Vast, diverse and enticing, multicultural Australia revels in a Pacific Rim location that drenches it in sunshine and an affable charisma.
Sydney boasts the finest natural harbor in the world, comprising sandstone headlands, white sandy beaches and endless surf.
Melbourne’s
Victorian grace and easygoing charm belies a dynamic city that hosts the nation’s premier sporting and cultural events.
Brisbane, the river city, is gateway to the tropical northeast,
Adelaide is an impossibly well laid-out city oozing grandeur, while
Perth is young, brash
and alluring.
Australia may be an island, but it is also the world’s largest one, encompassing a range of stunning landscapes, from immense, barren
deserts to tropical
rainforests and rugged
mountains. Isolated from other continents, Australia has an abundance of unique plant and animal life recognizable by cuddly
koalas, bounding
kangaroos and ungainly
emus.
One of the country’s greatest lures is its sense of space. A beach, patch of tropical forest or piece of sandy desert all to yourself is an easy reality.
Watersports are ferociously popular, especially
surfing. The hulking form of
Uluru (Ayers Rock), an impossibly large rock plonked in the middle of Australia that soaks up the reds and oranges of the outback’s fiery sun, is Australia’s most iconic image.
Captain Cook stumbled onto Australian shores in 1770 to find an Aboriginal way of life that went back some 40,000 years. By 1868, Britain had sent more than 160,000 convicts to Australia.
Experiencing the culture of Australia’s
indigenous population is one of the great highlights of a visit. Many tensions still exist between mainstream Australia and its indigenous people. The first European settlers treated the Aboriginal population with appalling brutality, which gave way to racist and cruel policies from subsequent administrations. However, the slow march towards
reconciliation was given a boost in 2007 with the new government’s promise of a formal apology.
GeographyAustralia is bounded by the Arafura and Timor Seas to the north, the Coral and Tasman Seas of the South Pacific to the east, the Southern Ocean to the south, and the Indian Ocean to the west. Its coastline, including islands, covers 59,736km (37,119 miles).
Most of the population has settled along the eastern and southeastern coastal strip. Australia is the smallest continent (and the largest island) in the world. About 40% of the continent is within the tropics and Australia is almost the same size as the mainland of the United States of America. The terrain is extremely varied, ranging from baking red desert to lush green rainforest. Australia’s beaches and surfing are world-renowned, while the country is also rich in reminders of its long history: these range from prehistoric Aboriginal art to Victorian colonial architecture.
The landscape consists mainly of a low plateau mottled with lakes and rivers and skirted with coastal mountain ranges, highest in the east with the Great Dividing Range. There are rainforests in the far northeast (mainly in Queensland). The southeast is a huge fertile plain. Further to the north lies the enormous Great Barrier Reef, a 2,000km (1,200-mile) strip of coral that covers a total area of 345,000 sq km (133,000 sq miles).
Although Australia is among the driest lands on Earth, it nevertheless has enormous snowfields, the size of Switzerland. There are vast mineral deposits. More detailed geographical descriptions of each state can be found in the individual state entries.
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