Australia - Multiple Choice #1

Western Australia is the biggest state but is not included here.

Ned Kelly is Australia's most famous outlaw. Back in the good old days, five-year-olds could tell you more about Ned Kelly than they could tell you about their own mothers. Tasmania is a state and is headed by a premier. Jorn Utzon designed the Sydney Opera House. Born in Copenhagen, Denmark.

'Warrigal' - from the indigenous Dharug language.

Broome is the only real town in the list. I spelt 'which' erroneously for hintage reasons. 'Hintage' is not a word. I coined it just then.

The dried up craters were Leg of Mutton Lake and Browne's Lake

Wrote as 'Patrick White'. Cash and Rafter - tennis players. Benatar - American singer from NYC.

George Bass was an English naval surgeon and explorer. Another one who did a disappearing act. Alfie Bass was an English actor of Jewish parentage. 'Parentage' is a word. I did not coin it just then.

Kalgoorlie is the fifth largest gold-producing region in the world. So far, 58 million ounces have been ripped out of the earth there.

Martin Cash was a bushranger. He turned to a life of crime because in spite of his surname... he had none. Helen Reddy was an Australian-born, American singer. Like nearly every Australian that finds fame and fortune overseas and stays oversea to live... she still called Australia, Rome. Her most famous song 'I Am Woman' became an anthem for women's liberation at a time when everyone seemed to be having sex with everyone else. The down-side of this flowery period in world history was that the participants were smoking too many flowers to really enjoy copulation. Or remember a single name, after a week, of who, he/she, they or it/what... had been fornicating with. Frank Gardiner was another bushranger.

Hudson Fysh was an aviator who was a founder of Qantas airlines. Albert Namatjira was an indigenous watercolourist. Molly Meldrum is a cretin who has a collection of ancient Egyptian artifacts that belong in a museum in Cairo... not his f..cking mansion in Oxford Street, Toorak.

A bit argumentative, I know... but Australians get a bit sick of celebrities who shove their 'Australian' identity down everyones' throat and spend nine tenths of a year in any other place BUT Australia.

Cassowaries have a simple but harsh foreign policy. It goes something like this "Stay the f**k away from me and I will let you live." Collective name for cassowaries? A 'shock'. The Raggiana bird-of-paradise is PNG's national bird and features on PNG's flag. They don't go to Australia.

It was the first time a major Japanese advance had been turned back in the Pacific War. The RAN was involved.

I saw one in the Daintree Rainforest in Queensland once. I think. I am not sure. I had a skinful of Bundaberg in me. I think. I am not sure.

Given that Canberra sits 406 miles north-east of Melbourne and 154 miles south-west of Sydney... it really doesn't take a 'George Szekeres' to figure which city is the power behind the throne.

Elizabeth Blackburn was a sharer of the 2009 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. J.M. Coetzee won the 2003 Nobel Prize for Literature. George Szekeres, in the mathematical field of graph theory, invented a snark with 50 vertices and 75 edges.😁

Everyone in a group has a 'shout'. Those that don't are soon pariahs. In the good old days such groups were known as 'drinking schools' but just called 'schools'. If someone was a little slow in going his 'shout' he might get a little, friendly reminder "What's ya problem, mate? Have you got Death Adders in your pockets?"

Paul Hogan was born in Sydney. He had a job painting bits of the Sydney Harbour Bridge for a while. That got him onto Australian television along with a comedic knife-throwing act. Not enough for Hollywood though. He reinvented himself as a crocodile hunter to sell his first feature film. Crikey! There's a lot of crocodile hunters, Great White Sharks and Ernie Dingoes down here. Place is turning into a regular f**king zoo.

Good old Bundy. Bought out by a Brit company in 2000 and the bottling operation transferred from Bundaberg to Sydney.

Bert Hinkler was the son of a Prussian-born father. Perished like so many other early aviators. Doing what he was destined to do. Fly. He crashed into a mountain near Arezzo, Tuscany Italy in 1933. He was buried with full military honours in Florence on the orders of Benito Mussolini.

Clive Caldwell was born in Sydney. Nicknamed 'Killer'. 28.5 enemy aircraft shot down, official. 6 probables. 15 damaged. Clive Churchill? A rugby league playing moron. Clive James is another proud 'Australian'. So proud of Australia that he has lived in England for most of his life. Clive Lloyd is a cricketer who captained the West Indies team, born in Georgetown, British Guiana.

Steve Hart, Joe Byrne and Dan Kelly never left the building. Pro Hart was an artist/painter born in Broken Hill, NSW. Jennifer Byrne is a TV celebrity born in Melbourne. Daniel Morgan, Ben Hall, Captain Thunderbolt and Frank Gardiner were all bushrangers.

Sadly... and less romantically, Denmark was named for an English naval surgeon NOT a beautiful, Nordic country.😢

World Wars' One and Two really smothered a lot of Germanic achievements in Australia. I hope some of my quizzes redress a little of that. No. I am not German and I have no German blood. My great grandfather shot at a German once at Pozieres, France in 1916. The cheeky, little bratwurst shot back at him. 😝

A lot of blame-laying, scapegoating and bizarre stories came out at the official enquiries after the incidents. All the Australian watch on both occasions were pissed as a barrel full of monkeys. The American watch in the second incident thought the Japanese had sided with North Vietnam and mistook the carrier for a modern, pocket 'Shinano' back for another sneak crack at them and tried to ram the carrier. The crews of all three ships were whale watching on duty just before the crunches. Who knows? It's all water off the starboard bow now.

There was a joke doing the rounds in Australia when Rogerson was shooting people, selling drugs and taking kick-backs all over the shop "How do you stop police corruption in NSW?" "Sack Roger Rogerson!"

Gilbert's potoroo and the woylie are as rare as rocking horse droppings and are seriously endangered. The Lawn Hill water rat is, very likely, extinct. The quokka has no real axe to grind. Their stomping ground is close to two major cities, one the capital of the state. She'll be right, mate. Tourists will ensure they don't go the way of the Tasmanian tiger.

A cricketer here won the hearts of the nation once. A fast bowler who was trying to steal Jeff Thomson's mantle as the most colourful cricketer who ever sniffed a gum leaf or shot a bandicoot in full flight. Tragically, his beautiful and charming wife died of breast cancer after a long struggle. That earned him more fans. Then this idiot goes and posts a picture of himself sitting on the the carcass of a dead lion, cradling a Buckingham Palace .458 rifle in his arms. Nobody talks about this Aussie, sporting legend anymore.

To avoid prolonging the agony of the families involved... most cases were written up as 'Death by Misadventure'.

In Wagga Wagga there is a walkway called the 'Wagga Wagga Hall of Fame of Sister Cities.'