Australia topic (1)

Topic
Australia
Introduction
Many people know Australia as the land down under because it is the only continent except for Antarctica that is all on the southern hemisphere. Its name means „Southland”.
The official name of the country is the Commonwealth of Australia. It’s capital is Canberra . Australia is the sixth largest country in the world but the smallest continent.
Australia has 6 states and 2 territories (New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania, Queensland , Western Australia , South Australia, The Australian Capital Territory and the Northern Territory).
The Australian people are culturally the same as the Anglo – Americans. There also live aborigines. Aborigines are the ancestors of the people.
Like the US and Canada , Australia was an English speaking colony of Great Britain . Today Australia is a modern developed country with a diversified economy . Australia is an island continent of 7.7 million square kilometres, which makes it a little smaller than the USA.
Located in south of Asia , between The Pacific and Indian Oceans, Australia is the World’s driest continent. Although large areas of the centre are desert , Australia has a wide range of climate from tropical in the north to temperate in the south – east , where it frequently snows in winter .
Geographical position
The coasts of Australia are surrounded by the Pacific Ocean , the Indian Ocean and the Southern Ocean.
Four seas are surrounding Australia, which are the Timor Sea and Arafura Sea in the north of Australia, the Coral Sea in the north-east of Australia and the Tasman Sea, near the island of Tasmania, in the south-east of Australia.
Government
The full name of the county is the Commonwealth of Australia. Its territory is 7.7 million square kilometres and population is about 19.7 million.
The state symbols are the coat of arms, flag anthem and aboriginal symbols. Australia’s flag has a British Union flag. . It is blue with the flag of the UK in the upper left corner . Five stars represent the Constallation Southern Cross and a large star is for the country’s states and territories.
The coat of arms features a kangaroo and an emu. The kangaroo and emu are chosen for the coat of arms of Australia because they can only move forward just like Australia.
The national anthem of Australia is “Advance Australia Fair”. This replaced the “God Save the Queen ” as Australia’s national anthem in 1984.
Aboriginal art uses Earth Colours (white, red, orange, brown ). These are the colours of the desert. Aboriginal artists made their paints from natural materials. Aboriginal paintings also use lots of dots. They used their fingers or sticks. There weren’t any art shops where they could buy brushes. Aboriginal art includes lots of symbols for the natural things around them .
Australia got its independence in 1st Jan 1901.
The Commonwealth of Australia is a constitutional monarchy, in practise a parliamentary democracy . The head of state is the Queen of the United Kingdom. Governor-General Michael Jeffery, performs her functions in Queen’s absence. The parliament consists the Senate and the House of the Reprentativer. The head of the government is the prime minister. The Prime Minister is elected by the House of Representatives and the Cabinet. The Prime Minister is John Howard.
Currency - Australian dollar .
Relief
Australia has a variety of landscapes .
The Great Australian Bight lies in the south of Australia.
The Gulf of Carpentaria is between the Arafura Sea and Cape York .
The Bass Strait separates the island of Tasmania from the mainland of Australia.
The Great Barrier Reef is in the north-east of Australia, between the Coral Sea and the mainland.
The western part of Australia is covered with deserts. Most of the rocks have turned into sand .
The biggest of them is the Great Sandy Desert, which lies in the north of Western Australia.
The Gibson Desert is in the middle of Western Australia.
The Victoria Desert is in the south of Western and South Australia.
The Tanami Desert is in the west of the Northern Territory.
The Simpson Desert is in the south-east of the Northern Territory.
The Great Dividing Range runs along the eastern coast of Australia.
The highest mountains in Australia, the Australian Alps, run along the southern coast of Australia, in Victoria. The highest point of Australia is Mount Kosciusko (2,228m above sea level).
The Flinders Range starts from the southern coast and runs towards inland.
The biggest single rock in the World Uluru is in the central Australia.
The island of Tasmania is in the south-east of Australia. The capital of Tasmania is Hobart.
The seas and oceans that wash the coasts of Australia are warm . The Coral Sea is the warmest that is why many corals live in the seas. The skeletons of these tiny organisms have formed a great belt of coral- called the Great Barrier Reef. Its is 2000 km long and 2-150 km wide.
There are five distinguishable natural zones in Australia. In the very east there are wet forests that occupy the space between the Great Dividing Range and the eastern coast. The wet forests give place to beautiful grasslands with some trees called the savannas. Farther west the trees disappear and the bushlands begin. The real desert occupies the centre of the Western Plateau. In the very southwest there are thin forests of evergreen trees.
Most of Australian trees are kinds of eucalyptus (or gum tree to Australians) and acacia (wattle of Australians). Eucalyptuses give the people timber and eucalyptus oil.
Of 600 kinds of acacias the golden wattle, the national flower of Australia, is the best known . Of other trees there grow bottle trees in the savannas, tree ferns in the tropical forests and many others .
Lakes
Australia has much underground water. There are only few lakes which are full of water only after it rains . The biggest lake is Lake Eyre which is a salt lake.
The natural lakes of the interior of continental Australia are salt lakes. Fed by streams and rivers , they receive water rarely. Lake Eyre, Torrens, Frome and Gairdner are the remains of a vast inland sea which once extended south from the Gulf of Carpentaria.
Rivers
Australia has only few rivers. Many of them are full of water only after it rains. There are many temporary rivers called creeks. The biggest rivers are in the east. All the rivers in Australia are short.
Murray River is Australia’s principal river. The Murray River and its tributaries run approximately 3,370km in length and form most of the border between New South Wales and Victoria.
Climate
Because of its size , Australia has many climates. The Tropic Capricorn cuts across the northern part of Australia so about 40per cent of the country lies in tropics. In the south, the island state of Tasmania lies in the cool roaring forties.
In the north the climate is tropical. Monsoon winds bring moist air from the northwest during summer . This time of high rainfall, between December and March is known as “the wet”.
In the southern the climate ranges from warm temperate to cool temperate. Winter temperatures can be low but rarely freezing in the southern states.
Australia is a land of droughts and floods . The droughts are caused by the EL Nino, a weather pattern which happens when the Southern Pacific Ocean heats up. This causes the wind direction to reserve . Instead of bringing moist air towards eastern Australia, the rain bearing clouds are blown away .
An EL Nino occurs every four or five years causing droughts and bushfires. Droughts are often followed by floods.
Plant Life
A long time ago Australia was separated form other countries. This movement caused the difference of species , plants and animal form the other countrys. The water controls the type of vegetation in a country.
The two main types of vegetation are the eucalyptus or gum trees and acacia or wattles. The eucalypts are found all over Australia. There are more than 500 varieties of gum trees in Australia. Australia is the home of some 600 species of acacia. These trees develop smaller, leathery leaves to avoid loss of water.
Australia has over 155 million hectares of native forest, about 80 per cent of which are eucalypt.
Animal life
Australia is a continent – sized museum of ancient animals . Anteater and platypus are the two of the strangest animals in the world. They are really reptile – mammals . They have hair like cats and dogs , but they lay shelled eggs like snakes and turtles. And they are found only in Australia.
Another group of Australian mammals, the marsupials, are less like reptiles than the anteater and the platypus, but they are not highly developed mammals either.
The kangaroo and the wombat are marsupials.
Their young are born before they are fully developed. The kangaroo is born after being only seven weeks inside it’s mother . It is completely blind and only an inch or an inch and a half long. It crawls into its mother’s pouch and attaches itself to a nipple there. There it stays for almost three months, when it begins to stick its head out. It is six months old before it is big and strong enough to leave the pouch.
Some of the marsupials in Australia look very much like higher animals. The koala , which looks like a live teddy bear , is not really a bear at all but a marsupial. Today Australian marsupials are dying out. Dogs, cats, and rabbits brought to Australia by men are rapidly destroying the gentler marsupials. Some day there may be nothing left of the ancient animals.
Australia has around 800 species of birds , 400 of which are unique to this country. There are 55 species of parrots in Australia, and the birds are as numerous as they are colourful.
Two types of crocodile, the saltwater and the freshwater crocodile are found in the north.
The dingo, or native dog is not really an Australian native. It was bought from Asia around 4000 years ago. The dingo is an effective hunter . To save their sheep from dingo attacks , farmers built many fences to keep the dingo out.
These fences didn’t work so in 1946 the government built a single fence which stretched 5400 km from Great Australian Bight in South Australia to near the Queensland coast. The single fence worked better.
Lyrebirds are covered with brown feathers. They live in forests and woodland in Australia.
They eat insects , spiders, beetles and worms .
Male lyrebirds can copy many sounds.
Lyrebird gets its name because of the tail of the male bird . It is shaped like a musical instrument called a lyre. There are 2 species of lyrebird, the superb lyrebird, about the size of a rooster, and Albert 's lyrebird, which is the smaller of the species.
Lyrebirds have mostly brown feathers and although they have wings , they don't often fly. They move about in the forests, running and jumping quickly on their short legs . They have four claws on each leg. At night they roost in trees.
Lyrebirds are a protected species.
The koala is a small bear-like, tree-dwelling, herbivorous marsupial which averages about 9kg in weight . Its fur is thick and usually grey . The koala gets its name from an ancient Aboriginal word meaning "no drink " because it receives over 90% of its hydration from the Eucalyptus leaves (also known as gum leaves) it eats, and only drinks when ill or times when there is not enough moisture in the leaves (during droughts etc.).
The Emu is the largest bird native to Australia. The soft -feathered, brown, flightless birds reach up to 2 m in height . The Emu is common over most of mainland Australia, although it avoids heavily populated areas. Emus can travel great distances fast, if necessary , can sprint at 50 km/h for some distance at a time. They eat a variety of plants and insects. Emus are farmed for their meat , oil and leather .
The Kangaroo is a common marsupial from the islands of Australia and New Guinea . There are 47 species of them. Kangaroos can hop up to 74 km per hour and go over 9 m in one hop. These shy animals live about 6 years in the wild and up to 20 in captivity . Most of them are active at night. Many kangaroos are in danger of extinction . Kangaroos eat grass , leaves, and roots . They swallow their food without chewing it and later regurgitate a cud and chew it. They need little water; they can go for months without drinking , and they dig their own water wells.
The Dingo is Australia's wild dog. It is found in Australia, in all states but Tasmania. They are found throughout the mainland of Australia, close to a source of water. The Dingo is a medium sized dog, with a bushy tail, and red to yellow coat. Dingos do not bark , but they do howl.
They are meat eaters, and try to feed mainly on this. If unavailable, dingos have been known to eat reptiles, and any food source it can find . When food is scarce, dingos group together to feed on larger animals such as kangaroos. Dingos usually stay and hunt in family groups.Dingos mate once a year , and the female dingo gives birth to up to eight puppies.
Population
The big country is far from crowded. It is about the size of the UK but its some 16 million population is less than four time as big as Chicago ’s. There are about 50 000 aborigines. More than half of all the people od Australia live in its eight biggest cities. Sydney and Melbourne are two largest. Each one has about 3 000 000 people.
Australia is multicultural diverse society. The languages most commonly spoken in Australia are English , Italian, Greek , Cantonese, Arabic, Vietnamese and Mandarin .

The native Australians Aboriginal flag
The word "aboriginal" means "the first " or "earliest known". Australia may well be the home of the worlds first people.
More than 30,000 years ago the population of the world was small, and people lived in family groups, hunting , fishing and food gathering. There where no cultivated crops, animals were not herded for food and metalworking was yet to be discovered .
At that time, known as the last great Ice Age, Australia was joined to New Guinea. Islands such as Java and Borneo were larger than today, sea passages between them narrower. This made it possible for the ancestors of the people now called Australian Aboriginals to reach Australia from lands to the north.
It is not known from where the Aboriginals began their journey , but it is certain that people with some kind of water craft crossed the 100 - 160 kilometres stretches of water between the islands to the north; and reach the southern continent. This sea voyage is the earliest evidence of sea travel by prehistoric man.
As the ice flows of the Ice Age began to melt, the sea level rose , isolating Australia, and making the sea passages too wide for crossing by the simple forms of watercraft available at the time. About 10,000 years ago, Tasmania became separated from the main land, isolating the people there, and about 5,000 years ago the Australian continent took on the shape of that it has today.
The biggest cities
In each of Australia’s six states, there is a large city which is near a river and the sea. Sixty per cent of Australians live in those cities or near them.
New South Wales is the oldest state in Australia. Sydney is its capital, which is known for it’s rich cosmopolitan lifestyle, fine restaurants, cool shopping , as well as the world famous harbour.
Sydney is the oldest and biggest city. It’s population is 3.7 million people. It’s a busy modern city and its high- rise buildings are the centre for much of Australian business. Sydney is also an international city.
Sydney Opera House (SOH) was opened in 1973 for music, theatre and dance . The roof of this beautiful building looks like sails on Sydney Harbour.
Sydney has one of the longest bridges in the world called the Sydney Harbour Bridge .
Victoria is the smallest mainland state in area but the most populated. Melbourne is Victoria's capital, with more than 70% of all Victorians living there. Melbourne is the second biggest city. It was the capital of Australia from 1901 to 1927. It has wide streets, lovely old buildings and large parks. Melbourne is famous for its theatres and pubs. Melbourne is very important for sports . Each year in September the Australian football finals are held there.
Queensland is Australia’s second largest state. It is 25% of Australia’s landmass. Queensland is known as Australia’s sunshine state. Its capital is Brisbane. Brisbane is the third largest city in Australia, with a population of just under 2 million. Brisbane has many stilt houses - wooden houses on tall posts which let cool ain underneath the house.
The Australian Capital Territory was established in 1911 to create a capital for the newly federated country. Canberra is it’s capital, also Australia’s capital. Canberra is known for its stylish restaurants, bars and a calendar of events . It is the newest city and is 120 km from sea.
Tasmania is a land apart- a place of wild mountains and beautiful landscapes, friendly welcoming people, temperate climate, quality wines and food, a spirited history. It is all wrapped up in a relaxed lifestyle. The capital of Tasmania is Hobart. A smaller and quieter city. It is Australia's second oldest and twelfth largest city.
South Australia has a wonderful outback, tasty wines etc. At kangaroo Island you can see sea lions, kangaroos, koalas etc. Adelaide is the capital city of South Australia, and is the fifth largest city in Australia, with a population of over 1.1 million. It is a coastal city beside the Southern Ocean. Adelaide is known for its many festivals as well as for its wine , arts and sports. Adelaide arranges festival of music, theatre and film every two years.
Western Australia has dolphins and whale sharks- the worlds largest fish , that you can swim with. Perth is the capital of Western Australia. A population of 1,477,800 makes Perth the largest city in Western Australia. One third of the families in Perth own a boat .
The Northern Territory is blessed with a variety of natural landscapes. Flora and fauna are diverse.
Economy
They have got beef productions, dairy industries, fisheries, forestry and wine industry.
They have got a lot of grazing lands, where they keep sheep, cows, pigs etc. They have beef productions. They export about 65% of it, so they keep less than half to themselves.
Then they also have got dairy industries, which are mostly in Victoria. They export butter, cheese, milk etc.
Because of the fact that people love seafood, they also have got fisheries. They export it mostly to Asia and America.
Forestry includes a lot of things. For example they grow grain, oilseeds, wheat, barley and rye.
They also have world class wine industries. They make great wines.
Sports
Sport plays an important part in Australian culture, assisted by a climate that favours outdoor activities . At an international level, Australia has particularly strong teams in cricket, hockey , netball, rugby league, rugby union, and performs well in cycling , rowing and swimming . Nationally, other popular sports include Australian rules football, horse racing , soccer and motor racing. Australia has participated in every summer Olympic Games and every Commonwealth Games. Australia has hosted the 1956 and 2000 Summer Olympics .
Culture
The modern culture of Australia draws from many sources including indigenous Australians, United Kingdom and the immigration of a diverse range of people with the Australian gold rushes of the 1850s and past.
Australian art is one of the oldest in the world. Tribes people were painting on cave walls and cutting pictures into rocks 20 000 years ago. When Europeans first came to Australia, it was along time before they started to paint , write, act or make music. They were too busy building roads and cities, and above all they had a whole new country to discover. And they all came from Britain. After the First World War new ideas began coming from Australia. Britain began to seem less like home. More people began to listen American pop songs and radio shows . They watched American films but some people believed that European art, music and literature were the best . Australian Art didn’t seem to be so important at all.
All that has changed now. Australia has grown up. Sydney is one of the artistic capitals of the world. World famous Australian actors and artists don’t have to travel to Europe or America anymore - people come to Australia to see them.
Cinemas now also show Australian films.

History
Australia may well be the home of the worlds first people. Stone tools were discovered in New South Wales, in 1971 . It shows that humans lived in Australia at least twelve thousand years before they appeared in Europe.
The first Europeans to arrive in Australia were the Dutch who tried to reach the East Indies, but landed on the western coast in 1611 . They thought Australia was an arid land inhabited by fierce savages. In 1770 captain James Cook discovered the eastern coast and had a better outlook . He explored the coast and named it the Botany Bay because he found many unknown plants there.
In 1788 about 700 British convicts and 200 marines arrived at Botany Bay and on the plain around Sydney the first settlement was founded . The British were very interested in the colonization of Australia because the loss of American colonies .In 1814 the continent became known as Australia- the land of the south.
By 1852 more than 150,000 convicts had been sent to Australia. About 20% were women and 30% were Irish . Convicts were mostly poor people who could not read or write, many of the women had been prostitutes. Only few convicts were from the wealthier classes. It was hard to build a new society leaning on such a difficult group. Until 1830 the convicts were harshly punished. The real start to Australia’s development was the discovery of gold in Bayhurst in 1851, which attracted people like a magnet. Many of the gold founders settled in Australia. Between 1829 and 1859 four of the six colonies became the states of Australia. The idea of unifying all the states first came to Earl Grey, as early as in 1847 The Commonwealth of Australia was approved by the British Parliament and became a reality on January 1, 1901. Now the states became States of the Commonwealth. As neither Sydney nor Melbourne was acceptable as the capital, a new capital Canberra was founded in 1911.
Conclusion
Australia is a very interesting country with a very interesting history. It has a big variety of landscapes, plants and animals. Australia has done a hude evolve.


Materials
Spotlight on Australia
Understanding Australia
English
Step 7
www.australia.com
www.enchanted-learning.com
www.bbc.com
www.google.com