FREE! Click here to Join FunTrivia. Thousands of games, quizzes, and lots more!
Quiz about The History of Australian Exploration
Quiz about The History of Australian Exploration

The History of Australian Exploration Quiz


Australia is a vast country, and many people have been exploring it over the last few centuries. See you much you know about these intrepid souls and their expeditions.

A multiple-choice quiz by ozzz2002. Estimated time: 5 mins.
  1. Home
  2. »
  3. Quizzes
  4. »
  5. History Trivia
  6. »
  7. Australian History
  8. »
  9. Australia 1600s to 1800s

Author
ozzz2002
Time
5 mins
Type
Multiple Choice
Quiz #
359,177
Updated
Jun 08 23
# Qns
10
Difficulty
Average
Avg Score
7 / 10
Plays
627
Awards
Top 5% quiz!
Last 3 plays: psnz (10/10), Guest 120 (10/10), Rizeeve (9/10).
- -
Question 1 of 10
1. In 1616, Dirk Hartog landed on an island that now bears his name. He had bumped into a rather barren part of the Western Australian coast. What simple item did he leave behind? Hint


Question 2 of 10
2. Western Australia saw several European visits, mainly because of the proximity to the Spice Islands (now part of Indonesia). An Englishman named Dampier navigated around the top of the Great South Land (or Terra Australis), taking floral and faunal specimens before heading north. He has a town named after him in Western Australia, and there is also a bay named after his ship. What bay is it? Hint


Question 3 of 10
3. James Cook is an indelible part of Australian history. Which parts of the 'great south land' did he discover and map? Hint


Question 4 of 10
4. 1813 was an important year in Australian history. The Blue Mountains, just to the west of the settlement at Sydney, were finally crossed. Blaxland, Wentworth and Lawson found the secret where previous attempts had failed. What did they do differently? Hint


Question 5 of 10
5. After the barrier of the Blue Mountains was overcome in 1813, explorers went in all directions. Hamilton Hume and William Hovell crossed and named this major river, and Charles Sturt followed it to its mouth. What is that river known as today? Hint


Question 6 of 10
6. Master sailor Matthew Flinders explored a lot of Australia, and his legacy is remembered all over the country with towns, streets, etc, all named after him. What did his 1798 expedition prove? Hint


Question 7 of 10
7. After the coastal fringes of Australia had been explored, attention turned to the interior of the country. In the first half of the nineteenth century, what legendary geographical feature were many expeditions looking for? Hint


Question 8 of 10
8. In 1835, John Batman declared that 'This will be the place for a village'. His 'village' got quite a bit larger over the years. What name is it known by now? Hint


Question 9 of 10
9. Major Thomas Mitchell was another explorer than travelled extensively, mainly in the eastern half of the continent. He surveyed the Darling River, a major tributary of the Murray, and explored inland Queensland. He is remembered by various place names, and also an animal. What type of animal is known as a Major Mitchell? Hint


Question 10 of 10
10. Australia has a few famous trees in its history, but which is most closely associated with the disaster that was the 1860 Burke and Wills expedition? Hint



(Optional) Create a Free FunTrivia ID to save the points you are about to earn:

arrow Select a User ID:
arrow Choose a Password:
arrow Your Email:




Most Recent Scores
Mar 21 2024 : psnz: 10/10
Mar 20 2024 : Guest 120: 10/10
Feb 27 2024 : Rizeeve: 9/10
Feb 17 2024 : jibberer: 10/10
Feb 08 2024 : Guest 1: 8/10
Feb 01 2024 : Guest 101: 10/10
Jan 28 2024 : Guest 203: 6/10

Score Distribution

quiz
Quiz Answer Key and Fun Facts
1. In 1616, Dirk Hartog landed on an island that now bears his name. He had bumped into a rather barren part of the Western Australian coast. What simple item did he leave behind?

Answer: A dinner plate

The pewter dinner plate was inscribed with the short message giving the date, the name of the ship and the senior crew. It is the oldest European artefact in Australian history, and is now in a museum in The Netherlands. The island is in Shark Bay, and is the westernmost point of Australia.
2. Western Australia saw several European visits, mainly because of the proximity to the Spice Islands (now part of Indonesia). An Englishman named Dampier navigated around the top of the Great South Land (or Terra Australis), taking floral and faunal specimens before heading north. He has a town named after him in Western Australia, and there is also a bay named after his ship. What bay is it?

Answer: Roebuck

Dampier went round the world three times, and popped up all over the place, from Peru to South Africa, Guam to Panama, Brazil to the Phillipines. Dampier was the captain responsible for marooning Alexander Selkirk, the inspiration for Daniel Defoe's novel, 'Robinson Crusoe'.

Roebuck Bay is just south of Broome, Perth is the state capital, hundreds of kilometres to the south, and Batavia is now known as Jakarta, Indonesia.
3. James Cook is an indelible part of Australian history. Which parts of the 'great south land' did he discover and map?

Answer: East coast

He first sighted land in what is now Victoria, and continued up the coast to the tip of present-day Queensland. The expedition's first actual landing was in Stingray Harbour, now Botany Bay. He damaged his ship on the Great Barrier Reef, and met some kangaroos, before heading north to New Guinea. From there, he dropped into Indonesia and South Africa before heading for home.

Bonus Question- Did you know that Captain Cook made three journeys around the world? He was killed on one of them- which one? (Think about it.)
4. 1813 was an important year in Australian history. The Blue Mountains, just to the west of the settlement at Sydney, were finally crossed. Blaxland, Wentworth and Lawson found the secret where previous attempts had failed. What did they do differently?

Answer: Followed the mountain ridges

Previous expeditions and escaped convicts tried to cross the Blue Mountains (part of the Great Dividing Range), but all followed the same plan- to stay in the valleys- every valley ended in an unscalable cliff. Even though Blaxland, Wentworth and Lawson followed the mountain ridges, the going was not easy, with hostile natives, dense bushland and very narrow ridges dogging their every step. The Great Western Highway now roughly follows their route.

Going round the range was not an option, as it extends for hundreds of kilometres to the north and south, running parallel to the coast. Following the large river, now known as the Nepean River, would not have worked either, as its source is still on the eastern side of the Great Dividing Range.
5. After the barrier of the Blue Mountains was overcome in 1813, explorers went in all directions. Hamilton Hume and William Hovell crossed and named this major river, and Charles Sturt followed it to its mouth. What is that river known as today?

Answer: Murray River

Hume and Hovell crossed the river in 1824 and named it the Hume River. Charles Sturt renamed it the Murray in 1830. The river now forms the majority of the border between New South Wales and Victoria.

The Yarra runs through Melbourne and the Swan flows through the Western Australian capital of Perth. The Orange River is in South Africa.
6. Master sailor Matthew Flinders explored a lot of Australia, and his legacy is remembered all over the country with towns, streets, etc, all named after him. What did his 1798 expedition prove?

Answer: Tasmania was an island

Flinders and George Bass circumnavigated Van Diemens Land (now Tasmania), establishing that it was, in fact, a large island. A few years later, in 1803, Hobart was established as a penal colony and the vast majority of English prisoners were sent there. Port Arthur soon gained a fearsome reputation as the toughest convict colony in the continent. In 1996, it became the scene of the most deadly massacre in Australia's history, when a madman murdered 35 tourists, and wounded many others. I have been to the site, and it is the eeriest place that I have ever visited. The Isle of the Dead is a small islet just offshore. There are hundreds of bodies buried in unmarked graves.

The Great Barrier Reef does not quite reach as far as New Guinea and there were no kangaroos in New Zealand. It has been speculated that the Chinese visited Australia in the 1400s, but this has never been confirmed, and Flinders would certainly not have been able to suggest such a theory.
7. After the coastal fringes of Australia had been explored, attention turned to the interior of the country. In the first half of the nineteenth century, what legendary geographical feature were many expeditions looking for?

Answer: The inland sea

They did not find an inland sea, because it just does not exist. Much of the interior is classified as desert or semi-arid. Over 2.3 million hectares is desert. To put that number into perspective: Australia is the sixth largest country on Earth; the desert areas cover almost as much area as the seventh largest country, India. Most of the country has an annual rainfall of less than 25cm (about 9 inches).

Lasseter's Reef is an imaginary reef of gold, somewhere in the outback. Various treks have been made to discover it, since Harold Lasseter announced that he had found it in 1930. None have been successful; it may be out there somewhere, just down the road from the Fountain of Youth!

Early convicts were convinced that there was a land bridge to China, despite seafarers like Cook and Torres disproving this theory many years before.
8. In 1835, John Batman declared that 'This will be the place for a village'. His 'village' got quite a bit larger over the years. What name is it known by now?

Answer: Melbourne

Batman was born in Sydney, but moved to Van Diemens Land (Tasmania) when he was 20. He led an expedition to Victoria and made his pronouncement near the banks of the Yarra River, trading knives, mirrors and blankets with the local aboriginals for the land. Geelong, which is 75 kms south-west of Melbourne, was founded a couple of years later. Both settlements went through a massive population growth when the Victorian gold rush started in 1850.

Palmerston was founded in 1869, and changed its name to Darwin in 1911. It was a backwater town until the 1950s, when its population escalated. It is now the capital of the Northern Territory.

Gotham City is home to the superhero Batman, and is not in Australia.
9. Major Thomas Mitchell was another explorer than travelled extensively, mainly in the eastern half of the continent. He surveyed the Darling River, a major tributary of the Murray, and explored inland Queensland. He is remembered by various place names, and also an animal. What type of animal is known as a Major Mitchell?

Answer: A parrot

The Major Mitchell cockatoo is a large parrot. It has distinctive colouring, with a pink chest, white wings and a bright red and yellow crest.

Major Mitchell, (the explorer, not the bird!), was Surveyor-General of New South Wales, and was responsible for mapping all the new discoveries. He made three trips to the Darling, before heading north, in 1845, to search for a large river that was theorised to run northerly through Queensland. There is no such river.
10. Australia has a few famous trees in its history, but which is most closely associated with the disaster that was the 1860 Burke and Wills expedition?

Answer: The Dig Tree, Coopers Creek

Their mission was to cross the continent from south to north and return. The whole show was badly timed, badly led and badly provisioned. Marching through outback Queensland in summer was just crazy; temperatures topped 50C (120F) for days on end. Burke and Wills broke up the expedition to make an unencumbered dash for the Gulf of Carpentaria (in northern Queensland), but ran dangerously low on supplies. The remainder of the expedition had remained at Coopers Creek to await their return. They left only hours before the explorers returned, but they had carved in a tree the instructions 'DIG' and a nearby location. They rested and used the supplies, but they were still stranded in the desert, and eventually died while trying to get home.

The Tree of Knowledge in Barcaldine was where the Australian Labor Party was founded, in 1891. This action rose out of a shearers strike and dissatisfaction with the government. The Marked Tree, or Explorers Tree, is just outside Katoomba. There has been ongoing debate about the authenticity of the marking, which were alleged to have been made by Blaxland, Wentworth or Lawson in 1813.

Bandiana is an Australian Army base, and is home to the military, but not the Miller Tree; I just made that up.
Source: Author ozzz2002

This quiz was reviewed by FunTrivia editor bloomsby before going online.
Any errors found in FunTrivia content are routinely corrected through our feedback system.
Related Quizzes
This quiz is part of series All-Australian quizzes, part 1:

I love my country and love sharing it with the world. Here are some quizzes on various aspects of life Down Under.

  1. The History of Australian Exploration Average
  2. Australia, by Category Tough
  3. Australian Animals Average
  4. Mixed Aussie Sport Average
  5. Australian Music Average
  6. Weather in Australia Average

3/28/2024, Copyright 2024 FunTrivia, Inc. - Report an Error / Contact Us