Australian citizenship test: Australia and its people practice questions

Tie each date to one event: 26 January 1788 is the First Fleet, 1851 is the gold rush, and 1 January 1901 is federation.

Question 1

Historically, Aboriginal peoples are from which part of Australia?

  1. Mainland Australia and Tasmania
  2. The islands of the Torres Strait, between Queensland and Papua New Guinea
  3. New Zealand and the islands of the South Pacific

Answer: Mainland Australia and Tasmania

Aboriginal peoples are historically from mainland Australia and Tasmania. Torres Strait Islander peoples are from the islands between the northern tip of Queensland and Papua New Guinea.

Question 2

The gold rush that began in 1851 followed discoveries in which colonies?

  1. New South Wales and Victoria
  2. Western Australia and Tasmania, and nowhere on the east coast
  3. The Northern Territory alone

Answer: New South Wales and Victoria

Gold was discovered in 1851 in New South Wales and Victoria, and people arrived from many countries to try their luck. Chinese arrivals at that time were the first large group of migrants not from Europe.

Question 3

In the 1967 referendum, more than 90 per cent of voters agreed that Aboriginal peoples should be

  1. counted in the Census
  2. excluded from the population figures for another century
  3. required to give up their own languages in public

Answer: counted in the Census

The resource states that more than 90 per cent voted Yes so that Aboriginal peoples would be counted in the Census, and that they were included in population estimates only after that referendum. The 1901 figure of about four million people had left them out.