Australia

:

Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, country comprising the mainland of the , the island of , and numerous . It is the largest country in and the world's . The population of 26 million and heavily concentrated on the eastern seaboard., and its largest is . The country's other major are , , , and .

inhabited the for about of explorers in the early 17th century, who named it . In 1770, Australia's eastern half was claimed by and initially through to the colony of from 26 January 1788, a date which became Australia's . The population grew steadily in subsequent decades, and by the time of an 1850s , most of the continent had been explored and an additional five self-governing established. On 1 January 1901, the six colonies , forming the Commonwealth of Australia. Australia has since maintained a stable political system that functions as a , comprising .

Australia is the oldest, and driest inhabited continent, with the least fertile . It has a landmass of 7,617,930 square kilometres (2,941,300 sq mi)., its size gives it a wide variety of landscapes, with in the centre, tropical in the north-east, and in the south-east. Its , 2.8 inhabitants per square kilometre, remains among the lowest in the world.] Australia generates its income from various sources including , , , , and .[25]

Australia is a highly , with the world's . It has a , with the world's . and has the world's . , with immigrants accounting for 29% of the population. Having the third-highest and the eighth-highest ranked globally, the country in quality of life, health, education, , , and political rights, surveys., , , (OECD), , , , and the .

The name Australia (pronounced in ("southern land"), a name used for a hypothetical continent in the Southern Hemisphere since ancient times.

Until the early 19th century, Australia was best known as "", a name first applied by the Dutch explorer in 1644 (as Nieuw-Holland) and subsequently anglicised. Terra Australis still saw occasional usage, such as in scientific texts., who said it was "more agreeable to the ear, and an assimilation to the names of the other great portions of the earth". (1512–1594) used the phrase climata australia on his double cordiform map of the world of 1538, as did (1508–1555), who was Mercator's teacher and collaborator, on his own cordiform wall map in 1540. Australia appears in a book on astronomy by Cyriaco Jacob zum Barth published in Frankfurt-am-Main in 1545.[40]

The first time that Australia appears to have been officially used was in April 1817, when Governor acknowledged the receipt of Flinders' charts of Australia from . that it be formally adopted. agreed that the continent should be known officially by that name..[44]

Colloquial names for Australia include "" and "the Land Down Under" (usually shortened to just ""). Other epithets include "the Great Southern Land", "", "the Sunburnt Country", and "the Wide Brown Land". The latter two both derive from 's 1908 poem "".[45]

Indigenous peoples

Human habitation of the Australian continent is known to have begun at least 65,000 years ago, with the migration of people by and short sea-crossings from what is now . rock shelter in is recognised as the oldest site showing the presence of humans in Australia., which have been dated to around 41,000 years ago. These people were the ancestors of modern Indigenous Australians. culture is one of the oldest continual civilisations on earth.[53]

At the time of first European contact, most Indigenous Australians were with complex economies and societies. Recent archaeological finds suggest that a population of 750,000 could have been sustained. Indigenous Australians have an with spiritual values based on reverence for the land and a belief in the ., ethnically , obtained their livelihood from seasonal horticulture and the resources of their reefs and seas. by fishermen from what is now Indonesia.[60]

European arrival

The first recorded European sighting of the Australian mainland, and the first recorded European landfall on the Australian continent (in 1606), are attributed to the . captained by Dutch navigator, . in early 1606, and made landfall on 26 February at the near the modern town of on Cape York. sailed through, and navigated, islands." during the 17th century, but made no attempt at settlement., an English explorer and privateer, landed on the north-west coast of New Holland in 1688 (while serving as a crewman under pirate Captain In 1770, sailed along and mapped the east coast, which he named New South Wales and claimed for Great Britain.[67]

With the loss of its American colonies in 1783, the British Government sent a fleet of ships, the "", under the command of Captain , to establish a new in New South Wales. A camp was set up and the flag raised at , , on 26 January 1788, a date which later became Australia's national day, . A British settlement was established in , now known as Tasmania, in 1803, and it became a separate colony in 1825. (the ) in 1828. in 1836, Victoria in 1851, and Queensland in 1859. was founded in 1911 when it was excised from South Australia. Victoria and Western Australia were also founded "free", but later accepted . A campaign by the settlers of New South Wales led to the end of convict transportation to that colony; the last convict ship arrived in 1848.[77]

The indigenous population declined for 150 years following settlement, mainly due to infectious disease. with settlers. resulted in the removal of many Aboriginal children from their families and communities—referred to as the —a practice which also contributed to the decline in the indigenous population., the Federal government's power to enact special laws with respect to a particular race was extended to enable the making of laws with respect to Aboriginals.") was not recognised in law until 1992, when the held in that the legal doctrine that Australia had been ("land belonging to no one") did not apply to Australia at the time of British settlement.[82]

Colonial expansion

In 1813, , and crossed the , west of Sydney, opening the interior to European settlement. and former Royal Navy Captain led an expedition to find new grazing land in the south of the colony, and also to find an answer to the question of where New South Wales' western rivers flowed. In 1826, the British claim was extended to the whole Australian continent when Major established a settlement on (modern-day ).

A in the early 1850s, against mining licence fees in 1854 was an early expression of civil disobedience., managing most of their own affairs while remaining part of the . defence,[90] and international shipping.

Nationhood

On 1 January 1901, was achieved after a decade of planning, consultation and voting. of the British Empire. The Federal Capital Territory (later renamed the ) was formed in 1911 as the location for the future federal capital of Canberra. was the temporary seat of government from 1901 to 1927 while Canberra was being constructed.

In 1914, Australia joined Britain in fighting World War I, with support from both the outgoing and the incoming . Australians took part in many of the major battles fought on the . Many Australians regard the defeat of the (ANZACs) at as the birth of the nation—its first major military action. The is regarded by many as an analogous nation-defining event during World War II.[102]

Britain's formally ended most of the constitutional links between Australia and the UK. Australia in 1942,. The shock of the United Kingdom's defeat in Asia in 1942 and the caused Australia to turn to the and protector. treaty.[107]

After World War II, Australia encouraged immigration from mainland Europe. Since the 1970s and following the abolition of the , immigration from Asia and elsewhere was also promoted. The passing of the ended all possibility for any vestigial role of the British government in the government in Australia and removed the already seldom-used option of judicial appeals to the in London., 55% of voters and a majority in every state rejected a proposal to become a with a president appointed by a two-thirds vote in both Houses of the Australian Parliament. Since the publication of the landmark critique (1964) by and the election of the in 1972, nations, while maintaining close ties with Australia's traditional allies and trading partners.[112]

General characteristics

Surrounded by the Indian and Pacific oceans, and seas, with the lying off the Queensland coast, and the lying between Australia and New Zealand. The world's smallest continent, and is sometimes considered the . and claims an extensive of 8,148,250 square kilometres (3,146,060 sq mi). This exclusive economic zone does not include the ., Australia lies between latitudes , and longitudes .

The , the world's largest coral reef,, claimed to be the world's largest monolith, is the highest mountain on the Australian mainland. Even taller are (at 2,745 metres or 9,006 feet), on the remote Australian of , and, in the Australian Antarctic Territory, and , at 3,492 metres (11,457 ft) and 3,355 metres (11,007 ft) respectively.[122]

Australia's size gives it a wide variety of landscapes, with tropical in the north-east, mountain ranges in the south-east, south-west and east, and desert in the centre. makes up by far the largest portion of land. The , 2.8 inhabitants per square kilometre, is among the lowest in the world,

Eastern Australia is marked by the , which runs parallel to the coast of , 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 metres (5,249 ft) in height. and a lie between the coast and the mountains, while inland of the dividing range are large areas of grassland. These include the of New South Wales, and the , , and of inland Queensland.[] The northernmost point of the east coast is the tropical-rainforested .[]

The landscapes of the and the —with their tropical climate—include forest, , wetland, , rainforest and desert., and below that the . To the south of these and inland, lie more areas of grassland[]: the and the .. Prominent features of the centre and south include (also known as Ayers Rock), the famous sandstone monolith, and the inland , , , , and deserts, with the famous on the southern coast.

Geology

Lying on the , the is the lowest and most primordial landmass on Earth with a relatively stable geological history. The landmass includes virtually all known and from all geological time periods spanning over 3.8 billion years of the . The is one of only two pristine 3.6–2.7 Ga (billion years ago) crusts identified on the Earth.[145]

Having been part of all major , the began to form after the breakup of in the , with the separation of the continental landmass from the continent and . It separated from over a prolonged period beginning in the and continuing through to the . ended in about 10,000 BC, rising sea levels formed , 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 , and the mainland of Australia. at the rate of 6 to 7 centimetres a year.[148]

The Australian mainland's , excluding the thinned margins, has an average thickness of 38 km, with a range in thickness from 24 km to 59 km. shields found mostly in the west, in the centre and , metamorphic and in the east.[150]

The Australian mainland and Tasmania are situated in the middle of the and currently have no active volcanoes,, recent volcanism has occurred during the , in the 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 . in the Australian mainland and Tasmania is also low, with the greatest number of fatalities having occurred in the .[153]

Climate