Gunnedah Golf Club once again hosted the popular Australia Day-themed trivia that combines all things Australia and tests locals on their general knowledge about Gunnedah.

This year’s trivia was a hit with Nigel McIlveen once again taking out first place in the individual trivia.

The Heath family kept their wits with them and won the team trivia, scoring six lovely umbrellas and taking home all the glory.

For seven years Jacinta Stanley and Anne McMahon have been running the Australia Day trivia.

“Originally the co-op used to run it on a Saturday morning, just as an individual one and Les Charters, who was an old sports commentator, used to run it,” Jacinta said.

“Ann Luke approached me about six or seven years ago and said it’d be really good to bring it back. So we found this quiz machine and that’s when it started.

“Now Anne McMahon, she’s just an amazing trivia buff and does a lot of trivia questions, and I asked her if she would help so we get together and do all the questions.”

Every year, the trivia night is hosted at the Gunnedah Golf Club on the Wednesday before Australia Day.

Jacinta and Anne are able to create a prize pool with donations from the golf club as well as council which donates free movie tickets.

Support from locals has been great, and the event continues to grow with 17 teams and approximately 90 people turning up this year.

“In the first year we just had the individual trivia and we thought, oh we probably should have something for everybody and that’s when we decided to do teams,” Jacinta said.

“The last two years have been amazing because I think we’ve had nearly 90 people here tonight and I think there’s probably, we had about 80 last year, so it’s growing and people love it.”

A lot of effort goes into the creation of the trivia, with Jacinta and Anne starting in October to begin the daunting task of collating topics and questions.

“Anne and I do five categories each,” Jacinta said. “We typically start back in October and gradually put our questions together. Then Anne and I come together, and we look at which questions would be suitable for a team and which ones for an individual.

“After we go through the questions, Anne actually compiles it all because she’s very organised.

“But we do put in a lot of hours.”