Follow
Australia is the land of endless surprises, ranging from its strange wildlife to its strange history and strange cultural habits. There are kangaroos, koalas, and Sydney Opera House for everyone to adore, naturally, but the continent itself hides thousands of secrets that would drive even a professional traveler into wonder. Let’s present some actually stunning features of the Land Down Under that will make you love Australia with all your heart.
1. Australia Boasts More Venomous Snakes Than Any Nation
While the infamy of dangerous wildlife of Australia is renowned, few realize how unimaginably varied its snakes are. The continent hosts approximately 100 venomous snake species, 12 of which are the most poisonous snake species in the world. Most surprising is that the Australian snakes evolved their extremely deadly venom less than anything to strike down big prey, but due to the fact that the continent’s small native mammals became toxin resistant. This created an evolutionary snake-arms race to the bottom that produced some of the deadliest snake venoms on the planet. All this wonderful hardware, and Australia has less than five deaths from snake bites annually, largely due to good medical treatment and access to effective antivenoms.
2. The Great Barrier Reef Can Be Seen From Space, But It’s Actually Made Up Of Nearly 3,000 Separate Reefs
The coral system is so huge that it has its own climatic cycles, and in it there are certain parts separated by deep water passages creating alternate ecological zones. One individual reef is a system by itself, one reason why the Great Barrier Reef is so incredibly diverse, with more than 1,500 species of fish and 400 types of corals.
3. Australia Once Had a Prime Minister Who Had a World Record in Beer Consumption
Australia’s former Prime Minister of 1983-1991, Bob Hawke, was not only an excellent politician but also boasted a rather interesting record. When he was in Oxford University during the 1950s, Hawke had set a world record downing 2.5 pints of beer in 11 seconds. This one was included in the Guinness Book of Records and continued for decades. Hawke was also reported to have contended that this accomplishment benefited him more politically than his Oxford degree because it made him the darling of ordinary Australians for being a leader who speaks their lingo in the pub. The record became part of Australian political mythology and showed the country’s specific affinity between sincere politics and casual culture.
4. There’s a Town in Australia Where People Live Underground
Coober Pedy outback in South Australia is the “opal capital of the world,” but most intriguing about it is how individuals have adapted to subsist in such harsh desert conditions. With temperatures in the summer usually above 50°C (122°F), half of the town’s population of 1,700 residents reside in ground houses drilled into the rock. The ground houses maintain a consistent temperature of approximately 25°C (77°F) year-round with no heating or cooling. Underground hotels, churches, stores, and even a golf course are all part of the town. The painted environment with the intermittent mine shaft and underground entrance has also drawn filmmakers to utilize in their post-apocalyptic features like Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome and Pitch Black.
Our clients are loving Australia and it’s not hard to see why. Visit our Instagram page to see our gallery of our favourite pictures of Australia.
5. Australia is Home to Naturally Occurring Pink Lakes
Lake Hillier, Middle Island, Western Australia, has a bright bubblegum pink hue which will not disappear even when water is scooped up and placed in a jar. The best part of Lake Hillier is that despite its appearance, which is so strange and high in salt content, the water itself is perfectly safe to swim in, although it’s restricted access to prevent harming the fragile ecosystem. Australia also has a couple of other pink lakes, one being Hutt Lagoon and another being Lake MacDonnell, each with a bit different color depending on each of their unique communities.
6. The Australian Alps Receive More Snow Than Switzerland
In a dramatic reversal of global views of Australia as perpetually hot and arid, the area called the Australian Alps receives more snow in a single year than the Swiss Alps. The Snowy Mountains, which run fromNew South Wales to Victoria, receive heavy snowfall during winter that sustains a thriving ski industry with behemoth resorts like Perisher, Thredbo, and Mount Buller. The nation’s ski slopes are bigger than Switzerland and receive more than 3 meters of snow each year. There are even special wildlife adaptations in the alpine region, such as the mountain pygmy possum hibernating beneath snow for seven months each year. The Australian ski season, which is from June to October, offers world-class skiing and snowboarding experience leaving many overseas tourists in awe.
7. Australia’s Rabbit-Proof Fence, Stretching Over 1,800 Kilometers
When European rabbits, having been brought over in 1859, bred in such numbers that they threatened to annihilate the continent’s crops and native vegetation, Australia was gripped by an environmental disaster in the early 1900s. The government reaction was both melodramatic and unorthodox: construct the world’s longest single fence. The rabbit-proof fence, completed in 1907, stretches 1,833 kilometers from the top to the bottom of Western Australia. The highest point of the fence was patrolled by boundary riders who rode bicycles, camels, and later even motorcycles in order to maintain the fence. While the fence did not work all that well at keeping rabbits out, it is a testament to the persistence of human beings and was the setting for the Oscar-winning film “Rabbit-Proof Fence,” which dramatized the trek of three Aboriginal girls as they walked along the fence to return to their families.
8. Wombats Have Cubic Feces
Of Australia’s many unusual creatures, wombats have arguably the mathematically most fascinating digestive system of any animal. These marsupials have obviously cube-shaped poop, something which puzzled scientists for decades. New studies revealed that wombats accomplish such a remarkable achievement with their very slow rate of digestion, ranging from 18 days at most, and their distinct gut system with several points of pressure. The form is convenient: it prevents the droppings from rolling off, and wombats can bank them up as boundary signs on rocks, logs, and outcrops all around their range. Each produces 80 to 100 cubes a day, making them the most prolific creators of geometric dung in nature.
9. Australia Has Over 10,000 Beaches
It is a staggering diversity: there are some beaches with brilliant white silica sand which feels cool to the hand even on blisteringly hot days, some of which are traditional pink sand made from ground coral and shells, and others which are black sand beaches formed from volcanoes. Western Australia’s Cable Beach is 22 km of unbroken sand, and New South Wales’s Hyams Beach holds a Guinness World Record as having the whitest sand on the planet.
10. The Australian Government Once Went to War with Emus and Lost
The American military had their hands full in 1932, when they fought an unusual campaign known as the “Great Emu War.”.During World War I, soldiers had received land in Western Australia on which they were to establish farms. But around 20,000 emus wandered across the farmland, destroying crops and threatening the agricultural economy. The authorities decided to deploy army troops armed with machine guns to kill the emus. This was followed by a series of encounters that were humiliatingly ineffectual. The emus proved themselves to be incredibly intelligent and tenacious, breaking up when shot and reassembling elsewhere. By a few weeks into the operations, the military had managed to kill only a small percentage of the intended number and had discharged thousands of rounds of ammunition. The operation was finally halted, and locals used to taunt that the emus had won the war. The event became a national joke and an international news headline, solidifying Australia’s reputation for having wildlife tough enough to fend for itself against human domination.
Uncovering Australia’s Hidden Wonders
These interesting facts are only the start of the enormous multiculturalism and quirky nature of Australia. From the revolutionary natural occurrences to the strange incidents in the past, the continent has the potential to surprise and amaze those who look beyond the cover of its secrets. Whether it is the mathematically quantified wombat dung or the underground world of the opal miners, Australia shows that life is possible to be more bizarre than fiction.
The next time you hear of Australia, remember that behind the more widely advertised visions of Sydney Harbour and Uluru is a country of pink lakes, cube-sized dung, unseen towns, and army routes at the beaks of flightless birds. These stories remind you that Australia is still one of the world’s most fascinating and astonishing nations, where the impossible is normal and the extraordinary is another part of the way things are.