Australia Quiz 2022 | Outstanding Trivia from Down Under

Anthony Albanese was sworn in on May 23, 2022, as Australia’s 31st prime minister, marking the first time a person with a non-Anglo surname has held the office and making him the first Italian Australian to become prime minister. He replaced Scott Morrison, who had a minor acting career as a child.

You’re looking at the Aboriginal flag, which has been recognized as an official flag of Australia since 1995. The Australian government said on Jan. 25, 2022, it had acquired copyright to the Aboriginal flag from its creator, indigenous artist Harold Thomas for $20 million. The flag can now be freely used, resolving a commercial dispute that had restricted sporting teams and Aboriginal communities from reproducing the image.

According to Australia’s constitution, Britain’s monarch acts as its head of state. Queen Elizabeth II has a representative in Australia: the Federal Executive Council president and the Australian Defense Force commander-in-chief. He is Governor-General David Hurley.

What’s new:

Following Prince Harry’s and Meghan Markle’s interview with Oprah Winfrey, Sunday, Mar. 7, 2021, Former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said, “After the end of the queen’s reign, that is the time for us to say: OK, we’ve passed that watershed. Do we want to have whoever happens to be the head of state, the king or queen of the U.K., automatically our head of state?”.

On Feb 19, 2021, Facebook blocked Australian users from viewing and sharing local and international news and restricted local publishers from posting links on their pages. The move came as part of a dispute with the Australian government over a planned law forcing tech giants to pay for news content on their platforms. In a statement posted on Facebook, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the social media company’s actions to “unfriend Australia” were “as arrogant as disappointing.”

Are Facebook and Australia friends now?

Facebook agreed to reverse the decision on Tuesday, Feb 23, 2021, after the Australian government decided on last-minute changes to its proposed media bargaining code to bring Facebook back to the negotiating table with news companies.

WeChat is the Chinese platform for instant messaging, social media, and mobile payment – owned by Tencent.

Was Australia’s former Prime Minister’s WeChat account hijacked?

Sydney’s The Daily Telegraph newspaper reported on Jan. 24, 2022, that Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison had lost control of his WeChat account. His followers were notified the page had been renamed “Australian Chinese new life,” and his photograph was removed. WeChat had not immediately replied to an Australian government request that the prime minister’s account be restored.

Australian office supply store chain Officeworks has pulled Apple’s newly launched AirTags from sale amid child safety concerns surrounding its button battery. Button batteries pose a significant hazard to small children and can cause severe injury or death if swallowed. Incidents involving button batteries severely injure an average of one child per month in Australia.

APIs (application programming interfaces) allow computer programs to communicate and exchange data. In late-Sept. 2022 Optus, Australia’s second-largest wireless carrier, suffered a breach of 9.8 million customer records after its API was left open by error.

Telstra, Australia’s largest telecoms company, said on Oct. 4, 2022, it suffered a “small” data breach. The disclosure comes just two weeks after its rival Optus suffered an extensive cyberattack. According to the statement, only Telstra employees’ names and email addresses were stolen. The number of employees (current and former) affected was estimated at 30,000 in an internal Telstra staff email.

Australia’s Emma McKeon is the first female swimmer to claim seven medals at one Olympics – Four of them were gold, the other three bronze. She is also the second woman to win seven Olympic medals in any sport. The first was gymnast Maria Gorokhovskaya of the Soviet Union, who achieved the record at the Helsinki 1952 Games.

Emma McKeon Fun Fact

Emma McKeon is the daughter of Ron McKeon, a former swimmer who represented Australia in the 1980 Summer Olympics and 1984 Summer Olympics. Her brother, David McKeon, is also a member of the Australian national swimming team in international competitions.

Australian professional footballer Josh Cavallo, 21, who plays as a left-back and central midfielder for Adelaide United, became the only known current male top-flight professional footballer in the world to come out as gay on Wednesday, Oct. 17, 2021. Cavallo said in a Twitter post and personal video, shared by his club Adelaide United, he was “ready to speak about something personal that I’m finally comfortable to talk about in my life.” Cavallo said he had been worried that coming out may negatively impact his career, adding that he knew other players were “living in silence.”

Novak Djokovic has won nine Australian Open titles. He had hoped to secure his 21st Grand Slam singles trophy in 2022, breaking the record he shares with rivals Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal for the most in the history of men’s tennis.

Why was Djokovic out of the 2022 Australian Open?

The Australian government prevented the No. 1-ranked tennis player, Djokovic, from defending his Australian Open title after authorities revoked his visa for not being vaccinated against Covid-19, saying that ousting him was necessary to keep Australians safe. On Jan. 16, 2022, Djokovic was deported one day before the Melbourne tournament.

Ashleigh Barty was born in Australia.

Ash Barty Fact:

Barty is the second Australian WTA singles No. 1, after fellow Indigenous Australian player Evonne Goolagong Cawley, who won the Wimbledon singles title in 1971 and 1980.

Jason Donovan and Kylie Minogue were TV’s Scott Robinson and Charlene Mitchell on the Australian soap opera “Neighbours” from its debut in 1985 until their departures in 1989 and 1988. Their wedding episode was watched by more than 2 million Australian viewers when it first aired in 1987 and later pulled in an audience of almost 20 million when it was shown in the UK in 1988, becoming one of the most-watched TV moments of the decade.

Are Jason Donovan and Kylie Minogue coming back to “Neighbours”?

Minogue and Donovan, 53, returned to the show “to play a very special part in our series finale,” according to “Neighbours”‘s producers, before it ceased production in June 2022, ending a 37-year run.

Which other stars were introduced in “Neighbours”?

Along with Minogue and Donovan, the soap has helped launch the careers of Hollywood stars Margot Robbie, Russell Crowe, Guy Pearce, brothers Chris, Liam, and Luke Hemsworth, and singer Natalie Imbruglia.

The host of Australian Channel Seven’s Weekend Sunrise, Matt Doran, conceded during the interview that he had only heard one track from Adele’s latest album, 30. That was enough to abort the interview – which was reportedly part of a $1 million package including broadcast rights to Adele’s One Night Only television special. Doran told the Australian he was “totally unaware” he had her album, which was only publicly released a couple of weeks after Doran’s London trip. “This is the most important email I have ever missed,” he said.

Pitch Perfect and Bridesmaids star Rebel Wilson hosts Pooch Perfect –  an Australian dog grooming competition show also aired in the UK.

Pooch Perfect 2021 Fact

Wilson announced on Instagram Wednesday, Jan. 13, that her show is coming to US network ABC in 2021. On a different note, Wilson revealed during a Jan. 13, 2021 episode of British Sky One’s Straight Talking series, she was once kidnapped at gunpoint and held overnight while staying in Mozambique.

On Nov. 7, 2022, Rebel Wilson, 42, announced her new baby, Royce Lillian, via Instagram. Wilson’s baby girl was born by surrogacy. “This has been years in the making… but I particularly wanted to thank my gorgeous surrogate, who carried her and birthed her with such grace and care. Thank you for helping me start my own family,” she wrote.

What’s Royce?

The gender-neutral German name Royce means “fame.” It derives from the name Rose or the Norman “Roy” – as in Roy’s son, meaning the king’s child.

The koala is a marsupial native to Australia – Just like the Kangaroo. These mammals are distinguishable for their maternal pouch, in which females carry their newborns. Koalas are not bears.

How many Koalas are there in 2021?

Australia has lost about 30% of its koalas since 2018 to drought, bushfires, land clearing by property developers, and road builders, the Australian Koala Foundation said, Sept. 20, 2021. The independent non-profit group estimated the koala population has dropped to less than 58,000 this year from more than 80,000 in 2018.

Centipedes have one pair of legs per body segment, while millipedes have two. Typically millipedes have about 100 to 200 legs, while centipedes have as many as 382.

Is there a creature with 1,000 feet?

Scientists led by Virginia Tech entomologist Paul Marek have discovered millipede possessing 1,306 legs (pictured) – more than any known kind. The threadlike pale-colored millipede reaches about 3-1/2 inches (95 mm) long and about four-hundredths of an inch (0.95 mm) wide. The creature is equipped with a conical head, beak-shaped mouth, and extensive antennae – likely one of its only sources of sensory input because it lacks eyes, according to the research published in the journal Scientific Reports on Dec. 16, 2021. The Eumillipes Persephone resides underground in Western Australia.

Australia’s Great Barrier Reef is the world’s most extensive coral reef system, composed of over 2,900 individual reefs and 900 islands, stretching over 2,300 kilometers over an area of about 344,400 square kilometers.

Is The Great Barrier Reef “In Danger”?

On Friday, July 23, 2021, Australia was able to defer an attempt by the United Nations’ cultural organization UNESCO to downgrade the Great Barrier Reef’s World Heritage status to “in danger” because of damage caused by climate change. The reef has suffered significantly from coral bleaching caused by hot ocean temperatures in 2016, 2017, and 2020. The bleaching damaged two-thirds of the coral.

Poseidon’s ribbon weed, or Posidonia australis, found in Shark Bay, off the western end of Australia, is the world’s largest plant. The seagrass — not to be confused with seaweed and algae — spreads at least 180 km (77 square miles), about the size of Cincinnati. A new study published on June 1, 2022, in Proceedings of the Royal Society, shows that Shark Bay’s Poseidon’s ribbon weed colony is one giant organism that has been cloning for about 4,500 years, the largest known example of a clone in any environment on Earth.

Is it the largest organism on Earth?

Utah’s Pando, a clonal colony of 40,000 aspen trees connected by their roots, is the former “heaviest known organism.” covering an area of about 500 square meters (0.16 square miles) and weighing 6,000 tonnes. But the Humongous Fungus is probably even more enormous, weaving a web of mycelial tendrils (the root network of mushrooms) covering 3.7 square miles (9.6 square km) of Oregon’s Malheur National Forest. Scientists calculate it could weigh at least 7,500 tons and maybe up to 35,000 tons, making it the world’s most massive living organism.