Australia is a sovereign country located in Oceania, between the Indian Ocean and South Pacific Oceans in the Southern Hemisphere. Australia is the sixth-largest country by land mass in the world with a total area of 7,692,024 km2. Daunting in size, Australia has a wide variety of landscapes and climates, with deserts in the center, tropical rainforests in the north-east, tropical savannas in the north, and mountain ranges in the south-east. Australia is divided into 6 States (Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania, South Australia, and Western Australia) and 2 Territories (Australian Capital Territory and Northern Territory). The capital is Canberra, which is located in the southeast between the larger and more important economic and cultural centers of Sydney and Melbourne.
Australia is the driest, flattest, hottest, most desiccated, infertile and climatically aggressive of all the inhabited continents and still Australia teems with life – large portion of it quite deadly. In fact, Australia has more things that can kill you in a very nasty way than anywhere else. Only Antarctica is more hostile to life.
Australia is home to some of the world’s oldest living cultures. The county’s first inhabitants – Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander – have lived on and managed the land for more than 65,000 years before Dutch explorers first landed in 1606 followed by British settlers in 1788. By the end of the 1850s gold rush, most of the country had been explored by European settlers. Until the 1970s, the majority of immigrants to Australia came from Europe but Australia now receives more immigrants from Asia.
Years of mass immigration have led to sweeping demographic changes, making modern Australia one of the world’s mostdiverse and multicultural countries. Over 30 per cent of the Australian resident population were born overseas, and around 45% of Australians have at least one parent who was born overseas. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians are now joined by people from nearly 200 countries, making Australia home to over 26.5 million people from a variety of cultural, ethnic, linguistic and religious backgrounds. 80 percent of Australians live within 100 kilometres of the coast making Australia one of the world’s most urbanised coastal dwelling populations.
Australians are often described as friendly, down-to-earth, optimistic and resourceful. A sense of mateship and the belief in a ‘fair-go’ have underscored the Australian character for decades. Australian values based on respect, equality and freedom are central to the success of the nation, and provide the foundation for Australia’s prosperity, social cohesion, and a shared future in which everyone belongs. Australia has the 10th highest life expectancy in the world of 83.73 years on average.
When it comes to governance, Australia follows the principle of representative democracy wherein officials who make up the government are elected by and are accountable to the Australian people. There are three (3) levels of government in Australia—the federal government, the state government, and the local government units. The federal or national government is known as the Government of the Commonwealth of Australia. It is a federal parliamentary constitutional monarchy, with the currently reigning British monarch (presently King Charles III) as titular head. The federal government has three (3) branches: 1) the Bicameral Parliament or Legislature (composed of the Senate and House of Representatives), 2) the Executive, this is where the executive power lies and is headed by the Prime Minister who is the leader of the majority party in the House of Representatives, and 3) the Judiciary which is composed of the courts and headed by the High Court of Australia (Australia’s Supreme Court). Each State and Territory has its own parliament that can enact laws and policies that are limited to their respective jurisdiction. Australia’s institutions are independent, robust, and transparent. Voting is compulsory in Australia for citizens over the age of 18.
Harold Holt (1967), a former prime minister of Australia, was strolling along the beach in Victoria when he plunged into the surf and vanished.
Amazing Facts About Australia
# The Australian Alps get more snow than the Swiss Alps.
# 90% of Australians live on the coast.
# Tasmania has the cleanest air in the world.
# The Great Barrier Reef is the largest ecosystem in the world. It is made up of nearly 3,000 individual reefs and can be seen from space.
# Australia has over 60 separate wine regions.
# Fraser Island is the largest sand island in the world.
# 80% of Australian animals are unique to Australia.
# 5 km of Ayers Rock (Uluru) is underground.
# Australia has the world’s longest golf course measuring more than 1,350 kms long.
# Australia is home to 21 of the world’s 25 most venomous snakes.
# Perth is the only city in the world which can have aircraft land in its CBD.
# Australia is bigger than we realise, it’s almost the same size as mainland USA.
# The largest cattle station in the world is located in Australia, Anna Creek Station in South Australia and it’s bigger than Israel.
# The first Police Force in Australia was made up of the most well-behaved convicts.
# It would take around 29 years to visit one new Aussie beach every day – there are 10,685 of them!
# The world’s largest rock is not actually Ayers Rock (Uluru), but Mount Augustus in Western Australia and actually twice the size of Ayers Rock.
# Australia is the 6th largest country in the world.
# There are 1 million camels that roam wild in Australia’s deserts, the largest number of purebred camels in the world, they are exported to the Middle East.
# There are over 60 different types of kangaroos and a baby kangaroo when born is only about two centimeters long.
# Australia has 19 World Heritage Listed sites.
# 91% of the country is covered by native vegetation.
# 33% of Australians were born in another country.
# Over 300 different languages and dialects are spoken in Australia including 45 Indigenous languages. In fact, 21% of Australians don’t speak English at home!
# WA is home to what is believed to be the oldest evidence of life on Earth – the Stromatolites.
# Australia is the only continent in the world without an active volcano.
# In Australia, sheep out number people 2.5 to 1 (in 2020).
# Australia was the second country in the world to give women the right to vote in 1902.
# Per capita, Australians spend more money on gambling than any other nation, with over 80 percent of Australian adults engaging in gambling of some kind.
# Australia is home to the longest fence in the world, the Dingo Fence. Originally built to keep dingos away from fertile land, the fence is now 5,614 km long.
# The Australian dollar is considered to be the most advanced currency in the world – its waterproof, made of polymer and notoriously hard to counterfeit.
# Australia has around 600 varieties of eucalypt trees.
# Stonemasons in Australia instituted the 8-hour working day back in 1856.
# In Aboriginal culture women are not allowed to play the didgeridoo.
# Australia’s most deadly marine animal is the Box Jellyfish and is responsible for more deaths per year than snakes, sharks and saltwater crocodiles.
# The only two mammals in the world that lay eggs are found in Australia – the echidna and platypus.
# Both kangaroos and emus lack the ability to walk backwards. This was the reason they were chosen for Australia’s coat of arms – to symbolise a country always moving forward.
# The termite mounds that can be found in Australia are the tallest animal-made structures on earth.
# Australia is home to more than 1,500 species of spiders.
# The Great Victoria Desert is bigger than the whole of the United Kingdom.