zealand, situated to the far southeast of Darwin. Java is a quite big island, part of Indonesia, and situated far northwest of Darwin. Arnhem Land is not an island, but a national park in Australia, east of Darwin.

From Quiz More Amazing Heritage Sites Around Australia

Answer: Fossils

UNESCO has recognised both Riversleigh and Naracoorte as being among the world's ten most significant fossil sites. The diversity of mammal fossils at Riversleigh is staggering. Fossils here date back as far as 25 million years. The area is now semi arid but back in those days it was blanketed with dense rainforest. It was home to sheep like mammals called nimbadon, a marsupial lion called wakaleo and the nimbacinus which is believed to have been a close relative to the Tasmanian wolf. Naracoorte contains a series of cave systems that are located close to the south eastern border of South Australia. The conditions within these caves have remained stable over the centuries, which has aided in the preservation of the remains of a wide variety of creatures. The climate outside of these caves, however, has varied greatly over the past 170,000 years so this preservation has been a great aid to scientists in plotting how the fauna here has adapted to these changes.

From Quiz The Road Less Traveled

Answer: Sixth largest

Australia has an area of just over seven and a half million square kilometres. The Indian Ocean is on the western side of the country, and the Pacific Ocean is on the east. The Great Southern Ocean rolls in at the south, while the top of the country is separated from the Asian continent by the Timor and Arafura Seas. Because Australia is surrounded by ocean on all sides, it is considered by some to not only be a continent, but also the largest island in the world. The five largest countries are: Russia, Canada, USA, China and Brazil.

From Quiz It's a Wild World Out There

Answer: New South Wales

Of course, the Big Banana is not a real banana, it is made of fiberglass. It doesn't stop it from being a very popular tourist attraction, however. Tourists can walk around inside it and can also enjoy nearby banana related things such as banana themed restaurants. It was an early example of Australia's "big things", which also includes the Big Shrimp, the Big Guitar and the Big Gumboot. Coffs Harbour is a coastal city of New South Wales, Australia. It is located about 540 kilometres (or 340 miles) north of Sydney. Banana farming is one of the most important things for Coffs Harbour's economy. Other important things are tourism and manufacturing.

From Quiz Australian Geography

Answer: The only reliable source of water for most of inland Australia

The Basin covers an area of 1,700,000 square kilometres throughout much of inland Australia, and is the only permanent supply of water for this very dry part of our country. To put that into perspective, that's almost one quarter the size of Australia. Most of this is in Queensland, the south-east of the Northern Territory, the north-east of South Australia and northern New South Wales. It holds almost 65,000 cubic kilometres of water and is held under a sandstone layer of the higher ground. Most of the water enters via the higher areas of Queensland and NSW, and then flows south and west underground. It emerges periodically through a number of springs. For the most part however, it is tapped by drilling down through the rock layers, enabling it to be forced up to the surface by its own pressure.

From Quiz Australia States

Answer: Queensland

The capital of Queensland, which borders the Pacific Ocean and the Gulf of Carpentaria, is Brisbane. Kingsland and Reefstate are not states--I made them up.

From Quiz Location Australia

Answer: Western Australia and South Australia

The Great Victoria Desert is Australia's largest desert and covers an area of more than 400,000 square kilometresspread across two states, WA and SA. It is not named after the state of Victoria but rather Queen Victoria by Ernest Giles, who was the first person to cross it in 1875.

From Quiz Big Things Man Made All Over Australia

Answer: Darwin

Located in Australia's Top End, Darwin is closer to Jakarta, Indonesia's capital, 2,700Km away, than it is to Canberra, Australia's capital, about a 4,000Km drive. Darwin is surrounded by parks and wildlife reserves, including the home to the famous Salties-salt water crocodiles-which can grow up to 7 metres in length and weigh one ton.

From Quiz At the Highest Peak of Australia

Answer: New South Wales

The mountain is located in southern New South Wales in Kosciuszko National Park. It is part of the mountain range which run down the east coast of Australia, the Great Dividing Range.

From Quiz The Extremes of Australia

Answer: West Wallabi Island - WA

Survivors of the Dutch merchant ship Batavia built a fort on West Wallabi Island (yes that is the spelling) in 1629 after being shipwrecked. Under-merchant Jeronimus Cornelisz led a mutiny that resulting in more than 120 deaths among the survivors, he was captured, tortured, forced to sign a confession, then had his hands chopped off before being hanged after those left were rescued by a search party.

From Quiz Let's Holiday in Australia!

Answer: Qantas

Qantas began operating in 1920 and it's the world's second oldest active airline. Dustin Hoffman's character in the 1988 movie "Rain Man" said that it is the only airline that had never had a crash. This was certainly true throughout the 20th century.

From Quiz Our Beautiful Brown Land, Australia

Answer: Australia

Australia is located in the southern hemisphere and comprises a continent and a number of small islands. Our neighbours are Indonesia, East Timor and Papua and New Guinea to the north; Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and New Caledonia to the north east; and New Zealand to the south east. The Antarctic is way to the south, and if you keep going west far enough, you'll eventually bump into the coast of Africa.

From Quiz Australia: Between a Rock and a Hard Place

Answer: Uluru

Uluru, formerly known as Ayers Rock is a large sandstone monolith in the southern portion of the Northern Territory. Uluru means "God's Centre" in the Aboriginal language and as such, is a deeply spiritual site to the local Anangu people. In 1983 the Government agreed to give the land title to Uluru back to the traditional owners, and enforce the 10-point plan which included the proviso that climbing the monolith be forbidden. This last rule didn't come into effect until October 2019 although the traditional owners have long been quietly discouraging climbing. Tourism to the area had increased significantly since it was named a UNESCO World Heritage Site and by the year 2000 it had almost half a million visitors each year. Climbing withstanding there is plenty to see, including the Mutitjulu Waterhole and the petroglyphs which convey Anangu cultural knowledge. Photography in some areas is also forbidden due to the cultural beliefs and rituals.

From Quiz 'Corner Country' of Central Australia

Answer: Mining

Home of BHP, Broken Hill is centre to New South Wales' mining industry, and the terminus of the Broken Hill Xplorer railway service from Sydney.

From Quiz Australia's National Parks

Answer: 25.7 million hectares

In 2008, there were approximately 25.7 million hectares of land protected in 516 national parks which covers about 3.42 percent of the continent and territories. In addition to the national parks, there is a further 34.7 million hectares of protected conservation areas (non national parks) on the mainland, islands and territories which combined with the national parks, totals 60.7 million hectares. That equates to 7.85 percent of the land of Australia and its territories.

From Quiz Islands

Answer: Tasmania

Tasmania is both the largest island and the smallest state of Australia. Melville Island is an island just north of Darwin and is the home of the Tiwi aboriginal community. Kangaroo Island is a popular tourist island off the coast of South Australia and Dirk Hartog Island is the largest island off the coast of Western Australia.

From Quiz 9 for 10 Australia

Answer: billabong

A billabong is often formed by water left behind after a flood or when a river changes course. A jumbuck is a sheep, and a billy is a metal cooking pot.

From Quiz Australia Unearthed. Notes from the Dig

Answer: Luna Park

Archives show Luna Park opened 1930s. Fire closed park in 1960s. Several attempts at re-opening. Finally open to public April 2004 minus something called "Big Dipper". Note - research "Big Dipper" and why it was missing. Early newsclippings suggest noise factor. Check.

From Quiz The Princes Highway - from NSW to SA

Answer: Port Augusta

Many people believe it finishes at Melbourne, but it keeps on going until Port Augusta, 308km from Adelaide.

From Quiz Australian Seconds!

Answer: Queensland

Queensland has an area of 1,727,000 km2, which is slightly smaller than Mexico. New Zealand, of course, is not a state of Australia (but Queensland is bigger anyway).

From Quiz Aussie Oddities

Answer: 1838

Amazingly enough, this law was enforced up until 1902.

From Quiz Let's Discover Australia

Answer: Murray River

The Murray River is 2,508 km (1,558 mi) long; it begins in the Snowy Mountains and ends in the Indian Ocean. The Murray River runs through the states of New South Wales, Victoria, and South Australia. Some wildlife in the river include Murray cod, eel-tailed catfish, and platypus.

From Quiz An Australian Trivia Muster

Answer: 000

000 was first introduced as the emergency number in Australia in 1961 and now covers 100% of telephone services.

From Quiz About Oz, The Land Downunder

Answer: The Premier State

NSW was the Premier State of Australia from 1980-1986. NSW license plates are yellow with black writing with the format of : AAA-999. NS

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Last Updated Apr 11 2026 5:44 AM

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