Question 2: the correct answer is Canberra. Did you get it right? Score 1 point.
Question 3 of 10
What is the capital of Brazil?
Why, in question 2: What is the capital of Australia?
The answer is Canberra. Sydney and Melbourne are the largest cities in the country, and it was precisely the rivalry between the two that led to the creation of a new capital, at a point between them.
A capital born from a rivalry
When the Australian colonies united into a federation in 1901, Sydney and Melbourne were competing for the title of capital. The Constitution settled the dispute with a compromise: the capital would be in the state of New South Wales, where Sydney is, but at least 100 miles (about 160 kilometres) from it.
While the new city was not yet ready, Parliament sat in Melbourne. The site of Canberra was chosen in 1908, and the design came from an international competition, won in 1912 by the American architect Walter Burley Griffin, with drawings by his wife, the also architect Marion Mahony Griffin.
Parliament only moved to Canberra in 1927. The large lake at the centre of the city, which bears the name Burley Griffin, is artificial: it was formed in the 1960s, with a dam on a river in the region.
Today, Sydney and Melbourne each have more than 5 million inhabitants, while Canberra has about half a million. The name of the capital comes from a word of the Aboriginal peoples of the region, and the most cited meaning is "meeting place", although its origin is still debated.
