Australia – Sept 17-Dec 08, 2023
Total Mileage driven. 24,894 km Sept 21- Dec 8
Australia is a sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands. Australia is the largest country by area in Oceania and the world’s sixth-largest country. Australia is the oldest, flattest, and driest inhabited continent, with the least fertile soils. It is a megadiverse country, and its size gives it a wide variety of landscapes and climates, with deserts in the centre, tropical rainforests in the northeast, tropical savannas in the north, and mountain ranges in the southeast.
The ancestors of Aboriginal Australians began arriving from south-east Asia approximately 65,000 years ago, during the last ice age. Arriving by sea, they settled the continent and had formed approximately 250 distinct language groups by the time of European settlement, maintaining some of the longest-known continuing artistic and religious traditions in the world.
Australia’s written history commenced with the European maritime exploration of Australia. The Dutch navigator Willem Janszoon was the first known European to reach Australia, in 1606. In 1770, the British explorer James Cook mapped and claimed the east coast of Australia for Great Britain, and the First Fleet of British ships arrived at Sydney in 1788 to establish the penal colony of New South Wales. The European population grew in subsequent decades, and by the end of the 1850s gold rush, most of the continent had been explored by European settlers, and an additional five self-governing British colonies were established. Democratic parliaments were gradually established through the 19th century, culminating with a vote for the federation of the six colonies and the foundation of the Commonwealth of Australia on 1 January 1901. This began a process of increasing autonomy from the United Kingdom, highlighted by the Statute of Westminster Adoption Act 1942, and culminating in the Australia Act 1986.
Australia is a federal parliamentary constitutional monarchy, comprising six states and ten territories. Australia’s population of nearly 27 million is highly urbanised and heavily concentrated on the eastern seaboard. Canberra is the nation’s capital, while its most populous city and financial centre is Sydney. The next four largest cities are Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, and Adelaide. It is ethnically diverse and multicultural, the product of large-scale immigration, with almost half of the population having at least one parent born overseas.
Australia’s abundant natural resources and well-developed international trade relations are crucial to the country’s economy, which generates its income from various sources including services, mining exports, banking, manufacturing, agriculture and international education. Australia ranks amongst the highest in the world for quality of life, health, education, economic freedom, civil liberties, and political rights.
Australia has a highly developed market economy and one of the highest per capita incomes globally. Australia is a regional power and has the world’s thirteenth-highest military expenditure.
Etymology. The name Australia is derived from the Latin Terra Australis (“southern land”), a name used for a hypothetical continent in the Southern Hemisphere since ancient times.
Capital. Canberra 35°18′29″S 149°07′28″E
Largest Cities. Sydney (metropolitan). Melbourne (urban)
National language. English
Religion. 43.9% Christianity, 38.9% no religion, 3.2% Islam, 2.7% Hinduism, 2.4% Buddhism, 1.7% other, 7.2% unanswered
Area. 7,692,024 km2 (2,969,907 sq mi) (6th). Water 1.79 (2015)
Population. 26,749,600 (53rd). Density 3.5/km2 (9.1/sq mi) (192nd)
GDP (PPP). $1.718 trillion (19th). Per capita $65,366 (22nd)
GDP (nominal). $1.708 trillion[13] (13th). Per capita $64,964[13] (10th)
Gini. 32.5 medium
HDI. 0.95 very high · 5th.
Currency. Australian $ (AUD).
Driving side. Left
Calling code. +61
VISA. It is not entirely clear when you log into the Australian visa pages, that an ETA is available. Australia must have the most poorly designed visa information in the world. I applied for the visa as that was what was the only method I saw. I paid the A$192 and then found out that it may require up to 15 days to process. As this was only a few days before my arrival, I finally found the ETA information. The visa was eventually not approved with no reason given or opportunity to correct them. No refund of the $192 was possible.
Electronic Travel Authority (ETA). Allows travel in Australia for 3 months from entry for citizens of Brunei, Canada, Hong Kong SAR, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea (ROK), and the United States. Applied for using the Australian ETA app on your phone. The App takes a photo of your passport bio page, scans the electronic code on the back cover of your passport, and takes a photograph. Several more questions but all simple. Pay A$20. ETA granted within 24 hours.
On arrival, there is no need to print the ETA as it is stored on the immigration website and accessed by the immigration agent.
Visa. Necessary if stay longer than 3 months. Much more complicated than ETA with hundreds of questions, most security related. If you have a contact in Australia, need their address, phone number, birthday, and email address. Cost A$192. Granted usually within 15 days.
Currency. Australian dollar (AUD). 1US$ = 1.55AUD; 1€ = 1.66AUD; 1CA$ = 1.15AUD
SIM, Telstra is probably the best if going to the north and outback.
Transportation
Walking. On the sidewalk and escalators, walk or stand on the left, just like they drive. Australians are very into following rules – for example, they never cross a street against a no-walk signal. Few jaywalk.
Bicycles. There are few bike lanes on roads. All bikes go on the sidewalk. There are also few rental bikes (all the ones I saw were electric) and no electric motorcycles.
Scooters. The only rental thing. Ride on sidewalks.
Taxis. Like everything else, they are very expensive. I took one to go 7.5 km to my rental car and it cost $28.
Driving Around Australia. On September 21, I took possession of a Ford Falcon set up for camping from Traveler’s Autobarn in Brisbane. I thought it had a bed and built-in stove and cooler but it doesn’t. It is a plain station wagon that with the back seats down, makes for a long sleeping space. It is supplied with a portable stove (which uses small butane canisters – best bought at Bunnings at up to 1/3 the cost), a tent, and a box of dishes, pots, and utensils. I rented a table and chair. I have my own air mattress and sleeping bag. I bought a sheet (but ended up using my silk sleep sheet) and an inverter to charge my computer (indispensable if not paying for camping). There is room behind the front seats and the front seat to store most everything leaving half the bed space for my clothes and mat and the dish box, table, chair, tent and stove taking up the other half.
I am restricted from travelling on unsealed roads except for short distances to campgrounds and some national parks. However, I did eventually end up driving on some unsealed roads. Google Maps often takes you on long routes with a significant gravel road that could not be predetermined. I went to Mungo NP with 70 km of unsealed road each way.
That is the easy part. The fines in Australia are extreme, and all significantly increased for foreigners as we are unable to accumulate points. Speeding >6 km over 100 or >4 km over 60, the speed limit is $130 for Aussies, but $1000 for us. Driving with no seat belt or using your phone while driving is over $1000 for Aussies, but $4000 for us. Littering (including throwing out a cigarette butt) is over $300. Each fine incurs a $75 administration fee paid to Travelers AutoBarn. Speed is clocked by fixed cameras but also speed guns (the latter is not detected by radar detectors), so I endeavoured to only go at the speed limit. At the end of the trip, I surprised myself by not getting any speeding tickets or parking tickets.
But Australian speed limits are quite reasonable – 130 km/hour in all the Northern Territory, 110 on freeways most everywhere else and 100 off freeways. Watch for road construction zones which not uncommonly have speeds of 40. The only speed cameras that I noticed were in Victoria, NSW along the coast and Queensland along the coast. I really had no need to go faster than the limits. And almost no Australians speed – they appear to be very frightened of the high cost of tickets. I never saw any crazy drivers in all my 25,000 km drive (unlike in most countries where there are a small percentage of very fast drivers).
Tolls are automatic with no manual pay. Go to Linkt.au to set up an account to pay all tolls. Very easy to do. Need vehicle type, license number, phone number, and address in Australia. Each toll has a $3.75 administration fee if paid by Travelers AutoBarn. The only place with tolls were in Melbourne ($8 for all of Victoria State), Brisbane, and Sydney (where they are very high especially if using the tunnels M4 and M8 – I had $96 worth of tolls in one day (with GPS not working in the tunnel, I missed an early turn – there was only one in the whole tunnel, went its entire length and then came back the same way, a great mistake). There is almost no one in these long tunnels that stretch for 12 km – a real white elephant as no one uses them because of the exorbitant tolls.
Cost for 77 days (until Dec 7) at $59/day = $4680. This is expensive but I have on idea what it would cost to buy a similar vehicle and then have to sell it again, which could be a real headache).
Chair $15, table $30, tire insurance 112.50, window insurance 112.50.
Total 4,923.93.
One great negative with Travelers AutoBarn is the “bond”, a deposit of A$3500 that you pay with a credit card at the start of the rental. After my Kangaroo accident, they cashed the entire amount even though the damage was likely less than $500. They reassured me that the excess would be paid back after the repair.
000 is the normal emergency number, but if in the middle of nowhere with no service, use 112 which connects to a satellite.
Utes (trucks). Very common (just like in NA), but all fitted up with a set of gear. Bull bars (heavy steel bars and bumpers) for kangaroo protection. A snorkel is mandatory, even though use seems pretty rare. The road is full of signs “Road Subject to Flooding – Markers Indicate Depth” but there are usually imperceptible dips in the road. A heavy antenna is attached to the front left corner of your bull bars. Extra headlights, usually LED in a bar (apparently to go pig hunting!). Roll bar. A heavy roof rack to carry your kit, a couple of jerry cans of gas and water, and a propane bottle. Sand mats. An awning in a big tube attached to the sides of the roof rack. Trailer hitch. A large metal box with usually a kitchen, coolers, storage +/- a place for your dog/dogs. A rooftop tent or a small trailer with a tent. Not uncommonly a boat or a couple of cheap kayaks on the roof.
Caravans (trailers) are very common. Boats are very common. Trailers carrying all your stuff are very common.
Roadkill and animals. There is a lot of roadkill and many carrion-eating birds. One of the most unusual was two cows within a km of each other – both incredibly bloated (like Botero art) with their now small legs sticking straight up and the destroyed vehicle that hit one of them. Most of the country is open range “Watch for Wandering Stock”.
I was hit by two mad kangaroos very early in the trip. One ran into the area just in front of the driver’s door at 11 am when I was only going 50km/hr. The Australians will warn you “never drive at dawn or dusk”. Indeed this is when you see most of the roos.
Terrain. The scenery and the terrain did not change much for over 6000 km (ever since leaving the rainforest west of Cairns all the way to Broom on the west coast) – basically bush with grass, the trees vary in height but that is the only difference. Occasionally there were no trees. There are a lot more baobabs in western North territory and Western Australia. Some are massive. The outback does not have sand deserts. There are many dry creeks and often one-lane bridges over them. There may be some water in pools but the Victoria River was the only one flowing.
There are a lot of controlled burns happening or a lot of evidence of burns recently. The sun is a deep red from all the smoke.
In the Northern Territory and Western Australia, there were few towns but many more road stations with gas, rooms, a campground and a restaurant.
Camping. I stayed in the many roadside rest areas and often parks in cities and towns. Usually, there is a rest area every 50 km or so. Most have covered picnic tables, garbage, some have toilets and most have some sort of shade to get out of the sun (not one is covered in all of Victoria State). It was advertised that there is no wild camping but these are always available. Fines are $100. I have not needed Wikicamp to find free camping. I slept in my car every night after about 5 hostels in Queensland early in the trip.
Staying in a campground is expensive – at least $35 for a plug-in site. Showers would be nice. Motels and hotels are exorbitant – usually over $100/night (although I am not sure as I never used one).
Showers are available at swimming pools in every town. Some visitor information offices, most national parks and a few gas stations also have showers.
Insects. Black flies. Everyone extolls the virtues of Australia, especially the beaches but few complain about the small blackflies that are a real nuisance. Some have said they are bees, but are unlike any bee I have ever seen. They look like flies and don’t seem to be interested in pollination. Flies are a real PITA here. They’re practically the national insect.
Ever since Alice Springs and West, these have been common and very annoying. They have a predilection for orifices – mouth, ears, eyes, nose and seem to be able to take advantage of you when your hands are occupied. The only protection is head bug nets which every Australian seems to own. They follow you into your car – but then kind of disappear, coming around one by one. The only saving grace is that they disappear as soon as it gets dark.
There are an estimated 30,000 species of fly in Australia, of which only about 30 percent have been formally identified. The most common of the species is the bushfly. Bush flies (Musca vetustissima) are the iconic Australian fly, and are found country-wide. They’re a year-round issue in some places (like NW WA), but generally, they’re only horrible from Nov-Feb in Perth and the SW of the state. Heat + Australia = flies. They are much worse in the countryside. They slake their thirst on the sweat and tears of mammals and so linger around our heads, shoulders, and faces in search of a refreshing drink.
They’re so persistent that they’re credited with inspiring the “Aussie salute” – a characteristic gesture of waving flies – specifically the persistent Australian bush flies – away from the face.
In October 2023, they arrived earlier in Sydney than usual. A perfect storm of weather conditions, including a few showers, a mild winter, and warm spring temperatures have caused flies to emerge early from their cocoons and bug the city. The abundance of nectar and an increase in sweaty people are providing an all-you-can-drink buffet for flies.
The bushfly spread when winds from central Australia propelled them into new areas. This might also be partly responsible for the Sydney fly surge.
While the increase in flies might be annoying for humans, they play an important environmental role in pollination and as food for lizards, frogs and birds. If we got rid of flies, the food web could collapse.
The Australian bush fly is a dung fly. The adults are attracted to large mammals for fluid for nourishment and feces for oviposition. This fly likes to crawl on human faces, as well as on the faces of livestock. It also likes to crawl on human and livestock feces, though it seems that it prefers human feces. They breed in large numbers in dung pads. Larvae have been found in the feces of large mammals. The species continually breeds in subtropical Australia, and migrations help repopulate Australia each spring.
At night when there is a light source (headlight), there are small buzzing white bugs that are also very irritating. When I go to bed, I turn off all the lights and seem to lose them.
There have been very few mosquitoes (Hervey Bay at dusk). I sleep with my window down completely and sometimes the door completely open to get a breeze.
Cigarettes and tobacco. The most expensive in the world at $37.50-65 a package. 25 grams of tobacco is $60, and 50 grams is $120. Only towns on the east coast had black-market cigarettes. You have to ask smokers if there any. I paid $110 for a carton of 10 packs of 20 in Townsville and $70 for a box of 100 rolled cigarettes in Port Harcourt. I eventually ended up buying tobacco, filters and papers, the cheapest way to smoke.
The vape juice has no nicotine.
National Park Pass. Some parks (esp in the South) are free, but most cost $15/day and much more for Uluru. A good deal may be to get the annual pass for $120 if you are going to a lot of parks. I often entered parks and simply didn’t pay – nobody ever checked.
The concession price only applies to Australians. Save your receipts as they can be applied to the total cost when it is purchased.
Museums. All art and local museums and botanical parks are free. Others charge. Some gave the concession price but some didn’t.
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HISTORY
Prehistory
Indigenous Australians comprise two groups: the Aboriginal peoples of the Australian mainland (and surrounding islands including Tasmania), and the Torres Strait Islanders, who are a distinct Melanesian people. Human habitation of the Australian continent is estimated to have begun 50,000 to 65,000 years ago, with the migration of people by land bridges and short sea crossings from what is now Southeast Asia. It is uncertain how many waves of immigration may have contributed to these ancestors of modern Aboriginal Australians. The Madjedbebe rock shelter in Arnhem Land is recognized as the oldest site showing the presence of humans in Australia. The oldest human remains found are the Lake Mungo remains, which have been dated to around 41,000 years ago.
Aboriginal Australian culture is one of the oldest continuous cultures on Earth. At the time of first European contact, Aboriginal Australians were complex hunter-gatherers with diverse economies and societies and about 250 different language groups. Recent archaeological finds suggest that a population of 750,000 could have been sustained. Aboriginal Australians have an oral culture with spiritual values based on reverence for the land and a belief in the Dreamtime.
The Torres Strait Islander people first settled their islands around 4000 years ago. Culturally and linguistically distinct from mainland Aboriginal peoples, they were seafarers and obtained their livelihood from seasonal horticulture and the resources of their reefs and seas.
European exploration and colonization (1788–1850)
The northern coasts and waters of Australia were visited sporadically for trade by Makassan fishermen from what is now Indonesia. The first recorded European sighting of the Australian mainland, and the first recorded European landfall on the Australian continent, are attributed to the Dutch. The first ship and crew to chart the Australian coast and meet with Aboriginal people was the Duyfken captained by Dutch navigator, Willem Janszoon. He sighted the coast of Cape York Peninsula in early 1606, and made landfall on 26 February 1606 at the Pennefather River near the modern town of Weipa on Cape York. Later that year, Spanish explorer Luís Vaz de Torres sailed through and navigated the Torres Strait Islands. The Dutch charted the whole of the western and northern coastlines and named the island continent “New Holland” during the 17th century, and although no attempt at settlement was made a number of shipwrecks left men either stranded or, as in the case of the Batavia in 1629, marooned for mutiny and murder, thus becoming the first Europeans to permanently inhabit the continent. In 1770, Captain James Cook sailed along and mapped the east coast, which he named “New South Wales” and claimed for Great Britain.
Following the loss of its American colonies in 1783, the British Government sent a fleet of ships, the First Fleet, under the command of Captain Arthur Phillip, to establish a new penal colony in New South Wales. A camp was set up and the Union Flag was raised at Sydney Cove, Port Jackson, on 26 January 1788, a date which later became Australia’s national day. Most early convicts were transported for petty crimes and assigned as labourers or servants to “free settlers” (non-convict immigrants). While the majority of convicts settled into colonial society once emancipated, convict rebellions and uprisings were also staged, but invariably suppressed under martial law. The 1808 Rum Rebellion, the only successful armed takeover of government in Australia, instigated a two-year period of military rule. The following decade, social and economic reforms initiated by Governor Lachlan Macquarie saw New South Wales transition from a penal colony to a civil society.
The indigenous population declined for 150 years following settlement, mainly due to infectious disease. Thousands more died as a result of frontier conflict with settlers.
Colonial expansion (1851–1900).
The British continued to push into other areas of the continent in the early 19th century, initially along the coast. In 1803, a settlement was established in Van Diemen’s Land (present-day Tasmania), and in 1813, Gregory Blaxland, William Lawson and William Wentworth crossed the Blue Mountains west of Sydney, opening the interior to European settlement. The British claim extended to the whole Australian continent in 1827 when Major Edmund Lockyer established a settlement on King George Sound (modern-day Albany). The Swan River Colony (present-day Perth) was established in 1829, evolving into the largest Australian colony by area, Western Australia. In accordance with population growth, separate colonies were carved from New South Wales: Tasmania in 1825, South Australia in 1836, New Zealand in 1841, Victoria in 1851, and Queensland in 1859. South Australia was founded as a “free province”—it was never a penal colony. Western Australia was also founded “free” but later accepted transported convicts, the last of which arrived in 1868, decades after transportation had ceased to the other colonies.
Between 1855 and 1890, the six colonies individually gained responsible government, thus becoming elective democracies managing most of their own affairs while remaining part of the British Empire. The Colonial Office in London retained control of some matters, notably foreign affairs[93] and defense.
In the mid-19th century, explorers such as Burke and Wills went further inland to determine its agricultural potential and answer scientific questions. A series of gold rushes beginning in the early 1850s led to an influx of new migrants from China, North America, and continental Europe, as well as outbreaks of bushranging and civil unrest; the latter peaked in 1854 when Ballarat miners launched the Eureka Rebellion against gold license fees.
In 1886, Australian colonial governments began introducing policies resulting in the removal of many Aboriginal children from their families and communities (referred to as the Stolen Generations).
Federation to the World Wars (1910-1945)
On 1 January 1901, the federation of the colonies was achieved after a decade of planning, constitutional conventions, and referendums, resulting in the establishment of the Commonwealth of Australia as a nation and the entering into force of the Australian Constitution.
After the 1907 Imperial Conference, Australia and several other self-governing British settler colonies were given the status of self-governing “dominions” within the British Empire. Britain’s Statute of Westminster in 1931 formally ended most of the constitutional links between Australia and the United Kingdom. Australia adopted it in 1942, but it was backdated to 1939.
The Federal Capital Territory (later renamed the Australian Capital Territory) was formed in 1911 as the location for the future federal capital of Canberra. Melbourne was the temporary seat of government from 1901 to 1927 while Canberra was being constructed.
Australia became the colonial ruler of the Territory of Papua (which had initially been annexed by Queensland in 1883) in 1902 and of the Territory of New Guinea (formerly German New Guinea) in 1920. The two were unified as the Territory of Papua and New Guinea in 1949 and gained independence from Australia in 1975.
In 1914, Australia joined the Allies in fighting the First World War, and took part in many of the major battles fought on the Western Front. Of about 416,000 who served, about 60,000 were killed and another 152,000 were wounded. Many Australians regard the defeat of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZACs) at Gallipoli in 1915 as the nation’s “baptism of fire”—its first major military action, with the anniversary of the landing at Anzac Cove commemorated each year on Anzac Day.
From 1939 to 1945, Australia joined the Allies in fighting the Second World War. Australia’s armed forces fought in the Pacific, European, Mediterranean, and Middle East theatres. The shock of Britain’s defeat in Asia in 1942, followed soon after by the bombing of Darwin and other Japanese attacks on Australian soil, led to a widespread belief in Australia that a Japanese invasion was imminent, and a shift from the United Kingdom to the United States as Australia’s principal ally and security partner. Since 1951, Australia has been a formal military ally of the United States, under the ANZUS treaty.
Post-war and contemporary eras (1945 to present)
In the decades following World War II, Australia enjoyed significant increases in living standards, leisure time and suburban development. Using the slogan “populate or perish”, the nation encouraged a large wave of immigration from across Europe, with such immigrants referred to as “New Australians”.
A member of the Western Bloc during the Cold War, Australia participated in the Korean War and the Malayan Emergency during the 1950s and the Vietnam War from 1962 to 1972. During this time, tensions over communist influence in society led to unsuccessful attempts by the Menzies Government to ban the Communist Party of Australia and a bitter splitting of the Labor Party in 1955.
As a result of a 1967 referendum, the Federal Government received a mandate to implement policies to benefit Aboriginal people, and all Indigenous Australians were included in the Census. Traditional ownership of land (“native title”) was recognised in law for the first time when the High Court of Australia held in Mabo v Queensland (No 2) that the legal doctrine of terra nullius (“land belonging to no one”) did not apply to Australia at the time of European settlement.
Following the final abolition of the White Australia policy in 1973, Australia’s demography and culture transformed as a result of a large and ongoing wave of non-European immigration, mostly from Asia. The late 20th century also saw an increasing focus on foreign policy ties with other Pacific Rim nations. While the Australia Act 1986 severed the remaining vestigial constitutional ties between Australia and the United Kingdom, a 1999 referendum resulted in 55% of voters rejecting a proposal to abolish the Monarchy of Australia and become a republic.
Following the September 11 attacks on the United States, Australia joined the United States in fighting the Afghanistan War from 2001 to 2021 and the Iraq War from 2003 to 2009. The nation’s trade relations also became increasingly oriented towards East Asia in the 21st century, with China becoming the nation’s largest trading partner by a large margin.
During the COVID-19 pandemic which commenced in Australia in 2020, several of Australia’s largest cities were locked down for extended periods of time, and free movement across state borders was restricted in an attempt to slow the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
GEOGRAPHY
Surrounded by the Indian and Pacific oceans, Australia is separated from Asia by the Arafura and Timor seas, with the Coral Sea lying off the Queensland coast, and the Tasman Sea lying between Australia and New Zealand. The world’s smallest continent and sixth largest country by total area, Australia—owing to its size and isolation—is often dubbed the “island continent” and is sometimes considered the world’s largest island. Australia has 34,218 km (21,262 mi) of coastline (excluding all offshore islands),
Mainland Australia lies between latitudes 9° and 44° South, and longitudes 112° and 154° East. 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 desert in the centre. The desert or semi-arid land commonly known as the outback makes up by far the largest portion of land. Australia is the driest inhabited continent; its annual rainfall averaged over continental area is less than 500 mm. The population density is 3.4 inhabitants per square kilometre, although the large majority of the population lives along the temperate south-eastern coastline. The population density exceeds 19,500 inhabitants per square kilometre in central Melbourne.
The Great Barrier Reef, the world’s largest coral reef, lies a short distance off the north-east coast and extends for over 2,000 km (1,200 mi). Mount Augustus, claimed to be the world’s largest monolith, is located in Western Australia. At 2,228 m (7,310 ft), Mount Kosciuszko is the highest mountain on the Australian mainland. Even taller are Mawson Peak (at 2,745 m (9,006 ft)), on the remote Australian external territory of Heard Island, and, in the Australian Antarctic Territory, Mount McClintock and Mount Menzies, at 3,492 m (11,457 ft) and 3,355 m (11,007 ft) respectively.
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 m (5,200 ft) 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 and shrubland. These include the western plains of New South Wales, and the Mitchell Grass Downs and Mulga Lands of inland Queensland. The northernmost point of the mainland is the tropical Cape York Peninsula.
The landscapes of the Top End and the Gulf Country—with their tropical climate—include forest, woodland, wetland, grassland, rainforest and desert. At the north-west corner of the continent are the sandstone cliffs and gorges of The Kimberley, and below that the Pilbara. The Victoria Plains tropical savanna lies south of the Kimberley and Arnhem Land savannas, forming a transition between the coastal savannas and the interior deserts. At the heart of the country are the uplands of central Australia. Prominent features of the centre and south include Uluru (also known as Ayers Rock), the famous sandstone monolith, and 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 Western Australian mulga shrublands lie between the interior deserts and Mediterranean-climate Southwest Australia.
GEOLOGY
Lying on the Indo-Australian Plate, the mainland of Australia is the lowest and most primordial landmass on Earth with a relatively stable geological history. The landmass includes virtually all known rock types and from all geological time periods spanning over 3.8 billion years of the Earth’s history. The Pilbara Craton is one of only two pristine Archaean 3.6–2.7 Ga (billion years ago) crusts identified on the Earth.
Having been part of all major supercontinents, the Australian continent began to form after the breakup of Gondwana in the Permian, with the separation of the continental landmass from the African continent and Indian subcontinent. It separated from Antarctica over a prolonged period beginning in the Permian and continuing through to the Cretaceous. When the last glacial period ended in about 10,000 BC, rising sea levels formed Bass Strait, separating Tasmania from the mainland. Then between about 8,000 and 6,500 BC, the lowlands in the north were flooded by the sea, separating New Guinea, the Aru Islands, and the mainland of Australia. The Australian continent is moving toward Eurasia at the rate of 6 to 7 centimetres a year.
The Australian mainland’s continental crust, excluding the thinned margins, has an average thickness of 38 km, with a range in thickness from 24 km to 59 km.
Australia’s geology can be divided into several main sections, showcasing that the continent grew from west to east: the Archaean cratonic shields found mostly in the west, Proterozoic fold belts in the centre and Phanerozoic sedimentary basins, metamorphic and igneous rocks in the east.
The Australian mainland and Tasmania are situated in the middle of the tectonic plate and have no active volcanoes, but due to passing over the East Australia hotspot, recent volcanism has occurred during the Holocene, in the Newer Volcanics Province of western Victoria and southeastern South Australia. Volcanism also occurs in the island of New Guinea (considered geologically as part of the Australian continent), and in the Australian external territory of Heard Island and McDonald Islands. Seismic activity in the Australian mainland and Tasmania is also low, with the greatest number of fatalities having occurred in the 1989 Newcastle earthquake.
CLIMATE
The climate of Australia is significantly influenced by ocean currents, including the Indian Ocean Dipole and the El Niño–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 (monsoon). The south-west corner of the country has a Mediterranean climate. The south-east ranges from oceanic (Tasmania and coastal Victoria) to humid subtropical (upper half of New South Wales), with the highlands featuring alpine and subpolar oceanic climates. The interior is arid to semi-arid.
Driven by climate change, average temperatures have risen more than 1°C since 1960. Associated changes in rainfall patterns and climate extremes exacerbate existing issues such as drought and bushfires. 2019 was Australia’s warmest recorded year, and the 2019–2020 bushfire season was the country’s worst on record. Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions per capita are among the highest in the world.
Water restrictions are frequently in place in many regions and cities of Australia in response to chronic shortages due to urban population increases and localised drought. Throughout much of the continent, major flooding regularly follows extended periods of drought, flushing out inland river systems, overflowing dams and inundating large inland flood plains, as occurred throughout Eastern Australia in the early 2010s after the 2000s Australian drought.
BIODIVERSITY
Although most of Australia is semi-arid or desert, the continent includes a diverse range of habitats from alpine heaths to tropical rainforests. Fungi typify that diversity—an estimated 250,000 species—of which only 5% have been described—occur in Australia. Because of the continent’s great age, extremely variable weather patterns, and long-term geographic isolation, much of Australia’s biota is unique. About 85% of flowering plants, 84% of mammals, more than 45% of birds, and 89% of in-shore, temperate-zone fish are endemic. Australia has at least 755 species of reptile, more than any other country in the world. Besides Antarctica, Australia is the only continent that developed without feline species. Feral cats may have been introduced in the 17th century by Dutch shipwrecks, and later in the 18th century by European settlers. They are now considered a major factor in the decline and extinction of many vulnerable and endangered native species. Seafaring immigrants from Asia are believed to have brought the dingo to Australia sometime after the end of the last ice age—perhaps 4000 years ago—and Aboriginal people helped disperse them across the continent as pets, contributing to the demise of thylacines on the mainland. |
Australian forests are mostly made up of evergreen species, particularly eucalyptus trees in the less arid regions; wattles replace them as the dominant species in drier regions and deserts. Among well-known Australian animals are the monotremes (the platypus and echidna); a host of marsupials, including the kangaroo, koala, and wombat, and birds such as the emu and the kookaburra. Australia is home to many dangerous animals including some of the most venomous snakes in the world.
The dingo was introduced by Austronesian people who traded with Indigenous Australians around 3000 BCE. Many animal and plant species became extinct soon after first human settlement, including the Australian megafauna; others have disappeared since European settlement, among them the thylacine.
Many of Australia’s ecoregions, and the species within those regions, are threatened by human activities and introduced animal, chromistan, fungal and plant species. All these factors have led to Australia’s having the highest mammal extinction rate of any country in the world.
STATES and TERRITORIES
Australia has six states—New South Wales (NSW), Queensland (Qld), South Australia (SA), Tasmania (Tas), Victoria (Vic) and Western Australia (WA)—and three mainland territories—the Australian Capital Territory (ACT), the Northern Territory (NT), and the Jervis Bay Territory (JBT).
ECONOMY
Australia’s high-income mixed-market economy is rich in natural resources. It is the world’s thirteenth-largest by nominal terms, and the 18th-largest by PPP. As of 2021, it has the second-highest amount of wealth per adult, after Luxembourg, and has the thirteenth-highest financial assets per capita. Australia has a labour force of some 13.5 million, with an unemployment rate of 3.5% as of June 2022. According to the Australian Council of Social Service, the poverty rate of Australia exceeds 13.6% of the population, encompassing 3.2 million. It also estimated that there were 774,000 (17.7%) children under the age of 15 living in relative poverty. The Australian dollar is the national currency, which is also shared with three Island states in the Pacific: Kiribati, Nauru, and Tuvalu.
Australian government debt, about $963 billion, exceeds 45.1% of the country’s total GDP, and is the world’s eighth-highest.[271] Australia had the second-highest level of household debt in the world in 2020, after Switzerland. Its house prices are among the highest in the world, especially in the large urban areas. The large service sector accounts for about 71.2% of total GDP, followed by the industrial sector (25.3%), while the agriculture sector is by far the smallest, making up only 3.6% of total GDP. Australia is the world’s 21st-largest exporter and 24th-largest importer.[275][276] China is Australia’s largest trading partner by a wide margin, accounting for roughly 40% of the country’s exports and 17.6% of its imports. Other major export markets include Japan, the United States, and South Korea.[278]
Australia has high levels of competitiveness and economic freedom, and was ranked fifth in the Human Development Index in 2021. As of 2022, it is ranked twelfth in the Index of Economic Freedom and nineteenth in the Global Competitiveness Report.[280][281] It attracted 9.5 million international tourists in 2019, and was ranked thirteenth among the countries of Asia-Pacific in 2019 for inbound tourism. The 2021 Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Report ranked Australia seventh-highest in the world out of 117 countries. Its international tourism receipts in 2019 amounted to $45.7 billion.[283]
ENERGY
In 2003, Australia’s energy sources were coal (58.4%), hydropower (19.1%), natural gas (13.5%), liquid/gas fossil fuel-switching plants (5.4%), oil (2.9%), and other renewable resources like wind power, solar energy, and bioenergy (0.7%). During the 21st century, Australia has been trending to generate more energy using renewable resources and less energy using fossil fuels. In 2020, Australia used coal for 62% of all energy (3.6% increase compared to 2013), wind power for 9.9% (9.5% increase), natural gas for 9.9% (3.6% decrease), solar power for 9.9% (9.8% increase), hydropower for 6.4% (12.7% decrease), bioenergy for 1.4% (1.2% increase), and other sources like oil and waste coal mine gas for 0.5%.
In August 2009, Australia’s government set a goal to achieve 20% of all energy in the country from renewable sources by 2020. They achieved this goal, as renewable resources accounted for 27.7% of Australia’s energy in 2020.
DEMOGRAPHICS
Australia has an average population density of 3.5 persons per square kilometre of total land area, which makes it one of the most sparsely populated countries in the world. The population is heavily concentrated on the east coast, and in particular in the south-eastern region between South East Queensland to the north-east and Adelaide to the south-west.
Australia is highly urbanised, with 67% of the population living in the Greater Capital City Statistical Areas (metropolitan areas of the state and mainland territorial capital cities) in 2018. Metropolitan areas with more than one million inhabitants are Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide.
Ancestry and immigration.
Between 1788 and the Second World War, the vast majority of settlers and immigrants came from the British Isles (principally England, Ireland and Scotland), although there was significant immigration from China and Germany during the 19th century. In the decades immediately following the Second World War, Australia received a large wave of immigration from across Europe, with many more immigrants arriving from Southern and Eastern Europe than in previous decades. Since the end of the White Australia policy in 1973, Australia has pursued an official policy of multiculturalism, and there has been a large and continuing wave of immigration from across the world, with Asia being the largest source of immigrants in the 21st century.
Today, Australia has the world’s eighth-largest immigrant population, with immigrants accounting for 30% of the population, the highest proportion among major Western nations. 160,323 permanent immigrants were admitted to Australia in 2018–2019 (excluding refugees), whilst there was a net population gain of 239,600 people from all permanent and temporary immigration in that year. The majority of immigrants are skilled, but the immigration program includes categories for family members and refugees.[312] In 2020, the largest foreign-born populations were those born in England (3.8%), India (2.8%), Mainland China (2.5%), New Zealand (2.2%), the Philippines (1.2%) and Vietnam (1.1%).
The Australian Bureau of Statistics does not collect data on race, but asks each Australian resident to nominate up to two ancestries each census. These ancestry responses are classified into broad standardised ancestry groups. At the 2021 census, the number of ancestry responses within each standardised group as a proportion of the total population was as follows:[316] 57.2% European (including 46% North-West European and 11.2% Southern and Eastern European), 33.8% Oceanian, 17.4% Asian (including 6.5% Southern and Central Asian, 6.4% North-East Asian, and 4.5% South-East Asian), 3.2% North African and Middle Eastern, 1.4% Peoples of the Americas, and 1.3% Sub-Saharan African. At the 2021 census, the most commonly nominated individual ancestries as a proportion of the total population were: English (33%), Australian (29.9%), Irish (9.5%), Scottish (8.6%), Chinese (5.5%), Italian (4.4%), German (4%), Indian (3.1%)M Aboriginal (2.9%), Greek (1.7%), Filipino (1.6%), Dutch (1.5%), Vietnamese (1.3%), Lebanese (1%)
At the 2021 census, 3.8% of the Australian population identified as being Indigenous—Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islanders.
Language
Although English is not the official language of Australia in law, it is the de facto official and national language. Australian English is a major variety of the language with a distinctive accent and lexicon, and differs slightly from other varieties of English in grammar and spelling.
At the 2021 census, English was the only language spoken in the home for 72% of the population. The next most common languages spoken at home were Mandarin (2.7%), Arabic (1.4%), Vietnamese (1.3%), Cantonese (1.2%) and Punjabi (0.9%).
Over 250 Australian Aboriginal languages are thought to have existed at the time of first European contact. The National Indigenous Languages Survey (NILS) for 2018–19 found that more than 120 Indigenous language varieties were in use or being revived, although 70 of those in use were endangered. The 2021 census found that 167 Indigenous languages were spoken at home by 76,978 Indigenous Australians. NILS and the Australian Bureau of Statistics use different classifications for Indigenous Australian languages.
Religion
Australia has no state religion; Section 116 of the Australian Constitution prohibits the federal government from making any law to establish any religion, impose any religious observance, or prohibit the free exercise of any religion. As of 2023, a plurality of Australians are irreligious.
At the 2021 Census, 38.9% of the population identified as having “no religion”, up from 15.5% in 2001. The largest religion is Christianity (43.9% of the population). The largest Christian denominations are the Roman Catholic Church (20% of the population) and the Anglican Church of Australia (9.8%). Multicultural immigration since the Second World War has led to the growth of non-Christian religions, the largest of which are Islam (3.2%), Hinduism (2.7%), Buddhism (2.4%), Sikhism (0.8%), and Judaism (0.4%).
In 2021, just under 8,000 people declared an affiliation with traditional Aboriginal religions. In Australian Aboriginal mythology and the animist framework developed in Aboriginal Australia, the Dreaming is a sacred era in which ancestral totemic spirit beings formed The Creation. The Dreaming established the laws and structures of society and the ceremonies performed to ensure continuity of life and land.
Health
Australia’s life expectancy of 83 years (81 years for males and 85 years for females), is the fifth-highest in the world. It has the highest rate of skin cancer in the world, while cigarette smoking is the largest preventable cause of death and disease, responsible for 7.8% of the total mortality and disease. Ranked second in preventable causes is hypertension at 7.6%, with obesity third at 7.5%. Australia ranked 35th in the world in 2012 for its proportion of obese women and near the top of developed nations for its proportion of obese adults; 63% of its adult population is either overweight or obese.
Australia spent around 9.91% of its total GDP to health care in 2021. It introduced universal health care in 1975. Known as Medicare, it is now nominally funded by an income tax surcharge known as the Medicare levy, currently at 2%. The states manage hospitals and attached outpatient services, while the Commonwealth funds the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (subsidising the costs of medicines) and general practice.
During the COVID-19 pandemic Australia had one of the most restrictive quarantine policies, resulting in one of the lowest death rates worldwide.
Education
Australia has an adult literacy rate that was estimated to be 99% in 2003. However, a 2011–2012 report for the Australian Bureau of Statistics reported that Tasmania has a literacy and numeracy rate of only 50%.
Australia has 37 government-funded universities and three private universities, as well as a number of other specialist institutions that provide approved courses at the higher education level. The OECD places Australia among the most expensive nations to attend university.
Australia has the highest ratio of international students per head of population in the world by a large margin, with 812,000 international students enrolled in the nation’s universities and vocational institutions in 2019. Accordingly, in 2019, international students represented on average 26.7% of the student bodies of Australian universities. International education therefore represents one of the country’s largest exports and has a pronounced influence on the country’s demographics, with a significant proportion of international students remaining in Australia after graduation on various skill and employment visas. Education is Australia’s third-largest export, after iron ore and coal, and contributed over $28 billion to the economy in 2016–17.
CULTURE
The country is home to a diversity of cultures, a result of its history of immigration. Prior to 1850, Australia was dominated by Indigenous cultures. Since then, Australian culture has primarily been a Western culture, strongly influenced by Anglo-Celtic settlers. Other influences include Australian Aboriginal culture, the traditions brought to the country by waves of immigration from around the world, and the culture of the United States. The cultural divergence and evolution that has occurred over the centuries since European settlement has resulted in a distinctive Australian culture.
Arts
Australia has over 100,000 Aboriginal rock art sites, and traditional designs, patterns and stories infuse contemporary Indigenous Australian art, “the last great art movement of the 20th century” according to critic Robert Hughes; its exponents include Emily Kame Kngwarreye. Early colonial artists showed a fascination with the unfamiliar land.
The impressionistic works of Arthur Streeton, Tom Roberts and other members of the 19th-century Heidelberg School—the first “distinctively Australian” movement in Western art—gave expression to nationalist sentiments in the lead-up to Federation. While the school remained influential into the 1900s, modernists such as Margaret Preston, and, later, Sidney Nolan, explored new artistic trends. The landscape remained central to the work of Aboriginal watercolorist Albert Namatjira, as well as Fred Williams, Brett Whiteley, and other post-war artists whose works, eclectic in style yet uniquely Australian, moved between the figurative and the abstract.
Cuisine
Most Indigenous Australian groups subsisted on a simple hunter-gatherer diet of native fauna and flora, otherwise called bush tucker. The first settlers introduced British and Irish cuisine to the continent. This influence is seen in the enduring popularity of several British dishes such as fish and chips, and in quintessential Australian dishes such as the Australian meat pie, which is related to the British steak pie. Post-war immigration transformed Australian cuisine. For instance, Southern European migrants helped to build a thriving Australian coffee culture which gave rise to Australian coffee drinks such as the flat white, while East Asian migration led to dishes such as the Cantonese-influenced dim sim and Chiko Roll, as well as a distinct Australian Chinese cuisine. Sausage sizzles, pavlovas, lamingtons, meat pies, Vegemite and Anzac biscuits are regarded as iconic Australian foods.
Australia is a leading exporter and consumer of wine. Australian wine is produced mainly in the southern, cooler parts of the country. The nation also ranks highly in beer consumption, with each state and territory hosting numerous breweries. Australia is also known for its cafe and coffee culture in urban centres.
Sport and recreation
Cricket and football are the predominant sports in Australia during the summer and winter months, respectively. Australia is unique in that it has professional leagues for four football codes. Originating in Melbourne in the 1850s, Australian rules football is the most popular code in all states except New South Wales and Queensland, where rugby league holds sway, followed by rugby union. Soccer, while ranked fourth in popularity and resources, has the highest overall participation rates. Cricket is popular across all borders and has been regarded by many Australians as the national sport.
Australia is one of five nations to have participated in every Summer Olympics of the modern era, and has hosted the Games twice: 1956 in Melbourne and 2000 in Sydney. It is also set to host the 2032 Games in Brisbane. Australia has also participated in every Commonwealth Games, hosting the event in 1938, 1962, 1982, 2006 and 2018.