Q 01/05

HMS Pandora sank on the Great Barrier Reef in 1791 while carrying captured mutineers from which famous ship?

A) HMS Bounty

B) HMS Victory

C) HMS Beagle

D) HMS Hermione

Answer · why

A) HMS Bounty

HMS Bounty mutineers caught on Tahiti were locked in a makeshift deck cell that they called Pandora's Box.

Q 02/05

The Battle of the Coral Sea, fought off Australia in World War II, was the first battle between which warships?

A) Pocket battleships

B) Aircraft carriers

C) Submarines

D) Heavy cruisers

Answer · why

B) Aircraft carriers

Aircraft carriers did all the fighting: the opposing fleets never sighted or fired on each other, attacking over the horizon by air instead.

Q 03/05

Activists declared a micronation on the remote Coral Sea Islands in 2004 to protest Australia's ban on what?

A) Offshore gas drilling

B) Nuclear testing

C) Same-sex marriage

D) Uranium mining

Answer · why

C) Same-sex marriage

Same-sex marriage campaigners sailed to Cato Island, raised a rainbow flag and named their campsite capital Heaven. The kingdom dissolved itself in 20...

Q 04/05

Which animated film sends its heroes riding the East Australian Current, which carries warm Coral Sea water south?

A) Shark Tale

B) Happy Feet

C) Lilo & Stitch

D) Finding Nemo

Answer · why

D) Finding Nemo

Finding Nemo opens on the edge of the Great Barrier Reef, and the real current is the largest ocean current close to Australia's shores.

Q 05/05

When the steamer Yongala vanished in a 1911 Coral Sea cyclone, the only body ever found belonged to what?

A) A prize bull

B) A racehorse

C) The ship's cat

D) The captain's dog

Answer · why

B) A racehorse

A racehorse named Moonshine washed ashore, but no trace of the 122 passengers and crew was ever found. The wreck itself stayed lost until 1958.