More Weird Stuff about Australia. 79. Some shopping centres and restaurants play classical music in their car park to deter teenagers from loitering at night. 80. Despite sharing the same verbal language, Australian, British and American sign language are all completely different languages. 81. In 1979, debris from NASA’s space station ‘Skylab’ crashed in Esperance, WA. The town then fined NASA $400 for littering. 82. There have been no deaths in Australia from a spider bite since 1979. 83. There is currently a chlamydia outbreak among koala species, which has led to a 15% drop in koala populations. 84. In NSW, there is a coal fire beneath the ground which has been burning for 5,500 years. 85. An Australian election TV debate was rescheduled so it didn’t conflict with the finale of reality cooking show Masterchef. 86. Chinese explorers travelled to Australia long before Europeans arrived. As early as the 1400s, sailors and fisherman came to Australia for sea- cucumbers and to trade with Indigenous peoples. 87. The first European to visit Australia was Dutch explorer Willem Janszoon, in 1606. More Dutch explorers visited the country over the next hundred years, plotting maps and naming it ‘New Holland’. 88. 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.
Posted on: Sun, 20 Jul 2014 09:47:51 +0000
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