Frequently Asked Questions

By average seasonal snow depth at the resorts, yes — it's a real, if slightly cherry-picked, comparison rather than a claim about total snowfall across both mountain ranges.

About 85% of Australians live within 50km of the coastline — even though the country's dry interior alone could swallow most of Western Europe.

Air arriving at Kennaook/Cape Grim in Tasmania's north-west has crossed thousands of kilometres of Southern Ocean with almost nothing in its path, giving scientists there some of the purest air readings ever recorded.

Yes — NASA and the European Space Agency have both photographed it from orbit. It's considered the largest living structure on Earth, made up of nearly 3,000 individual reefs.

Yes — at over 120km long, K'gari is officially recognised as the world's largest sand island, and it's UNESCO World Heritage listed.

This gets repeated constantly, but it's more myth than measured fact — no published geological survey has confirmed a specific depth. What is true is that the visible rock is only part of a much larger formation.

No — that title actually belongs to Mount Augustus in Western Australia, which is roughly twice the size of Uluru, even though it's far less famous.

Australia is the 6th largest country in the world by land area, behind Russia, Canada, China, the USA and Brazil.

Close, but slightly smaller — mainland Australia (about 7.69 million km²) is around 95% the size of the contiguous 48 US states (about 8.08 million km²), and noticeably smaller than the US once Alaska is included.

Yes — of all the inhabited continents, Australia receives the least average rainfall. It's part of why the green coastline where most Australians live feels so different to the outback a few hours inland.

It's Australia's largest desert, and it covers more ground than the entire United Kingdom.

Yes — the Simpson Desert contains the world's longest parallel sand dunes, with some ridges running for over 200km.

Several Western Australian lakes, including the famous Lake Hillier, are a permanent, natural bubblegum pink — caused by salt-loving microorganisms that produce their own pink pigment.

Yes, in two forms: fossilised stromatolites in the Pilbara region date back roughly 3.4 billion years, and living stromatolite colonies still grow today at Hamelin Pool, Shark Bay — modern-day analogues of that ancient life, not the same 3-billion-year-old organisms.

Not on the mainland — that part is true. But it's not quite "no active volcano at all": Australia's remote sub-Antarctic Heard Island is home to Big Ben, which last erupted in 2016 and is still classified as active.

Yes — fossilised microbial life discovered in the Pilbara region of WA, dated to roughly 3.4 billion years old, ranks among the oldest confirmed evidence of life on Earth.

Yes, informally — every other inhabited continent is divided between multiple nations; Antarctica has no single sovereign country at all.

Australia currently has 20 UNESCO World Heritage listed properties, including the Great Barrier Reef, Uluru-Kata Tjuta and the Sydney Opera House.

Roughly — endemism is extremely high for some groups (around 87% of mammals, 93% of reptiles, 94% of frogs), so "about 80%" is a reasonable rounded figure across Australian wildlife as a whole.

By raw venom toxicity in lab tests, several Australian species do rank at the top. In practice, Australian snakes are shy, bites are rare, and antivenom is excellent — you're far more likely to spot one from a safe distance on a bushwalk than ever have trouble with one.

Yes — an estimated population in the hundreds of thousands to around a million roams the outback, descended from camels imported in the 1800s. Some are now mustered and exported live to the Middle East.

Counting the broader kangaroo and wallaby family, there are 60-plus species. And a newborn joey is genuinely jellybean-sized — around 2cm long at birth.

It depends on the year — kangaroo numbers boom after good rains and crash in drought — but in high-rainfall years, estimates have put the kangaroo population above Australia's roughly 26 million human residents.

Yes, though the gap has narrowed a lot over the decades — around 2020, Australia had roughly 65-70 million sheep to about 25.5 million people, a ratio of about 2.5 to 1.

More than 700 — eucalypts are one of the most diverse plant groups on the continent, and the backbone of most Australian forest ecosystems.

Thousands have been formally described, and researchers believe thousands more are still undiscovered — so "well over 1,500" undersells it; current estimates run into the several thousands.

Male platypuses have venomous spurs on their hind legs capable of delivering extremely painful venom to humans — and enough to kill a small animal like a dog.

This is repeated a lot and is roughly consistent with recorded Australian fatality data historically, but all of these death tolls are small and fluctuate year to year — so it's a real pattern, not the dramatic, fixed ranking the claim implies.

Yes — the platypus and Australia's four echidna species (monotremes) are the only mammals on Earth that lay eggs instead of giving live birth. Echidnas are also native to New Guinea, not Australia exclusively.

Yes — before humans arrived, Australia had genuine megafauna: giant short-faced kangaroos, a 7-metre-plus goanna (Megalania), a giant flightless bird nicknamed the "demon duck of doom," and a leopard-sized marsupial lion. Some of the sizes get rounded up in retellings, but the animals themselves are real and well documented in the fossil record.

Emus genuinely can't walk backwards, thanks to how their knees are built. Kangaroos can shuffle backwards a little — just very awkwardly — which is close to, but not quite, the popular story behind their place on Australia's coat of arms.

Relative to the builder's size, yes — some outback termite mounds reach several metres tall, giving them the highest height-to-body-size ratio of any animal-built structure on Earth (though beaver dams and coral reefs are larger in absolute terms).

It genuinely is cube-shaped, and it took researchers years to work out why — the answer, to do with how a wombat's intestine walls vary in stiffness, won an Ig Nobel Prize in 2019.

Yes — about 100 cane toads were released in Queensland in 1935 to control a sugar-cane beetle they turned out not to even reach. They've since multiplied to an estimated 200 million and are one of Australia's most notorious invasive species.

It's often described that way — kangaroo and emu are both farmed and sold as meat in Australia, which is an unusual thing for a national emblem to say the least.

Sydney's 1789 "Night Watch" — the colony's first organised police force — was staffed by convicts selected for good conduct, just twelve months after the First Fleet arrived.

It was devised by Tom Wills in 1858, originally to help cricketers stay fit over winter. Whether the Indigenous game of Marngrook directly influenced its rules is a genuine, ongoing historical debate — some researchers have found supporting evidence, others dispute it.

Yes, and it's widely accepted by archaeologists — evidence from sites like Madjedbebe in the Northern Territory pushes continuous Aboriginal occupation of Australia back to at least 40,000, and possibly as far as 65,000, years.

At a national level, yes — New Zealand was first, in 1893, and the Commonwealth of Australia followed in 1902. Worth noting: Aboriginal women (and men) in several states weren't able to vote until 1962, a caveat often left out of this fact.

It was a Federation-era compromise — Sydney and Melbourne each wanted the honour, so a new, purpose-built capital was created roughly halfway between them instead.

Yes — Australia was one of the original 51 nations to sign the UN Charter in San Francisco in 1945.

Melbourne's stonemasons campaigned for and won an 8-hour work day in 1856 — one of the earliest successful movements of its kind anywhere in the world.

Yes — The Story of the Kelly Gang, made in Melbourne in 1906, is widely recognised (UNESCO included) as the world's first feature-length narrative film, years before Hollywood existed.

Through a public competition in 1901 — and the winning design was a tie between five separate entrants (including a 14-year-old schoolboy) who'd each submitted almost identical designs. They split the prize money.

Yes — Australia is one of a small number of countries that fines eligible citizens who don't vote, which helps keep federal election turnout above 90%.

Melbourne topped the Economist Intelligence Unit's Global Liveability Index for seven consecutive years (2011-2017) before another city finally took the title.

It's generally credited as the world's first aeromedical organisation — founded in 1928 specifically to reach Outback communities hundreds of kilometres from the nearest hospital, and it still operates today.

Around 65 official wine regions, spanning every state — from the Hunter Valley and Barossa to cool-climate pockets in Tasmania.

Yes — crossing the Nullarbor Plain, the Trans-Australian Railway runs dead straight for about 478km, the longest such stretch of railway track anywhere in the world.

Yes — the 243km road was built by returned WWI soldiers and dedicated to their fallen comrades, making it the largest war memorial of its kind in the world.

Yes — the Nullarbor Links stretches 1,365km across South Australia and Western Australia, officially the longest golf course on the planet.

Yes — Anna Creek Station in South Australia covers around 23,000+ square kilometres, making it the world's largest working cattle station and bigger than the entire country of Israel.

Researchers have counted 10,685 beaches nationwide — enough that visiting a new one every single day would take almost 29 years. For a taste closer to home, see our Sydney Beaches Guide above.

Around 30% of Australia's population was born overseas, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics — one of the highest proportions of any country in the world.

Over 300 languages are spoken across the country. Before colonisation there were 250-plus Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages; today around 123 of those are still spoken.

Australia is consistently ranked #1 in the world for per-capita gambling losses in international studies, driven partly by the sheer number of poker machines outside casinos.

Yes — at 5,614km, the Dingo Fence (also called the Dog Fence) is the longest fence on Earth, built to keep dingoes away from sheep grazing land.

Yes — Australia became the first country to fully convert its currency to polymer notes, rolled out between 1988 and 1996, making them waterproof and much harder to counterfeit than paper notes.

Coffs Harbour's Big Banana, built in 1964, is credited as the original of what's now a nationwide phenomenon — more than 150 oversized "Big Things" dotted along Australian highways, from a Big Prawn to a Big Merino.

Over one million self-cleaning ceramic tiles, specially made in Sweden and arranged in a chevron pattern across the famous sails.