Geography and Climate
An island continent just southeast of Asia, Australia is surrounded by the Indian Ocean to its west, the Pacific to its east, the Southern Ocean to its south and the Arafura and Timor seas to its north. Australia is divided into the states of Victoria, Queensland, New South Wales, Western Australia, South Australia and Tasmania and the two territories of the Australian Capital Territory and the Northern Territory. Australia is the smallest continent in the world but the sixth largest country by area, only slightly smaller than the continental United States. The country also owns over 8,000 islands, including the state of Tasmania.
Australian terrain generally falls into four characteristic regions. The eastern coastal plain is low and sandy, but the eastern highlands range from about 1,000 feet to around 7,000 feet, extending from Cape York Peninsula in northern Queensland southward to Tasmania. Australia’s vast central plains include the Great Artesian Basin, over 676,000 square miles of territory, and the most extensive area of internal drainage in the world. The western plateau stretches across the western half of the continent to the Indian Ocean and is covered with great deserts and plains that rise to 2,000 feet.
Surprisingly, given the size of the country, Australia has only three time zones. Australian Eastern Standard Time is 17 hours ahead of Pacific Standard Time in the U.S. and includes Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria and Tasmania. Australian Central Standard Time oddly is 16.5 hours ahead of Pacific Standard Time and covers the state of South Australia, the town of Broken Hill in western New South Wales and the Northern Territory. Lastly, Australian Western Standard Time is 15 hours ahead of Pacific Standard Time and includes only Western Australia. Daylight saving time is observed in New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania and the Australian Capital Territory, but not in Queensland, the Northern Territory and Western Australia.
As you would expect from a country almost the size of the continental U.S., Australia’s climate varies widely. The climate is strongly influenced by the hot, sinking air of the subtropical high-pressure belt, which moves north and south with the seasons. This causes the rainfall pattern to be highly seasonal. The country’s rainfall is the lowest of the seven continents. Rainfall is variable and generally occurs in the tropic and coastal areas. The hottest months of the year are January and February, while the coldest are in July. June is the driest month and October the wettest.
There also has been a wide range of natural disasters in Australia, including drought, bushfires, heat waves, cyclones, floods, severe storms, earthquakes and landslides.
People and Culture
Australia has just over 22 million people to fill its nearly 3 million square miles of space and most of them are clustered primarily on the eastern and southeastern coasts. Over 90 percent of Australians are of Caucasian ethnicity, of which well over 50 percent claim British heritage. About 7 percent of Australians are of Asian descent. As part of the British Commonwealth, Australia is an English-speaking country, although many other languages are spoken in this ethnically diverse country, reflecting its large immigrant population. Nearly one-quarter of Australian’s were born in another country.
Australia’s capital Canberra is located in the Australian Capital Territory and is the eighth largest city in the country. Sydney holds the title of the largest city with a population of over 4.5 million. Melbourne follows Sydney in population with just over four million. Brisbane, Adelaide and the western outpost of Perth are also major urban areas.
Australia’s first inhabitants, the Aboriginal people, are believed to have migrated from some unknown point in Asia to Australia between 50,000 and 60,000 years ago. Captain James Cook is credited with Australia’s discovery in 1770. The first European settlement of Australia was in January 1788 and all of Australia was claimed as a British territory in 1829 with the creation of the colony of Western Australia. Originally established as a penal colony, by the 1830s the number of free settlers was increasing. Transportation of convicts to the eastern colonies was abolished in 1852 and to the western colonies in 1868. Six colonies were created in the late 18th and 19th centuries. They federated and became the Commonwealth of Australia in 1901. The new country took advantage of its natural resources to rapidly develop agricultural and manufacturing industries and to make a major contribution to the British effort in World Wars I and II. In recent decades, Australia has transformed itself into an internationally competitive, advanced market economy.