Australian History
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50 free Australian History trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Sixty thousand years of human history, a Dutch ship called the Little Dove, a convict colony founded on 26 January 1788, a rum-fuelled coup, a gold rush, a bushranger in homemade armour and a prime minister who vanished into the surf. Australian history is anything but dull. These 50 questions run from the Duyfken and Abel Tasman to Cook at Botany Bay and Possession Island, the First Fleet and Governor Phillip, Bligh and the Rum Rebellion, Macquarie, Blaxland, Lawson and Wentworth, Sturt, Burke and Wills, Hargraves's gold, the Eureka Stockade, the separation of Victoria and Queensland, Ned Kelly, Parkes and Federation, Barton and Hopetoun, Gallipoli, Monash, Hughes and conscription, Phar Lap and Bradman, the Harbour Bridge, Darwin and Kokoda, Curtin and Chifley, Holden, Menzies, Holt, the 1967 referendum, Whitlam and the Dismissal, Hawke, Mabo, Port Arthur, the 1999 republic vote, the Apology and Australia's first female prime minister. Every answer is cited to a page we checked and each explanation adds one more detail. Play it solo or print it for an Australia Day quiz.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which Dutch ship made the first documented European landing in Australia in 1606?
Duyfken
Duyfken: her captain Willem Janszoon took the coast he charted for part of New Guinea, and Dutch maps repeated the error for years.
Q 02Which Dutch navigator's 1642 voyage first reached Van Diemen's Land and New Zealand?
Abel Tasman
Abel Tasman: Van Diemen's Land was later renamed Tasmania in his honour, partly to shed the island's convict associations.
Q 03Which English buccaneer landed on the north-west coast of New Holland in 1688 and again in 1699?
William Dampier
William Dampier: on a later voyage he helped rescue castaway Alexander Selkirk, who may have inspired Robinson Crusoe.
Q 04Which natural wonder nearly sank James Cook's Endeavour when the ship struck it in 1770?
Great Barrier Reef
Great Barrier Reef: the crew threw guns and ballast overboard to refloat her, then spent seven weeks repairing the ship at the Endeavour River.
Q 05Where did James Cook's Endeavour make its first landing on Australia's east coast, in April 1770?
Botany Bay
Botany Bay: Cook first called it Stingrays Harbour, then renamed it for the many new plants Joseph Banks and Daniel Solander collected there.
Q 06On which date in 1788 was the settlement at Sydney Cove established?
26 January
26 January is now Australia Day, and in 1938 Aboriginal activists marked it in Sydney as a Day of Mourning.
Q 07Who was the first Governor of New South Wales, arriving with the First Fleet?
Arthur Phillip
Arthur Phillip: within weeks he sent a party to settle Norfolk Island, hoping its native flax and timber would supply the navy.
Q 08What killed an estimated half of the Aboriginal people around Sydney in April 1789?
Smallpox
Smallpox, as most historians identify it: Arabanoo, an Aboriginal man held at the settlement, caught it nursing sick children and died.
Q 09Which governor was deposed in the 1808 Rum Rebellion?
William Bligh
William Bligh: 19 years earlier, the Bounty's crew had cast him adrift in an open boat.
Q 10Which wool pioneer was a key organiser of the 1808 Rum Rebellion?
John Macarthur
John Macarthur: he escaped prosecution in England, but was barred from returning to the colony until 1817.
Q 11Who served as Governor of New South Wales from 1810 to 1821?
Lachlan Macquarie
Lachlan Macquarie: he gave former convicts posts such as magistrate and colonial architect, and some free settlers refused to work alongside them.
Q 12Which mountain range did Blaxland, Lawson and Wentworth cross in 1813, opening inland New South Wales to settlers?
Blue Mountains
Blue Mountains: a road across them was finished by 1815, when the site of the inland town of Bathurst was chosen.
Q 13Who led the first inshore circumnavigation of mainland Australia, in HMS Investigator from 1802 to 1803?
Matthew Flinders
Matthew Flinders: sailing home in 1803, he put in at French-held Mauritius for repairs and was detained there until 1810.
Q 21Which architect won the 1957 design contest for the Sydney Opera House, then left the project in 1966?
Jørn Utzon
Jørn Utzon: Australian architects finished the building, and he never returned to Australia to see it completed.
Q 22Who publicised gold finds near Bathurst in 1851, starting Australia's first gold rush?
Edward Hargraves
Edward Hargraves: he collected a government reward, though the rich finds that followed came from his partners John Lister and the Tom brothers.
Q 23At which goldfield town did miners build the Eureka Stockade in 1854?
Ballarat
Ballarat: the 13 rebels tried for high treason were all acquitted, and rebel leader Peter Lalor later won a seat in parliament.
Q 14Which explorer reached the Darling River on his first expedition, then followed the Murrumbidgee into the Murray?
Charles Sturt
Charles Sturt: his party nearly starved on the journey back, and his failing eyesight soon left him blind for months.
Q 15Which 1860 expedition set out to cross Australia from south to north, to the Gulf of Carpentaria?
Burke and Wills
Burke and Wills: returning from the Gulf, they reached their Cooper Creek depot hours after its party had left, and both died weeks later.
Q 16Which modern city grew from the Moreton Bay penal settlement, founded in 1824?
Brisbane
Brisbane: the first convict camp, at Redcliffe, was moved south within a year to the banks of the Brisbane River.
Q 17Which modern Australian state began in 1829 as the Swan River Colony?
Western Australia
Western Australia: founded for free settlers, it later began taking convicts to ease a labour shortage and received Australia's last convict ship in 1868.
Q 18Which city did Colonel William Light design as the capital of a British colony planned for free settlers?
Adelaide
Adelaide: under Edward Gibbon Wakefield's scheme, the colony sold land instead of granting it and used the money to bring out free workers.
Q 19What did John Batman give Kulin elders in 1835 in exchange for about 600,000 acres along the Yarra River?
Blankets, knives and flour
Blankets, knives and flour: Governor Richard Bourke soon declared the treaty void, since the Crown claimed ownership of all the land.
Q 20About how many convicts did Britain transport to the Australian colonies between 1788 and 1868?
160,000
160,000: Britain turned to Australia after the American Revolution ended transportation to America and its prisons and hulks overflowed.
Q 24Which colony separated from New South Wales in 1859 and was immediately self-governing?
Queensland
Queensland: in 1922 it abolished its upper house, the Legislative Council, becoming the only state with a single-chamber parliament.
Q 25Which bushranger wore homemade armour in his final shootout with police at Glenrowan in 1880?
Ned Kelly
Ned Kelly: he was captured, tried for murder and hanged, and his disputed last words were reported as 'Such is life'.
Q 26Which NSW premier's 1889 Tenterfield Oration was pivotal to the federation cause?
Henry Parkes
Henry Parkes: often called the Father of Federation, he died in 1896, five years before the colonies federated.
Q 27Who was sworn in as Australia's first prime minister when the Commonwealth was proclaimed in 1901?
Edmund Barton
Edmund Barton: Governor-General Lord Hopetoun first asked NSW premier William Lyne to form the government, but Lyne could not find ministers.
Q 28Which city was the seat of federal government from 1901 to 1927?
Melbourne
Melbourne: federal MPs took over Victoria's Parliament House, so the state parliament met in the Royal Exhibition Building for 26 years.
Q 29Besides the vote, what did Australia's 1902 federal franchise law give women?
The right to stand for parliament
The right to stand for parliament: yet the same act barred most Aboriginal people from voting in federal elections.
Q 30Which 1901 act created the dictation test used to keep non-white migrants out of Australia?
Immigration Restriction Act
Immigration Restriction Act: officials once failed the Czech journalist Egon Kisch in Scottish Gaelic, and the High Court overturned his conviction.