About Australia

AAustralia is the only country that has a whole continent to itself. World famous for its natural wonders and wide open spaces (beaches, deserts and “the bush” or “the Outback”), Australia is ironically one of the world’s most highly urbanised countries and is well known for the cosmopolitan attractions of its globally significant cities, such as Adelaide, Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, Hobart and the Australian capital city Canberra. Australia is also a major tourist destination, and is one of the world’s wealthiest countries. The country is renowned worldwide for its vast, untouched landscape and its unique culture.

Quick Facts

Capital: Canberra, ACT
Government: Parliamentary democracy and constitutional monarchy; Commonwealth and Federation of States
Currency: Australian Dollar (AUD$)
Area: 7,686,850 km2
Population: 20,264,082 (July 2006 est.)
Language: English
Calling Code: +61
Internet TLD: .au
Time Zone: UTC +8 to +11

Geography

Australia is the world’s smallest continent but sixth-largest country; it’s slightly smaller than the 48 contiguous United States. The highly urbanised population is heavily concentrated along the eastern and south-eastern coasts. Australia is bordered on the northwest, west, and southwest by the Indian Ocean, and on the east by the South Pacific Ocean. The Tasman Sea lies to the southeast, while the Great Barrier Reef lies to the northeast. Papua New Guinea and Indonesia are Australia’s northern neighbors, separated from Australia by the Arafura Sea and the Timor Sea.

Australia is mostly arid and semi-arid: the center is desert and much agricultural land is poor quality by the standards of continents with richer soil. The south east is temperate and the north tropical. Australia was massively deforested for agricultural purposes: forest areas survive in extensive national parks and some other areas. Australia is prone to severe drought and water restrictions are currently in place in some areas, however these shouldn’t affect travellers as they mostly relate to watering gardens and washing cars.

A common perception of Australia is that it is always hot and sunny: wrong! Both Sydney and Melbourne can experience days or even weeks of almost continual rainfall, while Western Tasmania has a climate that closely resembles that of England, although Tasmania’s capital, Hobart, is the second driest Australian capital.

History

The continent of Australia was apparently first settled more than 40,000 years ago with successive waves of immigration of Aboriginal peoples from south and south-east Asia. With rising sea levels after the last Ice Age, Australia became largely isolated from the rest of the world and the Aboriginal tribes developed a variety of cultures, based on a close (spiritual) relationship with the land and nature, and extended kinship. Australian aborigines maintained a hunter/gatherer culture for thousands of years in association with a primitive artistic and cultural life - including a very rich ’story-telling’ tradition. While the ‘modern impression’ of Australian Aborigines is largely built around an image of the ‘desert people’ who have adapted to some of the harshest conditions on the planet (equivalent to the bushmen of the Kalahari), Australia provided a ‘comfortable living’ for the bulk of aborigines amongst the bountiful flora and fauna on the Australian coast - until the arrival of Europeans.

Although a lucrative Chinese market for shells and beche de mere had encouraged Indonesian fishermen to visit Northern Australia for centuries it was unknown to Europeans until the 1600’s, when Dutch traders to Asia began to ‘bump’ into the Western Coast. Early Dutch impressions of this extremely harsh, dry country were unfavourable, and Australia remained for them something simply a road sign pointing north to the much richer (and lucrative) East Indies (modern Indonesia). Deliberate exploration of the Australian coast was then largely taken over by the French and the British. Consequently place names of bays, headlands and rivers around the coastline reflect a range of Dutch, French, British, and Aboriginal languages.

In 1770, the expedition of the Endeavour under command of James Cook navigated and charted the east coast of Australia, making first landfall at Botany Bay on April 29, 1770. Cook continued northwards, and before leaving put ashore on Possession Island in the Torres Strait off Cape York on August 22, 1770. Here he formally claimed the eastern coastline he had discovered for the British Crown, naming it New South Wales. Given that Cook’s discoveries would lead to the first European settlement of Australia, he is often popularly conceived as its European discoverer, although he had been preceded by more than 160 years.

Following the exploration period, the first wave of British settlers came to Australia in 1788, starting a process of colonisation that almost entirely displaced the Aboriginal people who inhabited the land. This reduced indigenous populations drastically and marginalised them to the fringes of society.

While Australia began its modern history as a British penal colony, the vast majority of people who came to Australia after 1788 were free settlers, mainly from Britain and Ireland, but also from other European countries. Convict settlements were along the east coast, Adelaide and Perth being settled by free settlers. Many Asian and Eastern European people also came to Australia in the 1850s, during the Gold Rush that started Australia’s first resource boom. Although such diverse immigration diminished greatly during the xenophobic years of the White Australia policy, Australia welcomed a successive series of immigration from Europe, the Mediterranean and later Asia to formulate a highly diverse and multicultural society by the late 20th century.

The system of separate colonies federated to form an independent country in 1901, each colony now becoming a state of Australia. The new country was able to take advantage of its natural resources to rapidly develop its agricultural and manufacturing industries and made a proportionally huge contribution (considering its small size of population) to the Allied war effort in World Wars I and II. Australian troops also made a valuable, if sometimes controversial, contribution to the wars in Korea, Vietnam and Iraq. Australian Diggers retain a reputation as some of the hardest fighting troops along with a great social spirit.

Long-term Australian concerns include salinity, pollution, loss of biodiversity, and management and conservation of coastal areas, especially the Great Barrier Reef. Government in Australia is based on a federal system (with States and a National Governments) similar to the USA, but these Governments follow a British model, with two elected houses (similar to the US House and Senate) with an unelected representative of the Queen of The United Kingdom in the (notionally powerless) executive position ‘above’ the parliament. A referendum to change Australia’s status to a republic was narrowly defeated in 1999, largely due to a split between those seeking a directly elected President (the majority) and those who believed the President should be elected by the Government. Demand for another vote has been discouraged by the current conservative Government, but it is likely to resurface.

Most of the population is concentrated in the south-east of the country, to the east of the Great Dividing Range. This is because the inland and western areas of the country are at best semi-habitable desert, known as the Outback. The most-inhabited states are Victoria and New South Wales, but by far the largest in land area is Western Australia.

Culture

Although the modern culture of Australia largely reflects its British origins, Australia is an incredibly multicultural nation, its citizens’ families originating in seemingly every country of the world, and practising almost every religion and lifestyle. Over one-third of Australians were born to immigrant parents, and there are approximately half a million Australians of Aboriginal descent.

The most multicultural city is the largest: Sydney, closely followed by Melbourne. Both cities are renowned for the variety and quality of global foods available in their many restaurants, and Melbourne especially has been at pains to promote itself as a centre for the arts world-wide. That said, whilst smaller “Outback” and rural settlements might still reflect a majority Anglo-Celtic monoculture (often with a small Aboriginal population), virtually every large Australian city and town reflects the immigration from Europe, Asia, the Middle East and the Pacific that occurred after World War II and continued into the 1970s. The changes that that might involve can be appreciated by the fact that, in the half century after the war, Australia’s population boomed from roughly 7 million to just over 20 million people. Perth, although relatively isolated, for example, has a population in which 32.5% were born overseas.