Sometimes you need a few interesting Australian facts to pull out of your pocket to win you the game at trivia pub.  Below are 25 interesting Australian facts that you can take with you to your next trivia night.  How many of these do you already know?

Australia has the longest fence in the world.

• As one of the longest structures in the world, the dingo fence is an Australian landmark. It stretches more than 5,600km across three states, including 150km that traverses the red sand dunes of the Strzelecki Desert. It took 5 years to build, starting in 1880.  Today it is checked weekly by 23 employees, including two-person teams that patrol a 300 km section of the fence once every week. There are depots at Quilpie and Roma.  It is longer than the great wall of China.

Australia is home to the world’s largest cattle ranch – which is bigger than the entire country of Israel.

• Anna Creek is not only Australia’s biggest cattle station; it’s the largest in the world. The station covers a total of around 24,000 square kilometres. When you consider that the country of Israel is only 21,000 square kilometres in size, you realise how vast this station is.

Australia is the only continent covered by a single country.

• Although it is rich in natural resources and has a lot of fertile land, more than one-third of Australia is desert. Most Australian cities and farms are located in the southwest and southeast, where the climate is more comfortable.

49% of Australians were born overseas or have at least one parent who was born overseas and moved to Australia.

• This statistic was in 2016. More than a quarter (28%) of the Australian population were first generation Australians (born overseas).

Australia’s first police force was made up of 12 convicts who were judged to be the best behaved.

• Australia’s first civilian police force, the Night Watch, was formed by Governor Arthur Phillip in 1789. This unit was made up of the 12 best-behaved convicts, who had been selected to assist in the keeping of law and order in Sydney Town.

In Aboriginal culture, women are not permitted to play the didgeridoo in ceremony.

• The clamour of conflicting voices about the use of Didgeridoo by women and by outsiders has drawn attention to the potential for international exploitation and appropriation of traditional music and other Aboriginal cultural property.

Australia ranks sixth in the world in terms of wine production, behind the traditional wine producing countries Italy, France, and Spain.

• The country boasts 65 wine regions including the Hunter Valley in NSW, Barossa Valley in South Australia, and the Yarra Valley in Victoria which produce more than 10 million hectoliters of wine annually. Major wine varieties grown in Australia include the red varieties Shiraz, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Merlot and white varieties Chardonnay, Sémillon and Sauvignon Blanc.

Australia is the driest of any continent on earth other than Antarctica.

• About 35 per cent of the continent receives so little rain, it is effectively desert. In total, 70 per cent of the mainland receives less than 500 millimetres of rain annually, which classes it as arid, or semi-arid.

The Aussie state of Tasmania has the world’s cleanest air.

• The northwestern tip of Tasmania on the Cape Grim Peninsula is where you’ll find the cleanest air in the world. The coastline has been home to the Cape Grim Baseline Air Pollution Station since 1976. The station measures the quality of air so we know what Earth’s “baseline” is as pollution levels rise.

Australia has one of the world’s lowest population densities – its size is only a bit smaller than the USA, yet the population is only around 23 million, as opposed to 313 million in the United States.

After Athens, Melbourne has the world’s largest Greek population.

• According to the 2016 Australian census, Melbourne has the largest Greek Australian population in Australia (173,598), although some estimates put the number as high as 400,000. It is the largest Greek population of any city in the world outside of Greece and Cyprus.

The Great Barrier Reef is regarded as the world’s largest living organism, and is often listed as one of the Seven Wonders of the Natural World.

You can fly from Perth to Melbourne faster than you can fly from one end of Western Australia to the other.

The Box Jellyfish – which is found in the waters of the Great Barrier Reef – is responsible for more deaths than snakes, sharks and saltwater crocodiles combined.

Australia has 20 world heritage listed sites including historic townships, cities and landscapes.

• World heritage sites that are nominated for World Heritage listing are inscribed on the list only after they have been carefully assessed as representing the best examples of the world’s cultural and natural heritage. Australia currently has 20 properties on the World Heritage List.  Take a look at the list here

Platypus are highly poisonous, and have enough poison to kill a dog or make a human seriously ill.

Don’t think Australia gets snow?

• Well it’s all relative. The area of Australia that is covered by snow in winter is larger than the area of Switzerland.

The average Australian drinks 644 litres of beer per year.

• Consumption volume of beer per person Australia FY 2018, by strength. In the 2018 financial year, Australians consumed 64.4 liters of full strength beer per capita. In the same year, 18.75 liters of mid strength beer were also consumed per capita.

The highest mountain in Australia is Mt Kosciuszko, which stands 2228m high. Australia as a whole is a fairly flat country, with relatively few mountain ranges given its size.

• Australia must be one of the few countries in the world where the highest peak is only 2228 m above sea level and where the climb up the country’s highest mountain is nothing more than a rather pleasant 6-km walk from the top of a nearby chairlift at Thredbo village.

The termite mounds that can be found in Australia are the tallest animal-made structures on Earth.

• Some of the tallest documented examples are built by “cathedral termites” (Nasutitermes triodiae(), native to grasslands in Australia’s Northern Territory. Their lofty chimneys can reach 8 metres (26 feet) off the ground.

Australia has the longest golf course in the world.

• It is the Nullarbor Links, crossing the Nullarbor Plain at the head of the Great Australian Bight. It is an 18-hole par 72 golf course, situated along 1,365 kilometres of the Eyre Highway along the southern coast of Australia in two states (South Australia and Western Australia).

While mining is one of Australia’s biggest industries, more land is covered by pubs than mines.

In 2005, the government issued a ban on saying the word ‘mate’ at Parliament House. The ban lasted 24 hours before it was overturned.