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Australia historically has an insane history; here is a list of some of its wildest facts:
In 1932, a failed military operation that became a national embarrassment, the Australian government deployed soldiers with machine guns to combat 20,000 crop-destroying emus in Western Australia. However, the birds proved superior tactical fighters, dodging bullets and splitting into small units that continued their agricultural devastation.
In 1629, the Dutch merchant ship Batavia smashed into an Australian reef. It led to a bloody mutiny where the psychopathic second-in-command Jeronimus Cornelisz murdered 125 survivors, keeping a personal ledger detailing each kill.
Between 1910 and the 1970s, Australian authorities removed an estimated 100,000 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families—some as young as a few days old—under the false justification that Indigenous parents were unfit. It caused intergenerational trauma that persists today.
The Rum Rebellion erupted in 1808 when 400 New South Wales Corps soldiers marched on Government House and arrested Governor William Bligh—who had tried to hide under his bed during the coup—it was the only successful coup in Australian history.
In 1928, a Western Australian police party led by Constable George Murray—hunted and killed at least 31 Aboriginals near Coniston station. It was for revenge for the death of dingo trapper Frederick Brooks. The sole survivor, Gwoya Jungarai, escaped only because the bullet meant for him struck his tin plate as he fled.
The Eureka Stockade rebellion of 1854 happened when Australian gold miners violently clashed with colonial forces in Ballarat over mining licenses. It ended in a 15-minute battle that killed 22 miners and six soldiers. The surviving rebel leaders were all acquitted by juries despite clear evidence of their involvement.
The racist White Australia Policy enforced racial exclusion via strict immigration tests and deportations for 72 years. The law required non-European immigrants to pass a dictation test in any European language chosen by officials.
The last known thylacine, a striped marsupial carnivore nicknamed “Benjamin,” died from exposure at Tasmania’s Hobart Zoo on September 7, 1936, after a night watchman accidentally locked it out of its shelter during a cold snap. Sadly, this was the extinction of a species that had roamed Australia for 4 million years.
On February 6, 1851, devastating bushfires engulfed Victoria, Australia. The fires burned a quarter of the colony (approximately 5 million hectares) in a single day.
On Christmas Day 1974, Cyclone Tracy obliterated Darwin, Australia, with 150 mph winds. The storm left only six of the city’s 10,500 homes habitable.
Australian Prime Minister Harold Holt vanished without a trace while swimming at Cheviot Beach in 1967. His body was never found despite launching Australia’s largest-ever search operation. The search included deploying a top U.S. Navy submarine equipped with advanced sonar capabilities.
The notorious Australian gangster Ned Kelly, wearing his iconic homemade steel armor that deflected bullets from his body but left his legs exposed—made his final stand against police at Glenrowan Inn, where he was shot in the legs and captured while his gang burned to death inside.
In the largest Japanese prisoner-of-war breakout in history, 1,104 Japanese POWs stormed the fences of Australia’s Cowra detention camp. Some used blankets to protect themselves from the barbed wire, while others deliberately impaled themselves to create human bridges for their buddies.
Aboriginal warrior Pemulwuy led a fierce guerrilla rebellion against British colonizers in the Sydney region for twelve years. He survived multiple gunshot wounds due to his legendary ability to extract bullets from his body using traditional healing methods. Pemulwuy was finally killed in 1802 by colonists who mounted his severed head in a jar of spirits.
In a misguided attempt to control sugarcane beetles in Queensland, Australia, scientists released 102 Hawaiian cane toads in 1935. The toads have bred over to 200 million toxic toads today. They even evolved longer legs to invade new territories 10 times faster than their original hopping speed.
On April 28, 1996, 28-year-old Martin Bryant killed 35 people and wounded 23 others at Port Arthur’s historic prison site in Tasmania. Bryant targeted the busy Broad Arrow Cafe first with an AR-15 rifle before hunting tourists across the grounds.
The 1850s Australian Gold Rush transformed the continent from a convict colony into a booming economic powerhouse. One prospector, Bernhardt Holtermann, unearthed the world’s largest gold specimen—a staggering 290-kilogram mass from Hill End in 1872.
In 1859, Australian landowner Thomas Austin released 24 European rabbits for sport hunting. The release created an ecological disaster that saw rabbit populations explode to 10 billion within 70 years. It caused such severe agricultural damage that farmers attempted to build the world’s longest fence — the 2,023-mile “Rabbit-Proof Fence” — to contain their spread.
In 1912, three lighthouse keepers vanished without a trace from Flinders Island off Tasmania. The men left behind an untouched meal on their table and their logbook recording unusually agitated seabirds circling the lighthouse in the days before their disappearance.
The 2016-2017 Great Barrier Reef bleaching event devastated 29% of shallow-water corals in a single year, with scientists discovering that some surviving corals developed a peculiar fluorescent pigment that acted like a natural sunscreen, allowing them to endure the warming waters.
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