With approximately 3 million sq mi/7 million sq km, Australia is the world's largest island. It is the only country that is also a continent. Although most of it is barren desert where little rain falls, Australia has a wide range of environments, including tropical rain forests in its northern regions, temperate forests along the east coast and even a few snowy mountains spotting the Great Dividing Range, which runs north to south across the entire continent and separates the coastal plains from the drier inland areas. Off the northeast coast is the world's largest coral reef (1,200 mi/2,000 km long). Western Australia occupies the entire western third of the country, much of it desert.
Australia is divided into both states and territories (capital cities for each are in parentheses): Australian Capital Territory (Canberra), New South Wales (Sydney), Northern Territory (Darwin), Queensland (Brisbane), South Australia (Adelaide), Tasmania (Hobart), Victoria (Melbourne) and Western Australia (Perth).
Early European explorers had been curious about the possible existence of Australia long before they actually found it. During the first 250 years of Pacific exploration by Europeans, a large blank space in the corner of navigators' maps was marked
Terra Australis Incognita, meaning Unknown Southern Land. In 1770, Captain James Cook reached the southeast coast. He claimed the land for England, named it New South Wales and sailed 2,500 mi/4,000 km along its shores, charting the coast and barrier reef.
The "new" land wasn't empty, however. Cook encountered a dark-skinned race of nomadic hunters and gatherers. The distant ancestors of these people had begun their migration into the land as many as 75,000 years earlier, passing across land bridges and shallow seas connecting Ice Age Asia to present-day Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and Australia.
England didn't do much with New South Wales until 1787, when the First Fleet was dispatched, transporting convicts from overflowing British prisons to Botany Bay. The fleet anchored there in January 1788 and then headed a few miles north to Port Jackson, within a pistol shot of Sydney Cove.
More prisoners were transported and other convict colonies founded. Free settlers soon followed. Slowly, the land was explored and domesticated, in a pattern similar to the opening of the West in the U.S.—settlers in wagons followed pathfinders to make homes in wild country; pioneers and the Aborigines engaged in bloody conflict; great cattle stations (similar to ranches) were founded. Gold was discovered in 1851, and fortunes were made and lost in boomtowns. Then railroads were built along old wagon routes, and paddle wheelers were launched for transport.
This experience, set in a land that for 100 years remained at the ends of the world's transportation and communication lines, bred a special frontier spirit and independent attitude. It persists today in every Aussie who would "never let a mate down." This spirit of "mateship" became legendary in World War I when Australian troops who had been called on to help fight in Europe experienced major losses in 1915 on the Gallipoli peninsula in Turkey. When WWII broke out, Australian troops fought alongside the British in Europe; after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, the country shifted its forces homeward. The Australian towns of Darwin and Broome were subsequently bombed before the Japanese were defeated in the Battle of the Coral Sea.
After WWII, millions of immigrants, especially from continental Europe and the U.K., arrived on Australia's shores. In 1974, the government abolished its "white Australia" policy, and thousands more migrants arrived from Asia. Today, Australia is one of the most diverse, multicultural societies in the world.
Some of Australia's main attractions include the Great Barrier Reef, Aboriginal culture and art, Uluru, kangaroos, Tasmania, koalas, the Queensland rain forest, Sydney, beaches, white-water rafting, diving and the Outback.
Almost everyone will love Australia. The only people who should avoid it are those who are made uncomfortable by unrelenting informality.
Australia's vineyards produce wine that rivals the best produced in France, but you won't find any champagne there. Because of an agreement with the European Community, Australian-produced bubbly is known as sparkling wine.
Australians are passionate about their football, known as "footy," which comes in three varieties (which bear little resemblance to U.S. football): Rugby League, Rugby Union and Australian Rules. The last is considered "real" Australian football, and the games get pretty wild.
The Australian native macadamia nut is so hard to crack that it was not grown commercially until a machine was invented to open the shell. Identified by Europeans in 1857, it was named after John Macadam, then secretary of the Philosophical Society of Victoria.
The oldest art in the world was found in the remote tropics of northwestern Australia. Stone engravings said to be 75,000 years old—at least twice as old as ancient cave paintings in Europe—were discovered on a sandstone monolith in the Northern Territory, near the town of Kununurra.
Camels in the beach town of Broome are required to be equipped with taillights. Local camel-ride operators have outfitted the rears of their animals with battery-operated bicycle lights to alert motorists.
Kangaroos may be the national symbol, but they're also a source of protein. Kangaroo meat is a A$42 million-a-year industry in Australia, and hunters are licensed to kill more than 5 million kangaroos annually.
Australians are prolific nicknamers. Aussies (pronounced ozzies) call mosquitoes mozzies, surfers surfies, swimming costumes cossies and barbecues barbies. Even the toughest leather-clad, two-wheeled road hog will refer to himself as a bikie.
Park officials at Uluru/Ayers Rock support and encourage the Aboriginal belief that stone fragments taken from the site are cursed. Officials hope that this will help stop visitors from pilfering rock fragments to take home as souvenirs. So far, nearly 900 lbs/400 kg of the "conscience rocks" have been returned to park officials, many accompanied by a note describing the bad luck they caused.
