Australia: detail about the country

Australia – a combination of exotic wildlife and sparkling super modern cities. History of discovery, geography and climate. Hydrology and environment, demographics and language. Religion of this country. Education, health and culture (arts and cuisine).
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Introduction

Stretching from the Indian Ocean to the central part of Pacific Ocean, cover a vast area of our planet. However, because a large part of their territory is ocean, they have a relatively small population. Australia area is much larger, so that it is considered a continent. Oceania consists of thousands much smaller islands scattered in the Pacific. They share of three groups: Micronesia, Melanesia and Polynesia, which includes the large island of New Zealand. Islands in the Pacific are two types: high, with rugged terrain; and coral atolls. Many of Pacific's islands are very small and we can't see them in different maps.

Australia. This name got for many islands in the Pacific from borders of Asia and Indian Ocean to borders of America. Now Australia is island continent and Tasmania Island; every other islands is Oceania.

Australia is the continent, which is equal in magnitude to the United States. but here population is less than in Texas. Vast and arid interior regions of the country, mainly deserts and grasslands are considered sparsely populated, uninhabited areas. These areas are used for grazing sheep and a huge number of cattle, but they are almost uninhabited. Many Australians live in cities and suburbs along the eastern, south-eastern and south-western coasts, where the climate is temperate and land is fertile. Many Australians are natives and aborigines. They live in the cities but many of them, hold old traditions and stay in sparsely populated parts of the country.

Australia - a combination of exotic wildlife and sparkling super modern cities. Wonderful country roads, infinite ocean beaches and coral reefs. The main attraction of Australia - Great Barrier Reef, a UNESCO World Heritage Site of the United Nations, with its world-renowned resort island - is the best place in the world for diving and yachting.

Tourism has become a dynamic and important component of the Australian economy. To find out exactly what attracts tourists to Australia, and what factors in the development of tourism in this country must be detailed economic and geographical characteristics of the region.



1. History of Discovery

Human habitation of the Australian continent is estimated to have begun between 42,000 and 48,000 years ago, possibly with the migration of people by land bridges and short sea-crossings from what is now South-East Asia. These first inhabitants may have been ancestors of modern Indigenous Australians. At the time of European settlement in the late 18th century, most Indigenous Australians were hunter-gatherers, with a complex oral culture and spiritual values based on reverence for the land and a belief in the Dreamtime. The Torres Strait Islanders, ethnically Melanesian, were originally horticulturalists and hunter-gatherers. The northern coasts and waters of Australia were visited sporadically by fishermen from Maritime Southeast Asia.

The first recorded European sighting of the Australian mainland, and the first recorded European landfall on the Australian continent, are attributed to the Dutch navigator Willem Janszoon. He sighted the coast of Cape York Peninsula in early 1606, and made landfall on 26 February at the Pennefather River near the modern town of Weipa on Cape York.

A British settlement was established in Van Diemen's Land, now known as Tasmania, in 1803 and it became a separate colony in 1825. The United Kingdom formally claimed the western part of Western Australia (the Swan River Colony) in 1828. Separate colonies were carved from parts of New South Wales: South Australia in 1836, Victoria in 1851, and Queensland in 1859. The Northern Territory was founded in 1911 when it was excised from South Australia. South Australia was founded as a «free province» - it was never a penal colony. Victoria and Western Australia were also founded «free», but later accepted transported convicts. A campaign by the settlers of New South Wales led to the end of convict transportation to that colony; the last convict ship arrived in 1848.

Britain's Statute of Westminster 1931 formally ended most of the constitutional links between Australia and the UK. Australia adopted it in 1942, but it was backdated to 1939 to confirm the validity of legislation passed by the Australian Parliament during World War II. The shock of the United Kingdom's defeat in Asia in 1942 and the threat of Japanese invasion caused Australia to turn to the United States as a new ally and protector. Since 1951, Australia has been a formal military ally of the US, under the ANZUS treaty. After World War II Australia encouraged immigration from Europe. Since the 1970s and following the abolition of the White Australia policy, immigration from Asia and elsewhere was also promoted. As a result, Australia's demography, culture, and self-image were transformed. The final constitutional ties between Australia and the UK were severed with the passing of the Australia Act 1986, ending any British role in the government of the Australian States, and closing the option of judicial appeals to the Privy Council in London.

2. Climate

Australia's size gives it a wide variety of landscapes, with tropical rainforests in the north-east, mountain ranges in the south-east, south-west and east, and dry desert in the centre. It is the flattest continent, with the oldest and least fertile soils; desert or semi-arid land commonly known as the outback makes up by far the largest portion of land. The driest inhabited continent, only its south-east and south-west corners have a temperate climate. The population density, 2.8 inhabitants per square kilometer, is among the lowest in the world, although a large proportion of the population lives along the temperate south-eastern coastline.

Eastern Australia is marked by the Great Dividing Range, which runs parallel to the coast of Queensland, New South Wales and much of Victoria. The name is not strictly accurate, because parts of the range consist of low hills, and the highlands are typically no more than 1,600 metres in height. The coastal uplands and a belt of Brigalow grasslands lie between the coast and the mountains, while inland of the dividing range are large areas of grassland. These include the western plains of New South Wales, and the Einasleigh Uplands, Barkly Tableland, and Mulga Lands of inland Queensland. The northernmost point of the east coast is the tropical - rain - forested Cape York Peninsula. The landscapes of the northern part of the country-the Top End and the Gulf Country behind the Gulf of Carpentaria, with their tropical climate-consist of woodland, grassland, and desert. At the north-west corner of the continent are the sandstone cliffs and gorges of The Kimberley, and below that the Pilbara. At the heart of the country are the uplands of central Australia; prominent features of the centre and south include the inland Simpson, Tirari and Sturt Stony, Gibson, Great Sandy, Tanami, and Great Victoria deserts, with the famous Nullarbor Plain on the southern coast.

The climate of Australia is significantly influenced by ocean currents, including the Indian Ocean Dipole and the El Nino-Southern Oscillation, which is correlated with periodic drought, and the seasonal tropical low-pressure system that produces cyclones in northern Australia. These factors cause rainfall to vary markedly from year to year. Much of the northern part of the country has a tropical, predominantly summer-rainfall climate The southwest corner of the country has a Mediterranean climate. Much of the southeast (including Tasmania) is temperate.

3. Hydrology

Because much of Australia's interior is arid, the low average annual rainfall means interior rivers are often dry and lakes empty. The headwaters of some waterways are located in tropical regions where summer rains create a high rate of discharge. Flood events drastically alter the dry environment in which the ecology of central Australia has had to adapt to the boom and bust cycle.

The Great Artesian Basin is an important source of water, the world's largest and deepest fresh water basin. Access to water from the basin has led to the expansion of grazing into areas that were previously far too dry for livestock. Towns and cities across the country sometimes face major water storage and usage crisis in which restrictions and other measures are implemented to reduce water consumption. Water restrictions are based on a gradient of activities that become progressively banned as the situation worsens.

Billabong is the Australian name given to the oxbow lakes that can form along a meandering river's course. In a world-wide comparison of height, Australia's waterfalls are relatively insignificant, with the longest drop ranked 135th according to the World Waterfall Database.

4. Environment

Although most of Australia is semi-arid or desert, it includes a diverse range of habitats from alpine heaths to tropical rainforests, and is recognized as a megadiverse country. The fungi typify that diversity; the total number that occur in Australia, including those not yet discovered, has been estimated at around 250,000 species, of which roughly 5% have been described. Because of the continent's great age, extremely variable weather pat...