Australia. (0)

Australia
Fact file:
Australia comprises a land area of 7 686 850 square kilometres. Its population is about 21,3 million people. Australia’s capital is Canberra . The national language is English . The official name of it is the Commonwealth of Australia. It’s divided into six states and two territories: New South Wales , Queensland , South Australia, Western Australia, Tasmania, Victoria, Australian Capital Territory (ACT) and Northern Territory.
Symbols :
Australia had the British flag as their official flag until 1901, when the Commonwealth of Australia was formed . Over 30 000 entries attracted the official competition . Five of them , which contained almost identical designs, were placed equally first . The Australian flag symbolises Australia’s historical links with Britain, because it has British flag on it, and Australia’s location in the southern hemisphere, because it has stars of the Southern Cross on it. The large seven -pointed star represents the six original states and the territories of Commonwealth.
There is also the Indigenous Australian flag, which represents the Aboriginal Australians. The flag with its colours of red (representing the land), black (representing the people) and the yellow in the middle (representing the sun) is a source of pride for Indigenous Australians.
The present coat of arms was granted by King George V in 1912. It consists of a shield containing the badges of six Australian states, enclosed by an ermine border. The shield is a symbol for the federation of the states, which took place in 1901. The crest, which is above the shield, is a seven-pointed gold star on a blue and gold wreath. The seven points of the star represent exactly the same thing that they do on the flag. The supporters of the shield are native Australian animals : the red kangaroo and the emu. Usually the coat of arms is depicted on the background of sprays of golden wattle with a scroll beneath it containing the word ‘Australia’.
Australia’s national anthem is ‘Advance Australia Fair ’, which replaced ‘God Save the Queen ’ in 1984. It was written by a Scottish -born composer, Peter Dodds McCormick. The unofficial anthem of Australia is ‘Waltzing Matilda ’. It tells a story about a swagman, who has named his sleeping blanket Matilda. He is chased by police for stealing a sheep which he wanted to eat. The swagman doesn’t want to be punished, so he jumps into a billabong and drowns.
The golden wattle was proclaimed the official national floral emblem in 1988. It is a spreading shrub or a small tree, which grows in the under storey of open forest, woodland and open scrub in South Australia, Victoria, New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory.
Green and gold were proclaimed Australia’s national colour by the Governor-General in 1984. Before the proclamation, Australia had no official colour, although three colour combinations traditionally had a claim to be Australia’s national colours: red, white and blue; blue and gold; and green and gold.
Head of State:
The Head of State is the Queen of United Kingdom, who is also the Queen of Australia. In practise, Governor-General performs her functions in queen’s absence (now, Governor-General is Quentin Pryce and she is the 25th.)
Government :
The form of the government is constitutional monarchy, in practice, parliamentary democracy. The Parliament consists of two houses : the 76- member Senate and the 148-member House of Representatives. The Prime Minister is elected by the House of Representatives and the Cabinet. The current Prime Minister is Kevin Rudd.
History, discovery :
Though nobody had seen it, people thought long before the seventeenth century , that there was a land in the southern ocean . It was called the Unknown South Land. But more than 60 000 years before the arrival of the European settlers , Aboriginal people inhabited most areas of the nowadays Australian European settlement. There were estimated 300,000 Indigenous Australians living on the continent .
The Dutch navigator Janszoon was the first to find the South Land. He sighted the coast in 1606. Then Abel Tasman visited an island off the southern coast of Australia in 1642 and the island was named Tasmania after him. In 1770 British sailor James Cook came to Australia and landed in Botany Bay. He declared that Australia was very suitable for settlers. Britain had to send their convicts to the new country after loss in the American War of Independence to replace the North Atlantic colonies .
In 1788 the First Fleet with eleven ships, with 1500 people on board were sent to Australia with Captain Phillip . They landed in Port Jackson on January 26th in 1788 and that day is now called Australia Day. It is the biggest day of celebration in the country and in observed as a public holiday in all the states and territories of Australia.
During the 1850s, settlement was boosted by gold rushes. Gold was first found at Bayhurst in 1851.
The idea of unifying all the states first came to Earl Grey in 1847. On the 1st of January, in1901, Australian colonies federated to become the Commonwealth of Australia. Australia had declared independence from the federation of UK colonies.
As neither Sydney nor Melbourne was an acceptable new capital, a new city – Canberra – was built as a result of an architectural competition.
Geographical position:
Australia is located in the Southern Hemisphere and it’s the smallest continent in the world. It’s the only continent except for Antarctica that lies all south of the equator. It is surrounded by the Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean; the Gulf of Carpentaria, the Coral Sea, the Tasman Sea, the Australian Bight, the Timor Sea and Shark Bay.
The Great Barrier Reef is one of the natural wonders of the modern world. It is located off the northeast coast of Australia. It’s the largest coral reef on earth, extending for 2000 kilometres along the coast of Queensland. It consists of more than 600 islands . Most of the islands are uninhabited, but some have been developed as tourists resorts. Scientists estimate that the Reef is more than 30 millions years old and it had it beginning in a tiny animal known as polyp. There are more than 300 varieties of coral, which is a ultimate dream of every shell -collector. There are undersea observations, glass -bottomed boats and water scopes for undersea viewing, as well as skin -diving equipment . The Great Barrier Reef is and ideal place for a sunny holiday.
The relief:
Australia is an old and low continent with simple relief. Plains cover the greater part of the land. Most of the rocks have turned into sand and there are big sand deserts on the Western Plateau. In the centre of Australia are lowlands which are covered with sedimentary rocks.
Deserts cover most of the land in Australia. Most of the deserts lie in the central and north-western part of the country. The deserts in Australia occupy 18% of the continent. The biggest deserts are the Great Victory Desert , the Great Sandy Desert, the Tanami Desert, the Simpson Desert and the Gibson Desert.
Although Australia is a low continent, there are a few mountain rangers there, too.
The biggest is the Great Dividing Range. It stretches more than 3500 km from the north- eastern tip of Queensland, running the entire length of the eastern coastline through New South Wales, then into Victoria and turning west , before finally fading into the central plain at the Grampians in western Victoria. It consists of a complex of mountain ranges , plateaus, upland areas and escarpments.
One part of the Great Dividing Range is the Australian Alps . It’s highest point is Mount Kosciuszko, which is 2,228 metres high. The Snowy Mountains in New South Wales are also part of the Alps.
The most famous land mark of Australia is the Uluru . It’s a large sandstone rock formation in the southern part of the Northern Territory. It lies 335 km south west of the nearest large town, Alice Springs ; 450 km by road . Kata Tjuta (The Olgas) and Uluru are the two major features of the Uluru - Kata Tjuta National Park. Uluru is sacred to the Aboriginal people of the area. It has many rock caves and ancient paintings .
Water bodies:
Australia is a very dry continent. There are very few rivers and no big lakes in Australia. Most of the lakes of Australia have water in them only after rain.
The biggest lake of Australia is Lake Eyre and it is also the lowest point in Australia, at approximately 15 metres below the sea level. The lake is located in the deserts of central Australia. Even in dry season there is usually some water remaining in Lake Eyre.
Australian temporary rivers are called creeks. The biggest rivers of Australia are in the eastern part of the country. The Murray River is the largest but the second longest river, only its tributary the Darling river is longer than it. The Murray rises in the Australian Alps and flows north-west. It makes up much of the border of the New South Wales and Victoria. The Murray-Darling river system is one of the largest river systems in the world.
There are predominantly dry salt lakes in the flat desert regions of the country lacking in organised drainage.
The Australians can get most of their underground water from the Great Artesian Basin , which is the largest and deepest artesian basin in the world. Iti is near Lake Eyre, the Great Dividing Range and the Simpson Desert.
An artesian well is a confined aquifer containing groundwater that will flow upwards through a well without the need for pumping. Water may even spurt out of the ground if the natural pressure is high enough. An aquifer provides the water for an artesian well. An aquifer is a layer of soft rock, like limestone or sandstone that absorbs water from an inlet path . Porous stone is confined between impermeable rocks or clay. This keeps the pressure high, so when the water finds an outlet , it overcomes gravity and goes up instead of down.
Natural zones :
Although most of Australia is barren and arid or covered with deserts, there are five distinguishable natural zones in Australia.
The winds from the oceans bring rains to the western and eastern coast of Australia. So, the rainforests occupy the space between the Great Dividing Range and the eastern coast and also the northern coast. In the west they give place to beautiful grasslands with some trees called the savannas. Further west the trees disappear and the savannas are replaced by the bush lands. The real desert occupies the centre of the Western Plateau and in the very south-west there are thin forests of evergreen trees.
Most of the Austrian trees are various kinds of eucalyptus and acacia . Some eucalyptuses are small bushes in the semi deserts, some are the main trees in the savannas, but the biggest eucalyptuses grow as tall as hundred metres. Eucalyptuses give the people timber and eucalyptus oil.
Of 600 kinds of acacias, the golden wattle is the best know because it is the national flower of Australia. Of the other trees there are bottle trees in the savannas and tree-ferns in the tropical forests and many others .
Most of the animals which live in Australia are marsupial or pouched mammals . There are 150 different species of them. The babies of there animals are too small to start their lives on their own. After birth, they move to the pouch on the stomachs of their mothers and live there for several months.
The kangaroo is the most numerous among marsupials. There are more than 50 species of them. It’s a furry animal that hops on its hind legs . An adult can measure 2,4 metres high. They can jump more than 4 metres and travel 70 km/h. The biggest are red kangaroos, grey kangaroos and wallaroos. The smallest are the kangaroos that belong to the group called rat kangaroos. They eat grass and leaves and live in groups of about twelve.
The koala is one of the best loved Australian animals. The aboriginals named it “the animal that does not drink ”. They live in eucalyptus trees, sleeping for 18 hours , and eating 1 kilo of leaves and bark each day. Baby koalas are about the size of a bean when they are born. They move into their mother ’s pouch, which opens to the back . It comes out at the age of 6 months.
The wombat lives in burrows in grassland areas of Australia and Tasmania. It has short strong legs and claws for digging burrows. They live in groups and come out to look for food at night . To counterbalance their poor eyesight, they can smell and hear very well. Their nearest relatives are koalas.
The possum is a furry animal that lives in the trees. This good climber moves about at night. They live in groups and come out to look for food in the night. Some of them are called gliders as they have skin between their legs which they use like wings for gliding from three to another .
The egg-laying mammals are the strangest of all the Australia’s animals. They lay eggs like birds and feed their young with milk as mammals do.
The platypus lives mostly in the rivers of East Australia. The female lays two eggs in a nest of leaves and grass at the end of a burrow in a river bank . When the young come out of eggs, they start licking up the milk that comes from the mother’s stomach skin. Platypus gets its food mainly from the river. It has pouches in its cheeks where it can store food to eat later . It has a strong flat tail . It is a good swimmer. However , it can stay under water for a few minutes only and it shuts its eyes and ears first.
The echidna is a small mammal that is covered with coarse hair and spines. They have snouts which have the functions of both the mouth and nose . They have very short, strong limbs with large claws and are powerful diggers. Echidnas have a tiny mouth and a toothless jaw. They eat termites, which they catch which their long tongues.
There are only few ordinary mammals in Australia: dingoes, which are wild grown dogs and brumbies, which are wild grown horses .
The Englishmen brought rabbits to Australia and soon they became wild and numerous being the real pests of the fields and pastures today . That’s why Rabbit Proof fences were built. There are three fences; the original No. 1 Fence , which crosses the Western Australia from north to south, the No. 2 Fence, which is smaller and further west, and the smaller east-west running No. 3 fence. The fences took six years to build . When completed in 1907, the Rabbit-Proof Fence (including all three fences) stretched 2021 miles .
The Australian Lyre Bird is the world’s best imitator, it’s able to mimic the calls of 15 different species of birds in their locality and string the calls into a melody. It can also mimic the sound of mobile phones .
Climate, especially rainfall has played the most important role in where Australians have chosen to live. People are clustered in the regions of the south and east. The climates in these parts of Australia are well suited for ranching and farming.
The distribution of climates in Australia is determined by the location of the continent. The tropical climates are found in Northern Australia. Warm ocean winds near the equator bring heavy rain to there areas, especially in summer, so that tropical rainforests grow there.
The coastal areas, where the majority of Australians lives, have the most dependable rainfall in Australia. Westerlies bring winter rains to parts of Australia’s southern coast. Australia’s east coast gets rain all year round .
Between the tropical north and middle latitude south, lie Australia’s dry core -deserts. Deserts in that area receive almost no rainfall. In most areas of Australia rainfall is low and unpredictable.
In conclusion, Australia has three biomes: tropical, savannas and desert.
States and territories:
The Commonwealth of Australia is made up of 8 states and territories: Western Australia, Southern Australia, New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria, Northern Territory, the Australian Capital Territory and Tasmania. The biggest of them is Western Australia, which is almost one third of the whole Australia.
The biggest towns are all in the eastern part of Australia. Sydney, with the population of 4,3 million people and Melbourne, with 3,9 million people. The capital of Australia is Canberra, although it’s not as populated, but only about 340 000 people living there.
Outback refers to remote arid areas of Australia. There are not very many people living there, and those who do, are Aborigines.
Industry, minerals and power :
Agriculture is the major industry in Australia. People grow grain and bred sheep. The Australian wool industry is widely recognised as producing the finest quality Merino wool. Eastern Australia is the biggest farming region .
Australia is rich in many minerals; mining has been an important branch of Australia’s industry. Minerals are found and mined in most states, but Western Australia has become the most important region of mineral production . Gold, manganese ore, uranium and nickel ore are mined there. Australia is also rich in precious and semiprecious stones. Black opals and pink diamonds are though to be especially valuable .
Australia is a very rich country because of its mineral sources.
People:
The earliest humans living in Australia are called Aborigines, and they are descended from among the earliest humans in the world. They are native people who came from Asia about 30 000 or 40 000 years ago. The word “aborigine” means “from the beginning”. For thousands of years Aborigines lived as hunter -gatherers along the coast and in the inland desert areas, following the same lifestyle as their ancestors. They were dark skinned people who lived in tribes of about 500 distinct groups, speaking about 200 different languages.
Contact with British settlers began in 1788 when Captain Phillip raised the union Jack at Sydney Cove. The British, thinking that their culture was superior , tried to impose it on the native Aborigines. The settles exploited the traditional hunting land of the Aborigines by intensive, large-scale agriculture, sheep herding and cutting down the forests. The Aborigines began to lose their hunting lands and watering holes and were forced to move from place to place to place. As a result of contact with the European settlers, many of the Aborigines died from diseases. In 1900, laws were finally passed in almost every Australian state to protect the rights of the Aborigines. Improved living conditions in modern times have increased, but it is still lower than that of most Australians. The population of aborigines today is about 400 000 people.
Sports:
Sport is very popular in Australia. The most popular are water sports – surfing , swimming, sailing and fishing , but also cricket, golf , Australian Rules football, netball and baseball .
One famous Australian sprinter is Cathy Freeman . She has won the Gold medal for 400m at the Sydney Olympics.
Music:
The Aboriginal singing is called chanting, which is the rhythmic speaking or singing of words or sounds. There are many styles of Aboriginal music, for example Bunggul, Karma and Wangga. Most of the Aboriginal songs speak about the Dreamtime.
The most famous Aboriginal instrument is the didgeridoo . It’s a long pipe , without finger holes and it’s usually of eucalyptus. It is traditionally played by men. Today it’s commonly considered the national instrument of Australia.
Yothu Yindi is an Aboriginal band , although it has some non-Aboriginal members . The band tries to combine both musical cultures. They use typical instruments , like drums and guitars, but also Aboriginal instruments, like didgeridoo and clap sticks.
Sydney Opera House is one of the most famous performing arts venues in the world.
The most famous Australian singers are Kylie Minouge, Paul Kelly and Kevin Johnson.
Art:
The most famous Australian paintings are Aboriginal rock and dot paintings.
The rock paintings can be found almost everywhere in Australia. There are two types of rock paintings. One is petroglyphs – it means removing the rock, including scratching, abrading, pecking, carving, drilling, incising and sculpting. The other one is pictography – that means painting with mineral pigments, for example clay and ochre.
The dot painting is when patterns are created using dots .
The paintings are also about the Dreamtime.
The most famous Aboriginal artist is Albert Namatjira. He is best known for his watercolour Australian outback landscapes.
Literature :
Australian literature began soon after the settlement of the country by Europeans. Common themes include indigenous and settler identity, alienation, exile and relationship to place - but it is a varied and contested area.
Patrick White was a world-famous Australian writer. In 1973, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. He has published 12 novels, two short-story collections and eight plays .
Sally Morgan's “My Place” was considered a breakthrough memoir in terms of bringing indigenous Australians stories to wider notice. Alexis Wright and Tara June Winch are also famous Aboriginal writers.
Film :
The film-making in Australia started at the beginning of the 20th century.
The most famous Australian actors are Mel Gibson, Nicole Kidman, Russel Crowe, Cate Blanchett and Heath Ledger.
Some famous movies are, for instance , “ Happy Feet ”, “The story of the Kelly Gang” and “ Moulin Rouge”.
Ned Kelly was an Australian bushranger, and, to some, a folk hero for his defiance of the colonial authorities.