50 Things you probably didn’t know about Australia.

To celebrate all things Australian this Australia Day, here are 50 facts you probably didn't know about Australia:

1. Australia is as wide as the distance between London to Moscow.

2. The biggest property in Australia is bigger than Belgium.

3. The first photos from the 1969 moon landing were beamed to the rest of the world from Parkes near Canberra.

4. Each week, 70 tourists overstay their visas.

5. 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.

6. Australia is very sparsely populated: The UK has 248.25 persons per square kilometre, while Australia has only 2.66 persons per square kilometre.

7. Australia’s first police force was made up of the most well-behaved convicts.

8. 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.

9. Saudi Arabia imports camels from Australia (mostly for meat production).

10. In 1832, 300 female convicts mooned the governor of Tasmania.

11. In 2015 the Australian PM Tony Abbott made a foreign national residing in another country, Prince Philip a Knight of Australia. 

12. Melbourne is considered the sporting capital of the world, as it has more top level sport available for its citizens than anywhere else.

13. Before the arrival of humans, Australia was home to megafauna: three metre tall kangaroos, seven metre long goannas, horse-sized ducks, and a marsupial lion the size of a leopard.

14. Kangaroos and emus cannot walk backward, one of the reasons that they’re on the Australian coat of arms.

15. We also eat the animals on our coat of arms.

16. If you visited one new beach in Australia every day, it would take over 27 years to see them all.

17. Melbourne has the world’s largest Greek population outside of Athens.

18. The Great Barrier Reef is the planet’s largest living structure and it has its own postcode.

19. The male platypus has strong enough venom to kill a small dog.

20. 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.

21. Australia has 3.3x more sheep than people.

22. Prime Minister Harold Holt went for a swim at Cheviot Beach, and was never seen again. There’s now a swimming pool named after him.

23. The Australian Alps receive more snowfall than Switzerland.

24. A kangaroo is only one centimetre long when it is born.

25. The Box jellyfish has killed more people in Australia than stonefish, sharks and crocodiles combined.

26. Tasmania has the cleanest air in the world.

27. The average Aussie drinks 96 litres of beer per year.

28. Australia is ranked second on the Human Development Index (based on life expectancy, income and education).

29. In 2005, security guards at Canberra’s Parliament House were banned from calling people ‘mate’. It lasted one day.

30. Australia is the only continent in the world without an active volcano.

31. Aussie Rules footy was originally designed to help cricketers to keep fit in the off-season.

32. The name ‘Kylie’ came from an Aboriginal hunting stick, similar to the boomerang.

33. 53. 91% of the country is covered by native vegetation.

34. There are 60 designated wine regions in Australia.

35. Melbourne has been ranked the world’s most liveable city for the past three years.

36. If all the sails of the Opera House roof were combined, they would create a perfect sphere. The architect was inspired while eating an orange.

37. Australia is home to 20% of the world’s poker machines.

38. The performance by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra at the 2000 Olympics opening ceremony was actually a prerecording- of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra.

39. The wine cask (goon sack) is an Australian invention

40. The world’s first compulsory seat belt law was put into place in Victoria in 1970.

41. Each year, Brisbane hosts the world championships of cockroach racing.

42. Canberra was created in 1908 as a compromise when Sydney and Melbourne both wanted to be the capital city.

43. A gay bar in Melbourne won the right to ban women from the premises, because they made the men uncomfortable.

44. Eucalyptus oil is highly flammable, meaning gum trees may explode if ignited, or in bushfires.

45. There have been instances of wallabies getting high after breaking into opium crops, then running around and making what look like crop circles.

46. The male lyrebird, which is native to Australia, can mimic the calls of over 20 other birds. If that’s not impressive enough, he can also perfectly imitate the sound of a camera, chainsaw and car alarm.

47. In 1979, debris from NASA’s space station ‘Skylab’ crashed in Esperance, WA. The town then fined NASA $400 for littering.

48. There have been no deaths in Australia from a spider bite since 1979.

49. An Australian election TV debate was rescheduled so it didn’t conflict with the finale of reality cooking show Masterchef.

50. Captain James Cook first landed on Australia’s east coast in 1770. In 1788, the British returned with eleven ships to establish a penal colony. Within days of The First Fleet’s arrival and the raising of the British flag, two   French ships arrived, just too late to claim Australia for France.

Courtesy (mainly) of  Buzzfeed.com