This week’s theme: ‘Roots’
(1) What is a murnong?
Answer: Yam daisy (Microseris sp.)
(2) Which politician is known colloquially as ‘The Beetrooter’?
Answer: Barnaby Joyce.
(3) In which State or Territory is the Canning Stock Route located?
Answer: Western Australia.
(4) What is a pig-root?
Answer: When a horse (or other animal) kicks up with its back legs, while keeping its forelegs on the ground.
(5) What is ‘root beer’ called in Australia?
Answer: Sarsparilla.
This week’s theme: ‘Poles’
(1) Mount Kosciuszko was named in 1840 in honour of a Polish-American hero, Tadeusz Kosciuszko. Who named the mountain?
Answer: Paul Strzelecki.
(2) In Australian meteorology, what do the letters IOD stand for?
Answer: Indian Ocean Dipole.
(3) Which explorer (with his party) was the first to reach the South Pole, on 14 December 1911? (bonus: who came second?).
Answer: Roald Amundsen (bonus: Robert Scott).
(4) What is a pollywog?
Answer: A tadpole.
(5) What did South Australian engineer James Stobie patent in 1925?
Answer: The Stobie pole (electricity / telegraph pole used in place of timber in South Australia).
This week’s theme: ‘Yule-tide’
1. What Australian island, most of which is now a national park, was named on 25 December, 1643?
Answer: Christmas Island.
2. “The north wind is tossing the leaves…” is the first line of an Australian Christmas carol written in 1948 by John Wheeler and William G James. What is the next line?
Answer: “The red dust is over the town”.
3. Anoplognathus is a genus of large beetles in the scarab family, with more than 30 known species in Australia and South Africa. What are they commonly known as?
Answer: Christmas beetles.
4. Who wrote and recorded the Australian Christmas song ‘White Wine in the Sun’ in 2009?
Answer: Tim Minchin.
5. Austracantha minax is a small, brightly patterned, endemic animal which often lives in large communities in bushland throughout Australia. What is its common name?
Answer: Christmas spider (aka Jewel spider).
6. What once-popular Australian children’s Christmas song, released in 1961, has been banned from being played by many childcare centres?
Answer: Six White Boomers.
7. What author and artist, best known for characters based on Australian native seed pods, was first published in the 1889 Christmas edition of the ‘W.A. Bulletin’?
Answer: May Gibbs (creator of Gumnut Babies).
8. What do these native flora species from different parts of Australia have in common: Ceratopetalum gummiferum, Prostanthera lasianthos, Bursaria spinosa and Nutsyia floribunda?
Answer: They are all associated with Christmas because of their flowering times (C. gummiferum, B. spinosa and P. lasianthos are all known as ‘Christmas bush’, N. floribunda is known as ‘Christmas tree’).
9. How many people were killed at sea and on land by Cyclone Tracy when it struck Darwin in the early hours of Christmas Day, 1974? (a) 16 (b) 44 (c) 71 (d) 108 (e) 132
Answer: (c) 71.
10. What is in the boot when you are “dashing through the bush in a rusty Holden ute” (bonus question: is the back of a ute actually called a boot?).
Answer: Esky (bonus: no idea – just put that in to start arguments). Merry Christmas all.
This week’s theme: ‘Devils’
(1) What is the usual English name for Karlu Karlu – a natural feature visible from the Stuart Highway about 100 km south of Tennant Creek.
Answer: Devil’s Marbles.
(2) What is another word for willy-willy?
Answer: Dust devil.
(3) What company registered the name ‘Tasmanian Devil’ as a trademark in the 1960s?
Answer: Warner Bros
(4) What is the common name for the Australian desert lizard, Moloch horridus?
Answer: Thorny devil (aka mountain devil).
(5) ‘Devil’s Dust’ was the title of a two-part TV docu-drama, first broadcast on the ABC in 2012. What does the name refer to?
Answer: Asbestos.
This week’s theme: ‘Coolabah’
(1) What is the origin of the name ‘coolabah’.
Answer: Aboriginal name for tree (‘gulabaa’ in Yuwaalaraay language).
(2) While visiting Dagworth Station in 1895, Banjo Paterson wrote a lyric about a swagman who camped under a coolabah tree. There is now a Waltzing Matilda Centre museum in the nearest town. Where is it?
Answer: Winton, Queensland.
(3) What colour is the Eucalyptus coolabah flower?
Answer: Creamy white.
(4) What Coolabah tree on the bank of Coopers Creek, near Nappa Merrie homestead, was listed on the Queensland Heritage Register in 2003?
Answer: The Dig Tree (one of two trees emblazoned by William Brahe marking where stores had been buried for the missing Burke and Wills expedition).
(5) Fill in the missing word from this 1970s cask wine advertising jingle: “Where do you … your Coolabah?”
Answer: Hide.
This week’s theme: ‘Coinage’
(1) From 1938, what animal was depicted on the reverse side (‘tails’) of the Australian penny?
Answer: Kangaroo.
(2) What animal was depicted on the ‘tails’ side of the Australian 1 cent coin?
Answer: Feather tailed glider.
(3) What pre-decimal Australian coin featured the head of a merino ram?
Answer: Shilling.
(4) What animal is depicted on the ‘tails’ side of the current 5 cent piece?
Answer: Echidna.
(5) In what year did the Royal Australian Mint release a commemorative dollar coin featuring the landcare logo?
Answer: 1993.
This week’s theme: ‘Tracks’
(1) Who is the author of the popular book Tracks, Scats and Other Traces - A Field Guide to Australian Mammals?
Answer: Barbara Triggs.
(2) The last Federal Budget (5 October, 2020) confirmed funding to bitumenise an iconic, 472-kilometre outback road. What is the name of the road?
Answer: The Strzelecki Track.
(3) Complete the line: “There’s a track winding back to an old fashioned shack along the road to …”
Answer: Gundagai.
(4) The fossilised footprints of what extinct creature can be found on a lakebed near Camperdown in South West Victoria?
Answer: Diprotodon.
(5) The Trans-Australian Railway from Kalgoorlie to Port Augusta includes the longest straight section of train track in the world. The total length without a curve is (a) 258km (b) 368km (c) 478km (d) 588km (e) 698km?
Answer: (c) 478km.
This week’s theme: ‘Mollusca’
(1) Which of the following is not a mollusc?: (a) Garden snail (b) Oyster (c) Cuttlefish (d) Octopus (e) Earthworm.
Answer: (e) Earthworm.
(2) What hard-shelled, edible mollusc – common in coastal south eastern Australia – shares a common name with a purple-flowering, invasive weed of south eastern Australia?
Answer: Periwinkle.
(3) What invasive marine bivalve mollusc was discovered infesting several marinas in Darwin Harbour in 1999, and was successfully eradicated?
Answer: Black striped mussel (Mytilopsis sallei).
(4) What inhabitant of the Great Barrier Reef (and elsewhere) is the world’s largest living bivalve mollusc, growing to more than 200kg.
Answer: Giant clam (Tridacna species).
(5) Australia’s largest native land slug, Triboniophorus graeffi, is found along the coast in NSW and Queensland. It takes its common name from a distinctive marking. What is it commonly called?
Answer: Red triangle slug.
This week’s theme: ‘Camels’
(1) How many humps does an Australian feral camel have?
Answer: One.
(2) Australia’s first camel, named Harry, arrived in Port Adelaide in 1840. What event in 1846 made Harry infamous?
Answer: The camel shot and fatally wounded pastoralist and explorer John Horrocks.
(3) Believed to have been introduced in the packing of camel saddles, what succulent, multi-stemmed, weed - with heart-shaped leaves and conspicuous red fruit - grows prolifically in arid areas of Australia?
Answer: Rosy dock / wild hops (Acetosa vesicaria / Rumex vesicarius).
(4) The first mosque in Australia was constructed by Muslim cameleers, possibly as early as 1861. Where was it located?
Answer: Marree, South Australia.
(5) True or false?: Saudi Arabia imports live camels from Australia.
Answer: True.
This week’s theme: ‘Red gum’
(1) Eucalyptus camaldulensis was first formally described as a species in 1832, and was named after the garden in which the type specimen grew. Where was the garden?
Answer: Naples, Italy (L'Hortus Camaldulensis di Napoli).
(2) Australia’s largest remnant stand of river red gum is the 65,000ha Barma-Millewa Forest on the Victorian-NSW border. Approximately how long ago did this forest form? (a) 25,000 years (b) 250,000 years (c) 2.5 million years (d) 25 million years.
Answer: (a) 25,000 years.
(3) ‘I Was Only 19’, released in 1983, was a chart-topping single for the Australian folk band Redgum. What was the band’s second highest charting single?
Answer: ‘I’ve Been to Bali Too’ (1984).
(4) Eucalyptus camaldulensis has several sub-species, and occurs naturally in all States and Territories except one. Which one?
Answer: Tasmania.
(5) What famous, heritage-listed red gum in Melbourne’s Royal Botanic Gardens was twice ringbarked by vandals, in 2010 and again in 2013, and has subsequently died?
Answer: The Separation Tree (which marked the site where Victorians gathered in 1850 to celebrate the separation of their colony from NSW).
