Royal Netherlands Embassy

The Dutch name for the Netherlands is Nederland, meaning 'low country'. The Netherlands is made up of 12 provinces, two of which are North Holland and South Holland. These two western coastal provinces played a very important part in the country's history and have always been strongly identified with it, so in some languages the Netherlands is called Holland.

Most people in the Netherlands speak Dutch, but in the province of Friesland, in the north, about 400,000 people speak Frisian, a language that is similar, in some ways, to English.

Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn was born on July 15, 1606, so he would have been 400 years old in 2006! Rembrandt is considered to be one of the greatest painters in the world. He was especially well known for painting and etching almost 100 self-portraits.

Vincent van Gogh painted in a special style all of his own. During his lifetime he was very poor but people began to appreciate his work after his death. One of his paintings sold in 1987 for about A$49 million - a world record.

Amsterdam is the capital of the Netherlands and is also its largest city. The centre of the city is built on very soft soil, so people have driven wooden piles (poles) into the ground and built their houses on top of these. The city of Amsterdam also has 1,281 bridges crossing its network of canals.

The lowest point of the Netherlands, near Rotterdam, is 6.74 metres lower than the sea. No wonder that they need all those dikes and pumps!

Orange is the national colour of the Netherlands because the royal family came from the French province of Orange. The nickname of the Dutch national soccer team is Oranje, the Dutch word for orange, and its fans often dress entirely in orange. The city of Orange in New South Wales (Australia) has historical connections with the Netherlands.

On Prinsjesdag (Prince's Day) the Queen rides through The Hague to the Houses of Parliament. This is the day of the year (the 3rd Tuesday in September) on which Parliament is officially opened.

The motto of the Netherlands is 'Je Maintiendrai', which means 'I maintain'.

According to legend, eight-year-old Hans Brinker, from Spaarndam in North Holland, saved the city of Haarlem from a terrible flood in the 17th century. One evening, he was walking alongside the dike when he noticed that water was seeping through it. He realised the danger, stuck his finger into the hole, and stayed there until help arrived the following morning.

The earliest known record for a windmill in Holland is from 1274. Windmills actually helped to build the Netherlands, because they were used to pump out water so that the land could be drained. Many of the windmills have now been replaced by more powerful pumping machines, but there are still about 1,000 traditional windmills to be seen.

Windmills were also used for grinding flour, mustard and chalk, sawing wood, processing coffee husks, peeling barley (to make pearl barley), grinding plant material to produce vegetable oils and dyes, and making paper.

In the 16th century, Dutch millwrights perfected the traditional design of the windmill sail. To this day, the design has remained unchanged. The canvas on the arms of the windmills is spread all the way out on calm days and pulled in on windier days, just like the sails on a ship.

Windmills are tall enough to be seen from a long distance away, so the position of the blades (when not milling) can be used to send messages. The position of the sails has a special meaning for people living nearby. It can signal when a baby is born, a death in a local family, there is going to be a wedding, or if the miller is taking a short or a long break. The miller may also attach little flags and other decorations to the sails of the windmill.

The flag of the Netherlands is red, white and blue, like the Australian flag. It has a red stripe across the top, a white stripe in the middle and a blue stripe at the bottom.

The Dutch National Anthem is called the Wilhelmus. It has fifteen eight-line verses! The anthem is in the form of an acrostic. If the first letters of each verse are written down they spell the words 'Willem van Nassov' (William of Orange)

All courts in the Netherlands are presided over by judges, who are appointed for life. There is no trial by jury.

Dikes and dunes have to be built and water pumped out to reclaim land for Dutch people to live and farm on.

In February 1953, the Netherlands suffered its worst flooding disaster for 300 years when the dikes protecting the southwest of the country were damaged by hurricane-strength winds.

To prevent similar disasters in the future it was proposed that all the tidal inlets and estuaries in the provinces of Zeeland and South Holland should be dammed. This plan was known as the 'Delta Project'.

The Delta Project is one of the greatest projects in the world and is considered by the American Society of Civil Engineers to be one of the seven wonders of the modern world.

Great dams and sluice gates were built to control the flow of water from the major rivers. The gates, which are the size of twelve-storey blocks of flats, had to be built in special docks, floated into place, and then sunk. The dam was officially opened by Queen Beatrix on 4 October 1986.

Bicycles are a very popular way of getting around because the country is so flat. Special cycleways, rules and road signs have been made for bicycles and there are over 17,000km of bicycle lanes for cyclists to use.

Drop is a salty or sweet liquorice which many children and adults enjoy. The Dutch are also extremely fond of chocolate and Amsterdam has the largest cocoa depots in the world!

On average, the Dutch people are the tallest in Europe, and are among the tallest in the world. Perhaps this is partly because milk is one of their favourite drinks!

These are not boats you can sail across the ocean, but floating houseboats that always stay in the same place. They have telephone and electricity services and many of them have little gardens on the bank.

Most Dutch people take the health of the environment very seriously. Their per-capita carbon dioxide emissions are amongst the lowest in Europe and they are keen sorters and recyclers of household waste. The government encourages people to help keep the air clean by riding bikes and using public transport, and industries and agriculture must follow strict guidelines to make sure they are as ecologically sensitive as possible.

Pieter van den Hoogenband is a famous swimmer. Another famous Dutch swimmer is Inge de Bruijn. Other famous Dutch sportspeople are Johan Cruijff and Dennis Bergkamp (soccer), and Jochem Uytdehaage and Erben Wennemars (skating).

The microscope was invented by Antonie van Leeuwenhoek and the pendulum clock was invented by Christiaan Huygens. Cornelius van Drebbel, another Dutch inventor, is usually credited with building the first submarine. Van Drebbel's submarine was powered by oarsmen, with the oars protruding through flexible leather seals. Snorkel air tubes were held above the surface by floats, allowing a submergence time of several hours. It is also said that Van Drebbel developed a chemical which purified the air and allowed the crew to stay submerged for even longer periods.

The province of Zeeland was devastatingly flooded in 1953, so an enormous project was begun to make sure it could not happen again. This was called the Delta Project. The dams and flood barriers took 30 years to build.

The Netherlands is at the mouth of three major European rivers (the Rhine, the Maas and the Schelde) and also has a long coastline. This means that it is easy to move things to and from the Netherlands by sea. Because of this, the port of Rotterdam is huge. It manages a quarter of all the cargo that is moved in and out of Europe.

There is an area between Rotterdam and The Hague where many vegetables, such as tomatoes, lettuces, peppers and cucumbers, are grown in a large number of glasshouses. There are so many greenhouses in this area that it has been nicknamed the 'glass city'.

Nearly two thirds of all the flowers imported by countries around the world come from the Netherlands. The Dutch are particularly good at growing tulips, daffodils and hyacinths. People come from all over the world to buy the bulbs.

The Dutch are famous for their cheeses. Some of the best known varieties are Edam, Gouda and Leiden. During the summer many tourists visit the traditional cheese markets at Alkmaar and Gouda, where buyers slap the cheeses with the palms of their hands to determine whether the holes are the right size. They continue to do this until a price is agreed with the farmers.

The cheeses are then loaded onto specially-painted curved wooden trays and carried to the weigh house by porters wearing white uniforms and lacquered straw hats. Once the cheeses have been weighed they are taken to the buyers' warehouses or lorries.