Not only did Eurovision celebrate its 60th anniversary, but it also made the unprecedented step of inviting Australia to join the party.

Down under, the competition is either devoutly revered or completely ignored, but for the devotees this was akin to Cinderella getting to go to the ball.

Here's what we learned from this year's historic Eurovision Song Contest.

No Irish turkey puppets, no Finnish heavy metal monsters, and no Russian grannies - in fact it was positively sedate by Eurovision standards. Of course, this does not mean what transpired over the weekend in Vienna was "normal" by any typical definition of the word, but the weirdness was definitely dialled down this year. Georgia's entry looked like a young Priscilla Presley dressed as Morticia Addams, Latvia's singer appeared to be eight-foot-tall, Slovenia's act combined headphones with "air violin", and Austria sent a piano (and their chances) up in flames, but aside from that it was a steady parade of wind machines, pyrotechnics, and pop power ballads topped off with the occasional key change. It almost seems like Eurovision is taking itself more seriously these days.

The winners over the past five have been genuinely worthy songs (with Conchita Wurst's Rise Like A Phoenix last year the least worthy to be honest) and this year the finalists served up another solid batch. In fact, the pointy end of the leaderboard was all quality this year, which goes to show that usual voting blocs and politics (Scandinavia sticks together, Cyprus votes for Greece, Russia's neighbours vote in fear) will only get you so far. Winners Sweden were definitely deserving but Russia's song would have been an equally good choice. The talented pop opera trio of Italy weren't bad either, but things got really interesting is in the next three. Whereas the top three followed the usual trend of being either 10 years behind current musical tastes or typically Eurovision-style ballads, Belgium, Australia and Latvia had songs that actually sounded contemporary. You could hear Loic Nottet's Rhythm Inside, Guy Sebastian's Tonight Again and Aminata's Love Injected on the radio - hell, even triple j or Double J would play them.

Speaking of Guy Sebastian - damn that was good. Give him a knighthood or something. With a song that channelled the vibe of Mark Ronson's throwback stomper Uptown Funk, Sebastian did his country proud. What was really impressive was that his performance actually stood above the pack in terms of being the full pop star package - he had both the moves and the voice that no other singer matched. But it was particularly interesting to see how the voting went down. Given this appears to be a one-off "thanks for being a fan" invitation to the 60th birthday, there was a sense we might just pick up a few charity votes, maybe courtesy of all the Aussie backpackers in Europe. But scoring top points from Sweden and Austria (admittedly the Austrians probably thought was a typo and were trying to vote for themselves) means that a lot of people must have really loved it. In fact, only six countries out of 39 didn't vote for Australia - Azerbaijan, Czech Republic, Macedonia, Georgia, Montenegro and Portugal. The tourism boycott starts here.

The dreaded "nul points" is the biggest Eurovision slap-in-the-face you can get. This year, Germany and Austria suffered the indignity of failing to trouble the voters - the first time two countries have zeroed out in the same year since 2003. Austria is also the first host country ever to finish last. So what went wrong? Germany's Black Smoke, performed by Ann Sophie, was a solid song that deserved a top-half finish and its zero baffled a lot of online commentators. As for Austria, there is the theory that host nations don't do well because voters shy away from the reigning champions, possibly to share the hosting burden around Europe. But they've never shied away quite like this, which makes you feel sorry for Austrian entry The Makemakes, who wrote a proper song and set a piano on fire. Maybe voters objected to the destruction of musical property.

Last year, Eurovision expressed its displeasure with Russia over its invasion of Ukraine and its anti-gay stance, with the crowd in Copenhagen booing the Russian entry and less than half of the countries voting for them (most of the countries that gave big votes to Russia were neighbours). There was a worry the same would happen again, with broadcasters reportedly preparing "anti-booing" technology to ensure any Bronx cheers weren't heard in homes around the world. A number of news outlets reported that Russia were booed again in the stadium this year during the voting stage, but it didn't matter - voters loved the song, propelling it to second place. Less well received was the results reader from "Mother Russia" who joked that Russia had voted for itself. The joke went down like a lead zeppelin and the boos that followed probably made the "anti-booing" technology implode.