Happy Australia Day!

Today marks 230 years since Captain Cook landed in Australia, and many of my fellow Aussies are out celebrating the day. All politics aside I have some great memories of past Australia Days, and so to celebrate this year I thought I would put together my top 20 alternative Aussie facts!

1. Former Prime Minister Bob Hawke set a world record for sculling 2.5 pints of beer in 11 seconds. Hawke later suggested that this was the reason for his great political success.
2. Australia’s first police forcewas made up of the most well-behaved convicts.
3. In 1832, 300 female convicts mooned the governor of Tasmania. It was said that in a “rare moment of collusion with the Convict women, the ladies in the Governor’s party could not control their laughter.”
4. Australia has the highest electricity prices in the world.
5. Qantas once powered an interstate flight with cooking oil.
6. There were over one million feral camels in outback Australia, until the government launched the $19m Feral Camel Management Program, which aims to keep the pest problem under control.
7. Kangaroos and emus cannot walk backward, one of the reasons that they’re on the Australian coat of arms. Speaking of, Australia is one of the only countries where we eat the animals on our coat of arms.
8. Melbourne has the world’s largest Greek population outside of Athens.
9. The Great Barrier Reef is the planet’s largest living structure, and it has it’s own postbox!
10. When the platypus was first sent to England, it was believed the Australians had played a joke by sewing the bill of a duck onto a rat.
11. Wombat poop is cube shaped! This helps it mark its territory.
12. The wine cask (goon sack) is an Australian invention
13. The Australian Alps receive more snowfall than Switzerland.
14. The Box jellyfish has killed more people in Australia than stonefish, sharks and crocodiles combined.
15. In 2005, security guards at Canberra’s Parliament House were banned from calling people ‘mate’. It lasted one day.
16. In 1932, the Australian military waged war on the emu population of Western Australia. Embarrassingly, they lost.
17. There have been instances of wallabies getting high after breaking into opium crops, then running around and making what look like crop circles.
18. There currently a chlamydia outbreak among koala species, which has led to a 15% drop in koala populations.
19. In NSW, there is a coal fire beneath the ground which has been burning for 5,500 years.
20. An Australian man once tried to sell New Zealand on eBay.