Nearest is Indonesia, Papua New Guinea on north, Solomon, Fiji and New Zealand are on east. It is area is 7.7 million sq. k. Australia is an island continent. The Great Dividing Range along the eastern coast (The Australian Alps) has the highest Australian mountain Mt. Kosciusko. The western plateau rises to 607 m with arid areas in the Great Sandy and Great Victoria Deserts. The north-east have heavy rainfalls (it is an area often visited by destructive hurricanes) and Cape York Peninsula has jungles. Rivers that flow permanently are to by found only in the north, east, and in Tasmania. The Murray Rivers flows from New South Wales to the Indian Ocean, the second longest river is the Darling. There are three big lakes here: Lake Eyre, Lake Torrens and Lake Gairdner. The Australian climate varies from warm to subtropical. Australia has summer when we have winter and vice versa. The tropical forests in the north and north-east are displaced by savannah or grassland. The south-east is covered with forests of eucalyptus and other evergreen trees. The animals of Australia are numerous and some of them, like the kangaroo, koala bear, dingo, platypus, Tasmanian devil or barking lizards can’t be found elsewhere.
People:
The population of Australia is some 16 million. Around 85% people live in urban areas mainly along the south-east coast. Deserts and the tropical northern part are predictably uninhabited. 95%of inhabitants are of British origin, 3% are made by other European ethnic groups and 1.5% are aborigines. Australian English and aboriginal languages are spoken here.
History:
People lived there at a Stone Age level. They did not know of how to work the soil nor how to rear livestock. They had no plants suitable for cultivation and no original Australian animals were suitable for domestication. Thus, the Australians never became farmers or herdsmen. They made their tools and weapons only of wood and stone. The sole source of food was hunting and gathering. Men used to catch birds, snakes, crocodiles, and women with children used to pick fruits, caterpillars, ants, eggs and dig for roots. The dingo wild dog was the sole animal that became domesticated. The Australians were divided into about 650 tribes that spoke about 500 different languages. Each tribe usually had its own dialect, name and customs, its own territory and hunting grounds. Captain James Cook explored the eastern coast in 1770 when the continent was inhabited by a variety of different tribes.