Australia

UPPER LEVEL
JENNIFER GASCOIGNE
Australia
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Founding Editor o f the Macmillan Readers: John M ilne
The M acmillan Readers provide a choice of enjoyable reading materials for

learners of English. The series is published at six levels - Starter, Beginner,
Elementary, Pre-intermediate, Interm ediate and Upper. The M acmillan
Cultural Readers are a factual strand of the series.
Level Control
Information, structure and vocabulary are controlled to suit the students’
ability at each level.
The number of words at each level:

Starter about 300 basic words
Beginner about 600 basic words
Elem entary about 1100 basic words
Pre-interm ediate about 1400 basic words
Interm ediate about 1600 basic words
U pper about 220 0 basic words
Vocabulary
Some difficult words and phrases in this book are im portant for understanding
the text. Some of these words are explained in the text, some are shown in the
pictures and others are m arked with a num ber like this: 3. Phrases are m arked
w ith p. Words with a num ber are explained in the Glossary at the end of the
book and phrases are explained on the Useful Phrases page.
Answer Keys
Answer Keys for the Points For Understanding and Exercises sections can be
found at www.macmillanenglish.com/readers.
Audio Download
There is an audio download available to buy for this title. Visit
www.macmillanenglish.com/readers for m ore information.
Contents
The Places In The Book 4
Welcome To Australia 6
1 Climate, Landscape and People 8

2 The First People 17
3 Aboriginal Culture 23
4 M aking M odern Australia 31
5 N ature and the Environm ent 40
6 Food Culture 48
7 The Arts 54
8 Sport 61
9 The Big Things of Australia 68
10 Talented Australians 75
Points For Understanding 82

Glossary 86
Useful Phrases 94
Exercises 95
The Places In The Book
SOUTHERN OCEAN
Population: 23.2 million (Oct 2013)
Capital city: Canberra
Biggest city: Sydney
Land Area: 7.6 million square kilometres
Coast: 35,877 kilometres (main island only)
Highest Point: Mount Kosciuszko, NSW (2,228 metres)
Lowest Point: Lake Eyre, South Australia (-15 metres)
Main Language: English
CORAL SEA
Gold Coast PACIFIC OCEAN
sjSydney
C a o b ^ rra / B o ta n y B a y
AUSTRALIAN CAPITAL TERRITORY

\r t nr D T A i) A T h e S n o w y M o u n t a in s
V 1 C 1 U K 1A I ^ M o u n t /K o s c i u s z k o
T A S M A N SEA
TASMANIA
NEW ZEA LA N D
Hobart
^ £ f* P o rt Arthur
5
Welcome to Australia
Australia is the sixth largest country in The Australian National
the world, and the only one that covers a Flag was chosen by the
whole continent. It is very dry and m uch Australian people in the year of
of the centre and the west of the country is national federation1 (1901). Its
desert, but there are tropical 3 rainforests in latest design became official
in 1953. The Union Flag
the n o rth and very rich land for farm ing in
represents Australia’s links
the south-w est and south-east. M any of the to Great Britain. The Southern
anim al and plant species 4 of Australia are Cross (5 stars) represents the
not found anywhere else in the world. This southern hemisphere2, and
is because the country was isolated 5 from the large, white star represents
other land m asses 6 for m illions of years, so the states and territories of
no new species arrived. The existing species Australia.
could not m ix w ith others and so did not
change or develop.
Between 1788 and 1901 the country
was a British colony7. Today Australia is
an independent 8 federation of six states:
Q ueensland, New South Wales (NSW ),
Victoria, South Australia, W estern Australia and the island of Tasmania,
and two territories: A ustralian Capital Territory and N orthern Territory.
The largest state, W estern Australia, is about the same size as W estern
Europe.
Despite its size, Australia has a small population w ith m ost people living
in cities on or near the coast. The indigenous 9 or native people of Australia,
the A boriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, arrived from Asia about 50,000
years ago and today they m ake up nearly 3% of the total population. The rest
of the population is a m ix of m any different cultures, in particular people
from the U nited K ingdom (UK) and other European countries, but also
people from N orth Africa, Vietnam , C hina and the M iddle East.
In 2013 four A ustralian cities were in the Top Ten of the best places to
live in the w orld according to a survey 10 done by the A m erican m agazine
TIME. M elbourne was num ber one for the third year in a row, Adelaide
n um ber six, Sydney num ber seven and Perth was num ber nine.
6
Warm-up quiz
1 W hat is a com m on nam e for 6 W hat was Australia’s m ost

Australia? im portant product in the
a ‘in the m iddle 19th century?
b over there a m eat
C ‘dow n u n d er’ b cars
2 W hich oceans are to the east C wool
and west of Australia? 7 If you were at a Test M atch in
a the Atlantic and Pacific Adelaide, w hich sport would
b the Pacific and Indian you be watching?
C the Indian and Arctic a football
3 In w hich A ustralian city would b cricket
C surfing
you find the fam ous O pera
House? 8 W hich of these actresses is
a Sydney Australian?
b M elbourne a Nicole K idm an
C Brisbane b Angelina Jolie
C Em m a W atson
4 At C hristm as tim e, w hat season
is it in Australia? 9 W hen did Europeans first begin
a w inter to live in Australia?
b autum n a 1688
C sum m er b 1788
5 W hat is a didgeridoo? C 1888
a a type of cake 10 W hat is a baby kangaroo called?
b a m usical instrum ent a a bobby
C an insect b a jo n n y
C a joey
i Climate, Landscape
and People
The name Australia comes from

Uluru, the largest rock in the world the Latin phrase Terra Australis
meaning ‘land of the south’. In the
The island continent of Australia 16thcentury, this was the name given
lies between the Indian and Pacific to the unknown continent believed
to exist south of the equator. A
Oceans in the region of O ceania 11
common name you may hear for
in the southern hemisphere. It is
Australia is ‘down under’.
often described as the Earths largest
island but smallest continent (the other continents are Asia, Africa, N orth
America, South America, Antarctica and Europe, in order of size from largest
to smallest). It is also the lowest, the flattest and, apart from Antarctica, the
driest continent. The country is unique 12 and varied in every way - in climate,
landscape, people, history, culture and anim al and plant life.
Climate, Landscape and People
Australia’s way of life has traditionally been influenced by European
culture, but today A ustralian society is m ulticultural: in 2011, about 21% of
the population had been born in the UK, 9% in New Zealand, 6 % in China,
just over 5% in India and 3.5% in Italy M ore than 85% of Australians live
near or on the coast, and 89% of the population live in urban areas (towns
or cities), w hich m akes Australia one of the m ost urbanized countries in
the world.
Climate
A bout 70% of the country is very dry and nearly 40% of the country is desert.
M ost of the desert areas are in the centre and in the west. Parts of n o rth ern
Australia are tropical and have heavy rainfall in the sum m er, but are dry
in the winter. In the south-east and the south-w est corners the climate is
tem perate13. As a result, m ost of the biggest cities are found there. Snow in
Australia is rare, but there are places for skiing in the Snowy M ountains region
of south-eastern New South Wales and north-eastern Victoria, a few hours
from M elbourne and Sydney. The m ost popular tim e to ski is late August.
Because of the large differences in climate and natural environm ent, as well
as its size and position, Australia is a land of droughts (times w hen there
is no water), floods, fires and tropical storm s. Large fires occur som ew here
in Australia every m onth of the year. The frequency of these fires is not
just a result of the hot, dry climate but also of the changes in the climate.
Wet periods allow plants to grow quickly. In dry tim es the leaves die and
becom e fuel for fires.
Some features 14 of the Australian landscape
The desert outback IM . .

Uluru is about 335 m tall,
The outback covers m ost of the centre 3.6 km long, 1.9 km wide
of the country. Few people live there and 9.4 km around the bottom,
because life is very difficult. However, one Most of it is underground!
of Australia’s m ost am azing and fam ous
sights is in the outback - U luru (better know n outside Australia as Ayers
Rock), the largest rock in the world! It rises like an enorm ous whale’s 15 back
from the flat red-soil desert that the Australians call the Red Centre, and is
sacred 16 to the Aboriginals.
9
1
The bush
The folk song Waltzing Matilda is
W hen city people want to talk Australia’s best-known bush ballad
about the n on-urban areas (a song that tells a story). The title means
nearer the coast they use the travelling on foot (waltzing) with a bag
w ord bush. It is a w ord that (matilda) on your back that contains your
is now closely linked with possessions. The words were written in
1895 by Banjo Paterson (1864-1941), an
Australia and is used to describe
Australian bush poet17 and writer.
not only the landscape but also a
p art of the national identity.
Life in the bush is very hard, so the people who lived and w orked there in
the past had to be strong and able to deal w ith living in an isolated place. The
bush m ade them practical 18 and independent. They said w hat they thought
and were good to their ‘m ates’ (friends). Until the 1960s these qualities were
seen as being an im portant p art of the A ustralian national identity.
This has changed in recent years because m ost Australians do not have
m uch experience of life in the bush. They live in large cities or near the
coast where the way of life does
Lake Eyre
not require knowledge of survival
skills. However, it is clear from m uch
popular m usic and stories, painting,
films and food that the bush has
an im portant place in Australian
culture.
The Great Dividing Range
A round the eastern and south
eastern edge of Australia is the Great
Dividing Range, a 3,700-kilom etre
range 19 of m ountains. It is in fact
m ade up o fp several ranges including
the Snowy M ountains, where M ount
Kosciuszko, Australia’s highest
m ountain is, the Blue M ountains
and the A ustralian Alps. These
m ountains send water dow n into
Australia’s m ost im portant rivers, the
M urray and the Darling.
f -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Murray-Darling Basin (the area around the two rivers) is the most
important area in the country for farming. One hundred per cent of the
rice, 9 5 % of the oranges and 5 4 % of the apples grown in Australia are
produced there. And 2 8 % of the nation’s cows, 4 5 % of the sheep and 6 2 %
of the pigs can be found there too.
Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre

The lowest point on the continent is in South Australia, about 700 kilom etres
n o rth of Adelaide. It is Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre, which is 15 m etres below sea
level. A lthough it is the largest lake in Australia at 9,500 square kilom etres,
it is rarely full of water - it fills only once every eight years or so w hen the
rivers flowing into it flood the land. Then fish and w aterbirds arrive in large
num bers to eat the food it produces - it is a w onderful sight! W hen the lake
starts to empty, however, the water becom es very salty and the fish die and
the birds leave. Eventually 20 only salt is left on the ground, and Lake Eyre
rem ains like that until the rivers flood again.
1
The Daintree Rainforest
This rainforest on the north-east coast of Q ueensland is part of the Wet
Tropics UNESCO Heritage Site21. It is 135 m illion years old and about 1,200
square kilom etres, and is hom e to p a wide variety of plants and animals.
The rainforest was created w hen the super-continent of Pangaea broke
into two huge pieces about 200 m illion years ago: Laurasia in the n o rth
and G ondw ana in the south. The land mass of G ondw ana included* South
Am erica, Africa, Arabia, India, Australia and Antarctica, and was covered
in trees and ancient plants. The two large continents continued to break
up and by 40 m illion years ago Australia was already a separate island
continent. O ver tim e the rainforest becam e sm aller and w hat we see today
is only a p art of the history of the continent. U nfortunately hum an activity
such as cutting dow n trees, farm ing and building is putting the future of
the forest in danger. As a result the plants and anim als that live there are
in danger too. M any of the anim als are very ancient and are sim ilar to the
creatures found 150 m illion years ago. This m akes the D aintree Rainforest
a real-life Jurassic Park).
The Great Barrier Reef

A nother of Australias natural treasures
and also a UNESCO W orld Heritage
Site is the G reat Barrier Reef along
the coast of Q ueensland. M ore than
2,000 kilom etres long, it is the w orlds
largest reef system (344,400 square
kilom etres). It is so large, in fact,
that it can be seen from space. The
Reef actually consists of about 2,900
individual reefs, w hich took m illions
o f years to form. They are m ade of
extrem ely small sea creatures called
corals, and their skeletons22. Today
the Reef is one of A ustralias m ain
tourist attractions, but scientists are
w orried about its health. Its survival 23
is threatened 24 not only by hum an
12
activity - fishing m ethods, tourism
There are two types of coral -
and pollution - but also by predators 25 stony (hard) and soft. The stony
and changes in the environm ent. corals form the skeleton or the
Scientists reported that the am ount structure of the coral reef. The
of coral covering the Reef fell by less common soft corals look like
nearly 50% betw een 1985 and colourful plants.
2 0 1 2 as a result of dam age caused
by the crow n-of-thorns starfish (a predator that feeds on corals), tropical
storm s and global w arm ing26. Global w arm ing causes sea w ater to stay
w arm er for longer, and this in turn, causes corals to lose their colour and die.
‘Aussies* - the people of Australia

M ost Australians have their origins 27 in other countries. The only native
people of Australia are the Aboriginals, who now m ake up about 3% of
the total population. There are also about 40,000 Torres Strait Islanders
in Australia, living m ostly in the n o rth of Q ueensland. They are the first
people of the islands in the Torres Strait and they have the same origins as
the people of Papua New Guinea.
1
Multicultural Australia
It is not know n exactly how m any native people there were before
Europeans arrived in 1788, but experts th in k there were betw een 300,000
and 700,000, or m aybe more. However, colonization had a very bad effect
on the size of the A boriginal population and by the beginning of the 20th
century it had fallen to fewer than 90,000.
There were two m ain reasons for this.
Australian words
Firstly, the colonists brought diseases
a barbie: a barbecue (BBQ)
w ith them that were previously unknow n
a cobber: a friend
in Australia and the Aboriginals often
dinkum: honest
died w hen they caught them . Secondly,
lollies: sweets
there were m any fights about land during
oldies: parents
w hich large num bers of both Aboriginals
a sheila: a girl or girlfriend
and Europeans were killed.
14
Since the arrival of the British in 1788, there
has been a continual flow of im m igration 28 into
Australia. Until the 1970s, m ost of the im m igrants
came from Europe. These days, Australia receives
m any m ore people from Asia, and since 1996 the
num ber from Africa and the M iddle East has
alm ost doubled. Now, about 180,000 people move
to Australia every year. If this continues, there
will be about 35 or 40 m illion Australians by the
m iddle of the century.
W hy do so many people want to move to
Australia? Is it because Australia has some of the
warmest and driest weather in the world, beautiful
scenery and a clean environment? Or because
they like the idea of living in a really multicultural
country? Perhaps they have read or heard that life
in Australia is less stressful than in many other
countries? Or maybe they think it will be easier to
find a job there than in their own countries? At 6 %,
the Australian unemployment rate is lower than in
most English-speaking countries (UK 7.1%; United
States of America (USA) 6.7%; Canada 7.2%; South
Africa 25.5%).
Because the first nation to colonize the country
was Britain, the official language of Australia
is English, which everyone is expected to speak. However, m any other
languages are also spoken - m ore than 200, including native Australian
languages. The m ost com m on after English are Italian, Greek, Cantonese,
Arabic, Vietnam ese and M andarin.
‘G’day mate!’ (Many Australians say this when

they meet a friend.)
KEVIN, A STUDENT
15
1
A ustralian English is a little different from other types of English in
its vocabulary, pronunciation, gram m ar and spelling, so it is quite easy
to recognize an Aussie from the way he or she speaks. However, not
everyone finds it easy to recognize the difference betw een an A ustralian
and a New Zealander!
New Zealand
New Zealand is probably Australia’s closest cultural neighbour. A round
1,600 kilom etres away in the south-w estern Pacific Ocean, it is m ade up of a
group of m ountainous islands. The two m ain ones, the N orth Island and the
South Island, are separated by the C ook Strait. The capital city W ellington is
at the southern end of the N orth Island.
The islands were created just 23 m illion years ago w hen land was pushed
out of the ocean by volcanic eruptions29. Today, there are m ore than fifty
volcanoes in New Zealand, m any of w hich are still active and could erupt in
the future. W hite Island volcano is the largest active volcano and has been
active since at least 1769 w hen it was first seen and nam ed by the British
explorer Captain James Cook. Volcanoes are not the only natural danger
in New Zealand, however! Earthquakes 30 are also very com m on because
the country is on the edge of two tectonic plates, which are very large flat
pieces of rock that cover the earth. The plates are called the A ustralian
Plate and the Pacific Plate. In February 2011 parts of the second largest city
C hristchurch on the South Island were seriously dam aged and 185 people
died in a huge earthquake.
The native people of New Zealand are called M aoris. They first arrived
on the islands by boat in AD 1000 from islands in Polynesia near Tahiti.
They nam ed the country Aotearoa, w hich m eans ‘The Land of the Long
W hite Cloud’. In the 1600s, it was visited by the D utch, who nam ed it Nieuw
Zeeland after a region in the N etherlands. Later the British arrived there.
In 1907, it becam e p art of the British Em pire and in 1947 it was given its
independence.
Today, just over four m illion people live in New Zealand. In the past,
m ost New Zealanders, or ‘Kiwis as they are called, were farm ers, but today
8 6 % of them live in cities. The m ost popular sport is rugby 31 and nearly
everyone supports the national team the All Blacks.
16
2 The First People
The Aboriginals were the first Australian people
About 40,000, perhaps as m any as 60,000, years ago, the first people arrived
in Australia. Experts th in k that these people first crossed the shorter
distances between, and then from , islands in M alaysia to reach the no rth ern
parts of the land mass that was m ade up of Australia and Papua New Guinea
at that tim e. The journey to the A ustralian continent for these travellers
m ust have been very difficult and they w ould have needed boats that were
strong enough to survive the journey. The technology needed to build these
boats m ust have been a lot m ore advanced than the knowledge required for
m aking spears 32 or lighting fires.
From the northern parts, the Aboriginal people travelled all over the
continent. Archeological rem ains 33 show that hum ans were definitely living
in south-eastern Australia by about 40,000 years ago, and in Tasmania (at that
tim e connected to the continent by a land bridge) about 34,000 years ago.
17
2
By about 20,000 years ago, w hen the world was starting to come out
of the m ost recent ice age, Aboriginals were well-established all over the
country, including Tasmania, w ith the largest groups of people in the
southern and eastern regions.
O
D uring the last ice age, not as m uch
of the southern hem isphere was covered
... ^ /t+ jn jce as n o rth ern hem isphere.
near Lake Mungo in New South A ntarctica was completely covered in ice,
Wales, is the oldest human to , x , T a x v u
. , r I. A i. m uch like today. In Australia, however,
have been found in Australia. 7
Scientists believe that he is at only a yerY «ma11 area around M ount
least 4 0 ,0 0 0 years old. Footprints
Kosciuszko was frozen, and about a
left by the feet of Aboriginal third of Tasmania. As the ice age came to
Australians over 2 0 ,0 0 0 an end, the m elting ice caused the sea to
years ago have recently been rise, and about 12,000 years ago, the land
discovered in the same area. bridge betw een Australia and Tasmania
was flooded. They becam e two separate
islands and the Aboriginal people who lived there were isolated from each
other. Som ehow they lost or forgot the technology for building boats strong
enough to cross oceans, so the two groups were unable to m eet and could
not share new discoveries. A bout 8,000 years ago, the land bridge with Papua
New Guinea was also flooded and the Torres Strait islands were created.
M ost of the islands are just pieces of rock, and only seventeen are inhabited
today. The Torres Strait Islanders, unlike the Tasm anian Aboriginals, were
able to m ix and trade w ith the A ustralian Aboriginals because they had
small boats.
Before the arrival of European settlers 34 in the 18th century, there were
over 400 tribes 35 in Australia and on the islands near it, each w ith its own
language and territory.
There was little good land for growing crops 36 and, at that tim e in
Australia, anim als were not kept for food (the Europeans brought cows
and sheep later). So the Aboriginals lived by h u nting 37 wild anim als and
gathering 38 food in the bush. The m en hunted large anim als and the w om en
and children hunted sm aller ones and gathered fruit and plants. O n the
coast, people caught fish and collected m any types of shellfish39.
The Aboriginals had an excellent knowledge of their environm ent and
were able to m anage extrem ely well in the difficult conditions of the desert.
18
The First People
They m ade holes in the ground to collect the underground water, and they
knew where the natural water holes were. They respected the land and
w hat it provided because they knew that the land gave them life. They were
careful not to kill all the fish or anim als in one area, for example, so that
there w ould always be m ore food there. This m eant that they did not stay
anywhere for a long tim e but were always m oving to a new area. A nd they
wasted nothing - every p art of the anim al and plant was eaten or used to
m ake things such as clothing, baskets, nets and spears.
The water-holding frog. Aboriginals sometimes catch these frogs to get water when
they are thirsty.
Despite m oving frequently from place to place, the Aboriginals had

strong links w ith their hom e territory. They used rivers, lakes and m ountains
to show w here their territories started and ended. The Elders (old m en in
the tribe who were considered to know the m ost) gave the knowledge of
their territories to the younger people. They did this by telling it in stories,
singing it in songs, painting it in pictures and dancing it. The Aboriginals
have no w ritten language so this was how they rem em bered im portant
inform ation and passed it onp.
19
2
Social structure
The organization of Aboriginal society is very com plicated and is quite
difficult for non-A boriginal people to understand. Below is a description
of the m ost im portant groups in A boriginal society, beginning w ith
the largest.
a Aboriginal people are divided into tribes. Tribes share the same language,
custom s and general laws, and are therefore a little like small countries.
b Every person in a tribe belongs to one of two moieties. These are groups
that have a connection w ith certain anim als or plants (totems). For
example, in the n o rth ern Kimberley, the two m oieties are represented
by two different birds. A person is b orn into one m oiety and can only
m arry som eone from the other moiety.
C People w ith the same totem belong to a totemic group. Every person
has a totem , w hich is usually an anim al or a plant, but it can also be a
rock, river or hill. Some people are nam ed after their totems.
d A clan is a group of about forty or fifty people w ith the same territory,
totem and clan name. It is m ade up of groups of families. Usually, m en
b orn into the clan rem ain in the clan territory. A w om an usually goes to
live on her husb ands clan territory, if that is the tradition of that tribe.
e A band, m ade up of of two or m ore families, is the basic group (the
group that people norm ally travel with, and share everyday experiences
with).
f A family group can be quite large, m ade up of a m an and his wife or
wives, the children from each wife, and som etim es the families of the
wives. In the past, a m an often had from two to four wives, som etim es
as m any as ten, but this is m uch less com m on today. Each family group
has a leader, usually an older m an (an Elder). He decides w hen to move
cam p and w hat to do if a family m em ber has a problem or behaves badly.
Each family cooks and camps separately from other families in the band
but they often come together for cerem onies 40 and rituals.
Laws and rules of behaviour

In A boriginal society no one is m ore im portant than anyone else, and there
are no elected leaders. People respect the knowledge and experience of
20
The First People
*
An Aboriginal family
the Elders of the tribes and usually do

An Aboriginal custom all over
w hat they suggest. There are inform al Australia prevents people
laws, for example, about m arriage, talking directly to their husband
and children learn how to behave or wife’s mother! Another custom
correctly from an early age by w atching forbids people to mention the
their parents and older people. The names of dead people when
Aboriginals believe that their laws talking about them, sometimes
and way of life were decided for them for years.
by their spirit ancestors 41 during the
creation of the world.
21
2
Everyday life
Aboriginal bush tucker
W hen European explorers first m et
emu
the native people, they noticed how
healthy they were. This was because
the traditional A boriginal ‘bush
tucker (food found in the bush)
included m any different types of
anim al and plant foods that were
completely natural and rich in good
things for the body. They were also
low in fat and sugar and, because
the Aboriginals did not cook their
food for too long, they got the m ost
goodness from it.
witchetty In the past, half to tw o-thirds
grubs of a typical day in the life of an
A boriginal was spent collecting
food and water. The w om en and
children provided foods that were
easy to find such as small anim als,
shellfish, lizards42, insects, honey,
eggs and plants. The m en, hunting
alone or in pairs, provided larger
anim als like kangaroos43, birds and
fish.
Today, more than half of all
Aboriginal people live in urban areas,
macadamia nuts often in bad conditions. Others work
for farmers, who now own the land
where Aboriginals once hunted.
However, a few, particularly in the
northern part of the continent, have
managed to keep their land and
traditions, and still hunt and gather
bush tucker.
22
3 Aboriginal Culture
Culture is a set of ideas, beliefs,

and ways of behaving of a
particular organization or
group of people. 1
Aboriginal art www.macmillandictionary.com
The native cultures of Australia are the oldest living cultures in the w orld
and until 1788, the year European colonization began, they stayed m ore or
less unchanged for thousands of years.
Australian Aboriginals all shared a deep understanding of, and a close
relationship with, the land, and it is from this relationship that their culture
developed. Because they had no w ritten language, their culture had to be
passed on in other ways such as in storytelling, art, rituals and perform ances
of dance. Today, however, m any Aboriginals are afraid that their culture
(including their languages) will disappear in the future because there are so
few Aboriginal people left to pass it on. The Australian governm ent is trying to
prevent this by supporting the activities of arts centres that aim to protect and
develop Aboriginal culture. A team of people in Alice Springs, for example, is
collecting traditional Aboriginal stories. The governm ent also tries to involve
Aboriginal people in the protection and developm ent of their own culture. It
employs them as art teachers, gallery assistants and language assistants in the
regions where they live, and also in local radio stations.
23
3
\ As a traditional Aboriginal story, the Rainbow

m Serpent myth is told in many different places in ®
many different ways. This is true of most of the
y traditional stories that are told to children by
<2 parents and grandparents in different cultures all
1 over the world.
The Dreamtime
Like other cultures, Aboriginals have stories w hich explain how the world
was created (myths). The w ord they use for the Creation Period is not always
the same from region to region. For example, it is know n as Alcheringa by
the A randa tribe of C entral Australia, and as Bugari by the Karadjiri people
of Kim berley in north-w estern Australia. However, the m ore general term
for it is the D ream tim e, or the Dream ing.
Aboriginals believe that the land they live on was once empty. Then
during the D ream tim e, giant spirits (their spirit ancestors), who were
sleeping under the ground, woke up and walked on the earth. They looked
like anim als or plants or insects, but behaved like hum ans. As they searched
for food and dug for water, they created the features of the landscape: rivers,
lakes, water holes, m ountains, hills, rocks and trees, and all the anim als
and plants. They also established 44 a way of living for Aboriginals to follow.
This included how their society should be organized, the rules for social
behaviour and the cerem onies that had to be perform ed to m ake sure that
plant and anim al life on the land continued.
After the spirit ancestors had created the world, they changed into
trees, stars, rocks, rivers and other objects. These are the sacred places of
A boriginal culture. Because the ancestors did not disappear at the end of
the D ream tim e but rem ained in these sacred sites, the D ream tim e links the
past and the present, as well as the people and the land.
24
\
Aboriginal Culture
The Rainbow Serpent
The journeys across the land that the spirit ancestors m ade are know n
as D ream ing tracks 45 or songlines. The paths of these tracks are recorded in
traditional songs, m yths, dances and paintings.
O ne of these spirit ancestors is the Rainbow Serpent, whose D ream ing
track crosses m any different tribal territories all over Australia. The Rainbow
Serpent is represented as a large, snake-like creature and is a protector of
the land and its people. Its D ream ing track is always linked to water, the
source 46 of life. A lthough it is usually a good spirit, the Rainbow Serpent can
be bad, if it is not given respect. The serpent as a spirit ancestor is perhaps
the oldest spiritual belief in the world. It can be found in rock art paintings
up to 6 ,000 years old.
The Rainbow Serpent creation myth

‘In the D ream tim e all the earth lay sleeping. N othing moved. N othing grew.
O ne day the Rainbow Serpent woke up and came out from u nder the ground.
She travelled far and wide and eventually returned to the place where she
had first appeared. She called to the frogs, “Com e out!” The frogs came out
slowly because their bodies were heavy w ith w ater that they had stored in
their sleep. The Rainbow Serpent touched their stom achs and m ade them
laugh. W ater ran over the earth and filled the tracks of the Rainbow Serpent s
journeys. This is how lakes and rivers were m ade. W ith the water, grass and
trees grew. All the anim als woke up then and followed the Rainbow Serpent
25
3
across the land. They were happy on Earth and each lived and gathered food
with his own tribe. Some anim als lived in rocks, others lived on the ground
and others in trees and in the air. The Rainbow Serpent m ade laws that they
all had to respect. Some did but others didn’t. The Rainbow Serpent said,
“Those who keep m y laws will be rewarded; I will give them a hum an body.
Those w ho break m y laws will be punished and tu rn ed into stone. They will
never walk on the earth again." A nd so the lawbreakers becam e m ountains
and hills, but those who kept the laws becam e hum ans. The Rainbow Serpent
gave each of them their own totem of the anim al, bird or reptile from which
they came. The tribes knew them selves by their totems: kangaroo, snake
and many, m any m ore. The Rainbow Serpent m ade a rule: people m ust not
eat their totem , only other totems. This way there
was food for everyone.’
Ceremonies and rituals

The ceremonies and rituals that often accom panied
the telling of myths were as im portant as the
myths themselves. Nearly all ceremonies included
singing and dancing, but some included rituals
like painting the body and wearing special
decorative 47 objects m ade from feathers48, shells,
bones and even teeth. Aboriginal tribes in some
parts of Australia, for example in A rnhem Land in
N orthern Territory, still celebrate the traditional
ceremonies.
O ne of the m ost im portant is the cerem ony
that is celebrated w hen children becom e adults.
D uring this ceremony, called a Bora, boys and
girls learn about secret rituals, sacred objects and
spiritual knowledge. For boys especially, it is a
very im portant tim e in life. Boras som etim es last
for weeks or even m onths, with singing, dancing
and story telling every night. Some of the stories
are open for everyone to hear, others are ‘secret-
sacred’, only for the boys and girls to listen to and
learn.
26
Aboriginal Culture
After the Bora, the boys, now officially m en, m ake a long journey alone in
the outback. This journey is called a walkabout and can last as long as six
m onths. The travellers follow their ancestors songlines across the desert,
som etim es covering m ore than 1,500 kilom etres during their walkabout.
Large cerem onies during w hich the history of the tribe is acted, danced
and sung are called corroborees. Some of the rituals in a corroboree are
secret, but the ones that are not are perform ed in the camp at night for the
m en, w om en and children of the tribe. A group of m en sit around a small
fire and sing, while others, their bodies decorated with symbols, dance the
actions in the words of the songs. The dancers often carry decorated spears,
shields and boom erangs.
27
3
Aboriginal art |300merang was traditionally used
M uch Aboriginal art involved by Aboriginals for hunting. There are
the m yths o f the D ream tim e tw0 ^ P eS: the one that returns t0 the
i , , thrower after it is thrown, and the one that
and was an im portant part , , T1 . . , ,
r 3. . i A1 . . , doesn t. This one is known as a throwing
o f traditional Aboriginal stick or a kylie. The kylie is more powerful
life. People painted on the than the returning type of boomerang and
rock walls of their hom es, on can injure or even kill a kangaroo,
pieces of w ood and on their
bodies. They decorated their spears, their boom erangs, their didgeridoos (a
traditional m usical instrum ent), everyday objects and sacred objects. They
carved 49 pictures on trees and on rocks. They m ade pictures in the sand.
Some art was naturalistic (of anim als, plants and people), some was non-
naturalistic (of shapes and symbols).
Some of the m ost beautiful Aboriginal art in the naturalistic style is
the rock art in n o rth ern Australia, especially in the regions of Kim berley
and Kakadu. A few of the rock paintings there are especially interesting.
They are called X-ray paintings because both the outside and the inside of
anim als and people are shown!
N on-naturalistic paintings are full of traditional symbols that all
m ean som ething. There are symbols for people, anim al tracks, paths and
weapons, for example. A n Aboriginal is able to understand the m eaning
of the painting by reading the symbols. The designs and symbols painted
on an object or on the body of a person taking part in a cerem ony have a
different purpose. They m ake the object or person sacred.
Sand paintings or ground paintings are another form of Aboriginal art.
They are created by the Elders of a clan on a piece of ground that has been
cleared. The other m em bers of the clan watch the creation of the paintings.
A nything natural is used to m ake the designs: seeds, flowers, sand,
stones and feathers. As the Elders work, they sing, passing on knowledge to
the younger m em bers of the clan. It is a bit like a school lesson. The Elders
explain the symbols, the tribes creation story, and where the sacred sites,
food sources and water holes are.
In the early 1970s, some Aboriginal artists started copying these ground
paintings and selling them . However, the artists soon realized that the
secret-sacred objects they painted in their pictures were seen not only by
Europeans, but also by other Aboriginal people. Telling the secrets of a
28
3
tribe is a crim e so the artists decided to change the way they painted. They
started to use small dots 50 to hide the m eanings of the sacred designs and
from that tim e on, the paintings were know n as dot paintings.
A nother type of m odern A boriginal art is bush m edicine leaves
painting. These works of art are created from the leaves of the Kurrajong,
or Kurraw ong tree, which are usually used to m ake m edicines.
‘We use leaves to represent people.

We also use sticks and rocks and
sometimes small animals like
witchetty grubs. My mother and
grandfather taught me how to tell
stories like this when I was only
two or three/
APRIL, FROM Tl TREE,
NORTHERN TERRITORY
30
Australia
A replica of Captain James Cook's ship, Endeavour
In the M iddle Ages, up to

Captain James Cook (1728-79),
the 15th century, Europeans
explorer and map-maker, visited
did not know for sure that the Pacific Ocean three times and made
the continent of Australia maps of many areas. He also recorded
existed, but they thought that several islands and coastlines on European
a ‘Great Southern Land5, or maps for the first time. He sailed twice
Terra Australis, m ight exist. around the world, and was the first explorer
This was because, m any years to cross the Antarctic Circle.
before in the 2nd century AD,
the Greek m athem atician Ptolem y had suggested that there was land to the
south of the Indian Ocean. He thought that because there was a large land
mass in the n o rth there m ust be a sim ilar large land mass in the south. In
the 15th century, Terra Australis started to appear on w orld m aps as a large
area of land that included todays Australia, A ntarctica and m any of the
Polynesian islands.
31
4
British settlement
The first recorded discoveries o f the A ustralian continent by Europeans
were m ade in 1606, w hen a Spanish ship and a D utch ship reached the
north-east coast. Thirty-six years later a D utch sea captain called Abel
Tasman discovered an island near the south-east coast. He nam ed it Van
D iem ens Land, a nam e it kept until the British changed it to Tasm ania in
1856. In 1688, a British explorer called W illiam D am pier landed on the
north-w est coast of Australia and m et the Aboriginals there. The m eeting
was not a friendly one, according to his report.
European ships m ade a few m ore visits to the continent before the
British governm ent ordered Captain C ook in 1768 to go and find the ‘Great
Southern Land’ and claim 51 it for the King - if the people who lived there
agreed! Two years later, Cook, in his ship Endeavour, landed first at Botany
Bay on the east coast of Australia and then sailed up the coast to Possession
Island in the Torres Strait. O n 23rd August 1770, following the orders of the
British governm ent, he claim ed the region he had just explored for Britain.
He nam ed it New South Wales.
There were several reasons why Great Britain was interested in having
Australia as p art of its Empire. O ne of them was because it w anted a base 52
for its ships in that p art of the world. In those years, Britain had very strong
trade links with countries in East Asia like India. A base for British m erchant
ships in the Pacific w ould help support and increase this trade.
A nother reason was because it planned to establish a colony for convicts 53
there, know n as a penal settlem ent.
At the beginning of the 18th century in Britain, the prisons were so
crow ded that there was not enough room p for all the crim inals. In order to
solve this problem , the British governm ent had introduced transportation
to penal settlem ents in its A m erican colonies as a punishm ent. For seventy-
five years, betw een 1718 and 1783, Britain had sent crim inals to its thirteen
colonies in N orth Am erica, but after the A m erican W ar of Independence, it
lost control over them . Now that Australia had been claim ed as p art of the
Empire, new colonies could be established there and the problem of where
to send convicts was solved.
Botany Bay was chosen to have the first Australian penal settlem ent,
so on 13th May 1787 eleven ships set sail from Portsm outh, England, with
over 1,000 people on board. Over three quarters were convicts, and the
32
Making Modem Australia
rest were officials and their wives and children, and crew m em bers. They
arrived in Botany Bay on 18th January 1788, but Captain Phillip, who was
in charge of the ships, decided to go further no rth because he did not think
that the bay was a good place for a settlem ent. He stopped at Port Jackson,
which had an excellent natural harbour54. It was there, on 26th January (now
celebrated as Australia Day), that the first European settlem ent in Australia
was established. It was nam ed Sydney after a British politician called Lord
Sydney, who was responsible for the plans to colonize the country.
M ore ships arrived carrying convicts and officials in 1790 and 1791, and
the first free settlers arrived in 1793. These settlers were not convicts but
people who had chosen to start a new life in Australia.
Life in the new colony was very hard for the convicts. They were expected
to w ork all day from sunrise to sunset. In hot w eather they were allowed to
Captain Phillip raises the British flag on the site of the first European colony in
Australia (1788)
33
4
rest for an h our in the m iddle
Many of the less serious crimes in
of the day. Male convicts eighteenth-century Britain were due
generally did the heavy work to industrialization57. The invention of
like building and gardening. machines to do the work in factories meant
Those with special skills, the that many people lost their jobs. Without
printers55, blacksm iths 56 and a job to earn a salary, life was very hard
clockmakers, for example, did and people often had to steal58 things to
their own jobs. Female convicts survive. For small crimes like stealing a
often w orked as servants for cow, pig or sheep, convicts could be sent
the settlers, cooking, cleaning to a penal settlement for seven years.
and som etim es taking care of
their children.
The free settlers lives were not m uch easier. The land was poor and,
despite their hard work, did not produce m uch food. M any of them caught
diseases and died. As m ore people arrived, m ore land for houses was taken
away from the Aboriginal people, w hich caused fights. M any settlers and
Aboriginals were killed in these fights.
Convicts were given a Ticket of Leave (certificate of freedom ) w hen
they com pleted their punishm ent or before that if they behaved well. This
allowed them to go back to their hom es in Britain if they w anted to. M any
decided to stay in Australia, however, and look for a job or start a business.
Only a few convicts succeeded in escaping from the penal settlem ents,
but those who did were seen as heroes. John D onahue, a young m an from
Dublin, was one of them . He escaped and becam e a bushranger (a m an
who lives in the bush, stealing w hat he needed from settlers). However, he
was eventually found by a policem an and killed. A nother m an, W illiam
Buckley, spent 30 years living w ith the Aboriginals. W hen he eventually
returned to the city, he had completely forgotten how to speak English and
had to learn it again!
1606 1770 1788 1827 1901 ______

The first recorded Captain James Cook, The first British Britain claims the Australia becomes
visit to Australia a captain in the colony is whole country as an independent
by Europeans (the British Royal Navy, established in what British territory. country.
Dutch). explores and makes is now Sydney.
maps of the east
coast of Australia.
34
Making Modern Australia
Today’s Sydney - state capital of New South Wales

Size: 12,145 square kilometres
Population: about 4.6 million
Location: on the south-east coast in the state of New South Wales (NSW)
Famous for: the Sydney Opera House (opened 1973)
D uring the first half of the 19th century, Britain established m any other
penal settlem ents. Several were opened in Van D iem ens Land, and the
one at Port A rthur in the south-east of the island, where the very worst
crim inals were sent, is now Tasmania’s top tourist site. Port A rthur is on
a small piece of land that has water on three sides so it was impossible to
escape. M any young male convicts betw een the ages of 9 and 18 were also
sent there. They were often too small for
the hard w ork that convicts had to do, Between 1787 and the end
of British transportation in
so a separate Boys Prison was built near
1868, more than 150,000
Port A rthur. convicts were sent to New South
In 1849, the first official settlem ent Wales, Van Diemen’s Land and
in W estern Australia was established. Western Australia.
There was also a small one in Victoria,
w hich becam e a separate state from New South Wales in 1851, and one in
Q ueensland, which becam e a separate state in 1859. There were no penal
settlem ents in South Australia, which was colonized only by free settlers.
The settlers there had to buy land, establish farm s and employ workers,
often ex-convicts, to help them on their farms.
The gold rushes 59 and the development of farming

D uring the 1850s, the population of Australia increased very quickly for
two m ain reasons. The first was that a lot of cheap land becam e available
for farm ing as m ore of the land west of Sydney was explored and cleared of
trees. The second was the discovery of gold.
The first farm s developed around the early settlem ents near the coast
in the years following the arrival of settlers. Later, large areas to the west of
Sydney were cleared of trees and tu rn ed into grassland. The land was cheap
and there was lots of it. This attracted m any people from England, who left
their hom es hoping to start a new and better life in the country on the other
side of the world. They m ainly grew w heat 60 and raised m erino sheep (a
35
4
type of sheep w ith soft, white wool), w hich were introduced into Australia
in 1805. The wool industry developed quickly and by 1840, Australia was
producing m ore than two m illion kilogram s of wool each year. As a result,
m any sheep farm ers becam e very rich. W hen the railways were built, the
farm ers were able to transport their wool m ore easily and quickly to cities
and ports, from where it was shipped to Europe.
A lthough there had been m any
reports of gold discoveries in Australia There are gold mines61 in all
before the 1850s, they had always been continents apart from
Antarctica. The largest producer
kept secretp. The governm ent was
of gold today is China, followed
afraid that if convicts and free settlers
by the USA and Australia. These
heard about the discoveries, they w ould three countries produce nearly
im m ediately leave their farm s to go and one third of the world’s gold.
look for gold. A nd this is exactly w hat
happened w hen, in February 1851, a
m an called Edw ard Hargraves announced that he had discovered gold in
Bathurst, New South Wales. The news travelled very quickly and soon there
were hundreds of m en in the area all digging for gold. The discovery of
m any m ore goldfields in both New South Wales and Victoria caused the
first gold rushes - tens of thousands of people came to Australia, all hoping
to get rich quickly from the gold. It was during these years that Australia
first becam e a m ulticultural country. A lthough m any of the new arrivals
were British, there were also m any from a num ber of different countries,
including the USA, France, Italy, Germany, Poland and Hungary. The
Chinese, however, m ade up the biggest group on the goldfields.
Just a few years after Hargraves discovery, Australia was producing 40%
of the w orlds gold, with m ost of it coming from the state of Victoria. Later it
was found all over the country, including Tasmania.
The gold rushes changed Australia. Roads were built and Australia’s
railways opened in 1831. C om m unication w ith isolated places becam e
easier. In just tw enty years the total population grew from 430,000 in
1851 to 1.7 m illion in 1871. New towns grew up around the goldfields in
Q ueensland and W estern Australia and the first m aps were m ade of these
states. The whole country was industrialized and m odernized because of
the huge am ount of m oney that the gold from Victoria, and later W estern
Australia, produced.
36
The people who worked in the

goldfields were called Diggers.
During the First World War, this word
was used to refer to Australian and
New Zealand soldiers because so
many of them had been miners.
Today the word Digger is still used,
especially in newpaper reports, to
refer to Australian soldiers fighting
abroad.
Australia since federation

By the late 1880s, m ost people living in the A ustralian colonies had been
b o rn there and felt A ustralian rather th an the nationality of their parents
or grandparents. People started to talk about a union of the six states and
finally, at the end of the century, they voted to becom e a federation. O n 1st
January 1901 the Com m onw ealth of A ustralia was form ed.
In 1914, Australia becam e involved in the First W orld W ar (1914-18)
because it was still p art of the British Empire. O ut of the 400,000 A ustralian
37
4
m en who w ent to fight, m ore
Australia remembers all its soldiers
than 60,000 died and tens of killed in wars on ANZAC Day (5th April)
thousands were w ounded. each year. ANZAC means Australian and
The total population at that New Zealand Army Corps.
tim e was only five m illion,
so this was a terrible start for the new country. Australia joined Britain
again in 1939 to fight in the Second W orld W ar (1939-45). W hen the war
finished, alm ost one m illion Australians had been involved in it, and 27,073
of them had been killed and 23,477 w ounded.
The 1920s and the 1930s were bad years for the A ustralian econom y 62
and m any people did not have jobs. However, after 1945 this changed.
There were jobs for everyone and as a result people lived well. This period of
grow th lasted until the late 1980s w hen Australia and nearly every country
in the w orld had econom ic problem s. Today, however, the A ustralian
econom y is strong once again.
The second half of the 20 th century was an im portant time for Aboriginal
Australians. They started to become more politically active in their fight to
get equal voting rights 63 with non-Aboriginal people. They also wanted the
government to recognize 64 their rights to the land that had been taken from
them by the first European settlers. In 1967 they eventually succeeded in
getting the right to vote. Then another im portant step forward was made in
1993 when a law was passed which said
that some indigenous people have rights
and interests to their land that come from
their traditional laws and customs’.
‘To our people our home was not a

building made of bricks or wood,
but was the land that we hunted
and gathered on and where we held
cerem onies/
NALA, A COMMUNITY LEADER
38
The Aboriginal people continue
On 28th May 2000, over 250,000
to win small victories. In 2008, people walked across Sydney
Kevin Rudd, Australia’s Prim e Harbour Bridge as a sign of
M inister at the tim e, form ally friendship between Aboriginal
apologized to the Aboriginals and and non-Aboriginal people.
Torres Strait Islanders for all the
laws that had caused them suffering in the past; and in a survey held in
2013 m ost Australians said they were in favour of form ally recognizing
Aboriginals as the country’s first people.
39
5 Nature and the
Environment
The unique Australian landscape
Australia has some of the w orlds m ost unusual and diverse 65 natural
environm ents, and is hom e to m ore than one m illion species of plants and
animals. M ore than 80% of the country’s flowering plants, m am m als66,
reptiles and frogs are unique to Australia, as well as m ost of the freshwater
fish (fish in rivers and lakes), and alm ost half of its birds. The oceans around
Australia are hom e to 4,000 species of fish, 1,700 species of coral, 50 types of
sea m am m al, for example whales, and m any different types of seabird. M ost
of these, too, are not found anywhere else.
M uch of Australia’s unique plant and anim al life has its origins in the
ancient southern supercontinent G ondw ana. After Australia separated from
this huge continent, it began to move north. As a result, the climate becam e
w arm er and drier, and other plant and anim al species developed. M illions
of years later, new ones were introduced into Australia by the European
settlers for food and hunting. N ot all of them have been good for the
country, however. Cats and foxes, for example, have been responsible for the
disappearance of some of the native species. O thers, like rabbits and wild
pigs, have caused a lot of damage to the environm ent.
40
Nature and the Environment
Australia’s mammals
Nearly half of Australia’s m am m als
are m arsupials, anim als that give
b irth to their young and then carry
them in a pouch (pocket) until they
are old enough to survive on their
own. There are over one hundred
and fifty different types in Australia,
including kangaroos and wallabies
(sm aller kangaroos).
The kangaroo has been a symbol
of the A ustralian continent ever since
it was discovered. W hen C aptain
C ooks ship H M S Endeavour arrived
back in England in 1771, it carried a
large num ber of plants and anim als
previously unknow n to Europeans.
O ne of the strangest was a kangaroo.
George Stubbs, a fam ous artist of
the tim e, drew it and his draw ing
appeared in the official report
of Endeavours journey. After that
the kangaroo and Australia were A joey inside its mother's pouch
linked forever.
The koala67, also a symbol of Australia, is som etim es called a koala
bear, but is actually a m arsupial. W ild koalas only live in eastern Australia
where there is a lot of their
• Kangaroos live in groups called mobs. favourite food - the leaves
• They eat grass and plants and can of the eucalyptus tree. They
survive for a long time, even months,
spend m ost of their lives in
without water.
these trees, sleeping in the
• The red kangaroo is the largest living
marsupial (up to 2 metres tall).
branches for up to eighteen
• A baby kangaroo is called a joey. After
hours during the day and
birth, it spends seven or eight months eating at night. A n adult
living and growing inside its mother’s koala can eat up to a kilogram
pouch. of leaves in one night.
41
5
Since 2005, Australians have celebrated Wombat Day on 22 nd October

The wombat and the possum 68 are two of Australia’s smaller marsupials.
Wombats belong to the same family as koalas. They do not live in trees,
however, but in underground holes called burrows that are 3 to 30 metres long
and up to 3.5 metres deep. They are not very active during the day but at night
they come out to look for food, mainly grass and roots. There are three main
types: one lives in the coastal regions of South Australia, another in the coastal
regions of Victoria and New South Wales, and the third lives in a small area in
east-central Queensland. It is not easy to see a wombat in the wild because they
are shy animals and prefer to avoid people - and other wombats!
There are many different types of possum; some are as small as a mouse,
others are the size of a large cat. Like koalas, possums spend most of their
time in trees and are active at night. Most types of possum eat leaves, fruit and
flowers, but some types eat insects. They have a num ber of predators in the
wild such as foxes, dingos 69 and snakes. Possums can often be seen in urban
gardens, where their predators are dogs and cats. In 1837, they were introduced
into New Zealand, where they are seen as pests 70 because they destroy trees
and compete with native birds for habitats 71 and food.
Australia is also hom e to one of the strangest types of m am m al - the
m onotrem e (a m am m al that lays eggs instead of giving birth to live young).
There are only two families of m onotrem e: the duck-billed platypus and
the echidna.
About the size o f a pet cat, T , , _ . . . . .. .
.r Today s Brisbane - state capital
platypuses live in burrow s ofQ ueensland
and spend m uch of their tim e
sw im m ing in water. They use Size: 15’826 scluare kilometres
their duck-like bills to catch PoPulation: about 2 -2 millio"
the very small anim al life Location: on the east coast
they find in the water. They Famous for: its live theatre and music scene
can store food in pouches
inside their m ouths, w hich is useful while they are hunting underw ater.
The echidna, or spiny anteater, is found all over Australia because it can
survive in a range of tem peratures and habitats. Although they are m ost
active at night, they also come out during the day if the w eather is warm.
If it is either very hot or very cold, however, they stay in their burrow s or
u nder rocks.
Both the platypus and the echidna have been used several tim es as
A ustralian m ascots72. Syd the platypus was one of the three m ascots chosen
for the Sydney 200 0 Olympics and Expo Oz the platypus was the m ascot for
Expo ’8 8 , w hich was held in Brisbane in 1988. Millie (for M illennium ) the
echidna was also a m ascot in the 2 000 Sum m er Olympics, the th ird m ascot
being Ollie the kookaburra.
Syd the platypus, Millie the echidna and Ollie the kookaburra, from the Sydney
2000 Olympics. They represent the water, earth and air.
43
5
Australia’s reptiles
Australia has a large num ber of different reptiles com pared to other
continents, and some of them can be very dangerous to hum ans - the
snakes in particular! The eastern brow n snake, for example, causes m ore
than half the deaths due to snake bites in Australia! This is not because their
venom 73 is the m ost dangerous, but because they often live in places like
farms, where there are people. The m ost venom ous snake in Australia - and
the w orld - is m uch less dangerous because it lives in isolated places where
there are alm ost no people. It is called the inland taipan, and its habitat is
the dry areas and grasslands in central and eastern Australia. The venom in
one bite from this snake could kill a person in hours, but up to now there
have been no recorded deaths from taipan bites. The eastern tiger snake, on
the other hand, lives in areas in the tem perate southern regions of Australia
where there are a lot of people. For this reason, and because it is the world s
fourth m ost venom ous snake, it is considered very dangerous to hum ans.
A nother very dangerous anim al is the saltwater crocodile, w hich lives in
the wet areas around D arw in in N orthern Territory. It is the w orlds largest
reptile. Some crocodiles grow up to seven m etres long and weigh m ore
than a tonne. ‘Salties’, as Australians call them , eat m ainly sm aller reptiles,
fish, turtles 74 and birds, but they can also kill and eat m uch larger anim als
like wild pigs and even cows and horses. They will also attack hum ans who
enter their territory.
Crocodiles can
see very well, even
at night, and they have
excellent hearing.
Baby crocodiles
are born with teeth
and hunt from the
moment they are born.
Crocodiles can grow
new teeth if the old
ones fall out.
A saltwater crocodile
44
In the past, saltwater crocodiles were hunted and killed for their skins,
and by the 1970s the species was in danger of disappearing. Now they are
protected, although a crocodile can be killed if the governm ent considers it
a danger to people.
‘The work done to protect the crocs has

been so successful that there are now
just as many in and around Darwin as
there are people - 100,000 of each!’
JENNIFER, PARK RANGER
M uch less dangerous than crocodiles are freshwater and sea turtles. O f
the m any different types, the strangest-looking is the pig-nosed turtle that
lives in the freshwater rivers of n o rth ern Australia and southern Papua New
Guinea. Unfortunately, there are fewer and fewer of these anim als because
they are hunted for their m eat and eggs - they are a traditional food of the
Aboriginal people there. The pig-nosed turtle is a large, heavy anim al - up to
seventy centim etres long and th irty kilogram s in weight - and its shell is so ft,
not hard.
Australia’s birds
Australia is hom e to hundreds of different birds: birds w ith brightly-
coloured feathers, birds that do am azing dance shows, birds that lay their
eggs un d er a m ountain of dead leaves, birds that can copy the sounds they
hear around them , birds that can t fly, and m any more.
Some of the m ost brightly-coloured birds are the parrots75. The king
parro t is especially beautiful. The m ale is m ostly bright red but has blue
and green feathers too; the female is m ostly bright green. They live in the
tem perate and sub-tropical rainforests along the eastern coast, but they
som etim es go into the suburbs of Sydney and C anberra in the winter. They
are not Talking parrots but m any people keep them as pets.
45
5
Lyrebirds76, perhaps Australia’s best-know n native birds, are fam ous for
their ability to copy sounds from their environm ent. They have long tail
feathers, w hich the males use to attract females. Birds of paradise 77 also
have long tail feathers of very bright colours and are very beautiful birds.
M ost species are found in Papua New Guinea, but three can be seen in the
trees of the tropical rainforests in n o rth ern and eastern Australia.
A cassowary
The largest native bird of Australia is the emu, w hich can be up to two
m etres tall. Em us can t fly but their long legs allow them to ru n very fast.
They live all over Australia on the grasslands. A nother bird that c a n t fly
r * *6
is the southern cassowary. It is alm ost as large as the em u and is found
in the rainforest of n o rth ern Q ueensland, but also in Papua New Guinea.
The males of both em us and cassowaries are very good fathers - they look
after the eggs and then the babies until they are nine m onths old. Sadly,
cassowaries are in danger o fp disappearing today because their habitat is
getting sm aller and smaller, and m any are killed on the road by cars.
Environmental dangers
Scientists say that there are 13.6 m illion species of plants and animals on
Earth. Australia has about one m illion of these, which represents m ore than
7% of the w orlds total, and is m ore than twice the num ber of species in
Europe and N orth A m erica put together. This m eans that Australia is not only
one of the m ost biodiverse countries in the world, but also a megadiversity.
However, there are m any threats
to Australia’s biodiversity: hum an biodiverse: having many different j
activity like farm ing, cutting down types of life form (plants and ™
animals), and the ecosystems they
trees and m ining, air and water
are part of
pollution, predators such as the
ecosystem: a network of living things
crow n-of-thorns starfish on the Great and their environment, for example
B arrier Reef, climate change and fires. a rainforest
Over the last two hundred years, megadiversity: a country with huge
m any Australian plant and animal biodiversity
species have disappeared. Today the
Australian governm ent is working w ith non-governm ental organizations
(NGOs) like the W W F (W orld W ide Fund for Nature, or W orld Wildlife
Fund), local groups and farm ers to protect the anim als and plants that are
in danger. They are doing this by trying to save habitats and ecosystems
rather than trying to save species themselves. Rescuing a single species is
n ot enough. If a species is in danger, then the habitat in w hich it lives is
probably in danger too. By looking after habitats, the anim als and plants
that live there have a better chance of survival. For example, farm ers often
use too m any chemicals on their land because they w ant to grow better
crops. M any of these chemicals end up in the water of rivers that flow into
the Great Barrier Reef, and this polluted water is bad for reef life. The W W F
has recently introduced farm ers to new ways of farm ing and they are now
starting to use fewer chemicals. As a result, the water flowing into the reef
is cleaner.
47
6 Food Culture
An early Australian farm
Until the m iddle of the 20th century, Australians ate foods based on the
rather boring food that the British settlers brought to the country after
1788. Before that, A boriginal Australians had survived for thousands of
years on w hat they hunted and gathered in the bush. This included em u
and kangaroo m eat, fish, witchetty grubs, lizards, snakes, a huge variety of
fruit and vegetables and honey, w hich they got from honey ants. Despite the
difficulties of their way of life, Aboriginals usually had enough to eat and
were healthy.
W hen the European settlers arrived, they brought supplies of food with
them on their ships: salted meats, bread and tea. They did not recognize
m any of the local plants that the Aboriginals ate, and they did not know
they were good to eat. So their diet did not include m any fresh vegetables
or m uch fresh fruit. W hen their m eat supplies ran out, the settlers had to
eat native m am m als like wom bats and echidnas to survive. In order to
provide the food they were m ore fam iliar with, they had to w ork hard to
Food Culture
develop farm ing. Sheep and cows were brought from England for m eat
and milk, and w heat was planted to m ake flour for bread. Rabbits were
also introduced for food and for hunting, but their num bers increased so
fast that later they were considered to be pests because they did so m uch
dam age to the environm ent.
Rabbit meat, however, becam e an im portant food during the 1930s
w hen the A ustralian econom y was doing badly. It was cheap, and the only
m eat that poorer families could afford to buy. W hen the econom y got
better, people stopped buying rabbit m eat and started to buy beef instead.
Today rabbit m eat is popular once again and even expensive A ustralian
restaurants have it on their m enus.
Bush tucker food

In the 19th century, an English plant scientist wrote that, although
A ustralian native plants could be eaten, they were not nice to eat. This was
the accepted view until the 1970s w hen non-A boriginal Australians began
to discover that their own country was full of good and healthy things to
eat. Kangaroo m eat is very low in fat, for example, and the kakadu plum
has m ore vitam in 78 C th an any other fruit in the world. By the end of the
1990s, people were growing native plants in large quantities to sell in shops
and superm arkets, and the governm ent had passed laws in every state
allowing the sale of kangaroo m eat for hum an consum ption79. Today m any
A ustralian chefs use bush tucker food in their recipes.
M any native plants are also used in beauty products and m edicines.
People believe that they can protect the body against diseases and help the
body get strong again after illness.
m
‘Witchetty grub s are very good for you
I . * and really quite nice! Eaten just as
they are, they have a nutty taste. And
they taste like chicken when they’re
cooked.’
ELLIE, A CHEF
■ 49
6
Multicultural influences on Australian food
The Chinese first introduced Asian food to Australia during the gold rushes
of the 1800s. They m issed the kind of food they ate at hom e, so m any
Chinese people opened restaurants to m ake and sell the food they missed.
They soon realized that they could m ake m ore m oney from selling food
than from selling the gold that they found.
The big changes to A ustralian eating and drinking habits, however,
came after the Second W orld War, w ith the arrival of large num bers of
Europeans, especially southern Italians and Greeks. Until then, a typical
Australian dinner was m eat (usually beef) and three vegetables, but these
M editerranean people were used to eating a m uch bigger variety of food:
m any different vegetables, cheeses and fish. The Italians especially, had an
im portant role in changing the country’s eating habits. They introduced
Australia to pasta, pizza and espresso coffee and, although people found the
new flavours strange at first, Italian restaurants can be found everywhere
today. It took longer for coffee to becom e popular, however. Tea was the
traditional hot drink, and it was only in the 1990s that coffee becam e really
fashionable in Australia.
By the 1980s, m igrants from all over the world had settled in Australia,
and they brought their food traditions w ith them . As a result, all the big
cities now have a wide range of restaurants - Chinese, Thai, Japanese,
Vietnam ese, Lebanese, as well as French, Italian and Greek - and people
are always keen to try new flavours.
In the last tw enty years, A ustralian chefs have started m ixing flavours
from different cultures, particularly traditional European and Asian
flavours, to produce w hat is know n as m odern A ustralian cooking, or M od-
Oz cuisine. Possibly as a result of the influence o f European and Asian food
cultures, the consum ption of meat, especially beef, has dropped by 50%
since the 1970s. O n the other hand, the consum ption of seafood, fruit and
vegetables has increased.
The barbecue (barbie)

The good climate and the Australians’ love of being outside have m ade
barbecues a very popular way of preparing food. They are also a great way of
entertaining lots of people, and are not very expensive because guests usually
bring their own m eat or fish to cook.
50
Food Culture
Fresh seafood and vegetables on a barbecue

M any people have a barbecue set in their garden or on their balcony,
and if they don’t have their own set, there are public ones in the parks and
on the beaches that they can use.
Australians traditionally celebrate The average number of
Australia Day (26th January), hours of sunshine per day in the
southern and eastern parts of
the biggest public holiday in the
Australia is between 7 and 9.
country, by organizing a barbie in
In the western, central and northern
the back garden and inviting lots of
parts of the country it is 9 or more.
friends and neighbours.
Over the years, the type of food
When Australians have a barbie,
people cook on the barbecue has they keep their food and drinks
changed w ith A ustralian tastes. In fresh in an esky - a special box for
the past the favourite was m eat, but keeping things cold. In the UK it is
today fresh seafood and vegetables called a cool box and in New Zealand
are m uch m ore popular. a chilly bin.
51
6
Some famous Aussie foods
Anzac biscuits
These sweet biscuits were created during the First W orld War. W om en
used to m ake them and send them to their husbands, who were fighting
in countries far from hom e. The biscuits were sent by ship and som etim es
took weeks to get to the soldiers. Despite the long sea journeys, the biscuits
were still good to eat because they are not m ade w ith eggs and so keep fresh
for a long time.
Lamingtons
Covered in chocolate and coconut80, these cakes take their nam e from Lord
Lam ington, the governor of Q ueensland from 1895 to 1901. A lthough
they are popular all through the year, they are traditionally eaten on
A ustralia Day.
Meat pie
If Australia had a national dish, it w ould probably be the m eat pie! Invented
in 1947, it has becom e p art of A ustralian culture. The pies are small enough
to be held in the hand and are usually bought as take-away snacks, especially
at sporting events. It is a tradition, in fact, for supporters at A ustralian rules
football games to eat m eat pies while they are w atching the game. A ustralian
m eat pies are now popular in other countries, including the USA.
Pavlova
This delicious dessert was probably created to h o n o u r 81 the Russian dancer
A nna Pavlova during or after one of her tours to Australia and New
Zealand in the 1920s. Pavlova is m ade w ith egg whites and sugar. It is sweet,
and often eaten w ith soft fruit like strawberries.
Te Papa, New Zealand’s national museum in the capital Wellington,

celebrated its first birthday in February 1999 with the world’s largest
pavlova, named ‘Pavzilla’ (a mix of the words pavlova and Godzilla, a
famous monster). This record was broken in March 2005, when some college
students in New Zealand created ‘Pavkong’ (a mix of the words pavlova and
King Kong). It was 64 metres long.
52
Food Culture
Food for special occasions
Australians have few traditions regarding food, although some religious
groups eat certain things on their feast days. The Christian festival of
Christm as is celebrated by m ost of the population but not m any people eat
the traditional British Christm as dinner of turkey 82 and vegetables followed
by a heavy Christm as pudding anymore. As Christm as falls in the hottest
m onths in the southern hemisphere, lighter foods like seafood, pasta and ice
cream have become m uch m ore usual, and Christm as barbies are also popular.
However, there are some people who celebrate ‘Christm as in July5, using the
coldest m onth of the year to enjoy a traditional hot Christm as dinner!
Easter is also widely celebrated in Australia. A typical m enu for Easter
Day includes beef or chicken w ith vegetables and a fruit pavlova for dessert.
Seafood, Italian lasagne and salads are favourites too.
Australia Day is a day for celebrating fam ous Aussie foods. M any towns
hold com petitions to see who can eat the m ost m eat pies or the m ost
lam ingtons. Some places even have Vegemite sandw ich-eating com petitions!
Vegemite, a dark-
brown paste, is as
much a part of Australia
as kangaroos are. It
is usually eaten with
butter on bread and is
one of the richest known
sources of vitamin B.
Over 22.7 million pots
of Vegemite are made in
Australia every year and
it can be found in nine
out often Australian
kitchens.
Australians love
eating Vegemite
53
7 The Arts
The Sydney Opera House
The visual arts (painting and sculpture) and the perform ing arts (music,
theatre and dance) in Australia were strongly influenced by W estern
traditions up until the m iddle of the 20th century. Since then there has been
a growing interest in Aboriginal A ustralian art, m usic and dance, and their
im portance as p art of the country’s cultural history and national identity.
As a result, Australia now has a very lively arts scene that is a m ix of m any
cultural traditions, old and new, as well as lots of new ideas from Asian and
African cultures.
All the state capitals have plenty of good cultural facilities w here people
can go to enjoy both the visual and perform ing arts: art galleries, opera
houses, concert halls, theatres, cinem as, as well as places w here large rock
concerts can be held. Individual states and cities also organize large arts
festivals during the year that offer som ething to suit all tastes.
A ccording to a recent survey by the A ustralian governm ent, alm ost
thirteen m illion or 8 8 % of A ustralian adults attend at least one cultural
event or perform ance every year. The m ost popular art form is film. O ther
results show that m ore th an 26% attend a popular m usic concert; 25% go
to an art gallery or m useum ; 19% see an opera or musical; 18% attend live
theatre; 11% attend a dance perform ance; and 9% attend a classical music
concert every year.
The Arts
Cinema
W atching films has been a popular form of entertainm ent in Australia
since the first cinem a opened in M elbourne in 1896. This was only one year
after the Lumiere brothers invented the cinem a camera. In the following
years, the A ustralian film industry developed quickly, even though film
technology was still very new. In 1905 it produced the w orlds first long film
The Story o f the Kelly Gang. These were the days of silent films of course.
Then after the First W orld War, Britain and the USA becam e the leaders in
film -m aking and by the 1960s the A ustralian film industry was doing very
badly. Fortunately, the governm ent decided to put m oney intop it and as a
result there were som e very good films in the 1970s, for example Picnic at
Hanging Rock (1975) directed by Peter Weir.
The film that has m ade the m ost m oney ever in Australia was m ade in
the 1980s: “Crocodile”Dundee (1986). Film ed in the outback and New York,
it starred the A ustralian com edian and actor Paul H ogan as the bushm an
M ichael J. “Crocodile” D undee. In the 1990s, a wave of new young directors
produced some international successes: the rom antic com edy Strictly
Ballroom (Baz L uhrm ann, 1992), the action dram a Romper Stomper
(Geoffrey W right, 1992), the rom antic com edy M uriels Wedding (P. J.
Hogan, 1994), and Shine, a film about the life of A ustralian pianist David
Helfgott, (Scott Hicks, 1996). These films, and others, m ade this period one
of the best in A ustralian film history.
Ticket sales at cinem as since 2 0 0 0 show that the A ustralian public
prefers musicals and anim ations to other types of film. In fact, the two
m ost popular films of the early 2000s were Baz T uhrm anns m usical M oulin
Rouge (2001) w ith Nicole K idm an and Ewan McGregor, and the m usical
anim ation Happy Feet (2006).
In 2002, a film based on a book of a tru e story won m any awards 83 for its
director Phillip Noyce, and created a lot of discussion in Australia. Rabbit-
Proof Fence tells the story of three Aboriginal girls in W estern A ustralia who
are taken away from their families and sent to live in a native settlem ent a
long way away. The girls are very unhappy there and eventually m anage to
escape, but it takes them nine weeks to walk 2,400 kilom etres across the
outback to get hom e. They are able to find their way back by following a
long fence that was built in 1907 to stop rabbits and other pests from the
east getting into the grasslands of W estern Australia.
55
7
Between 1900 and the early 1970s, the A ustralian governm ent rem oved
thousands of Aboriginal children from their families. Some were sent to
live w ith white families; others were trained as farm workers or servants.
Rabbit-Proof Fence is not the only film to deal w ith this p art of A ustralian
history; there are several others including Baz L uhrm anns very successful
historical rom antic dram a Australia (2008), w hich starred Nicole K idm an
and H ugh Jackman.
There are three fences in Western Australia: the original No. i Fence crosses the
state from north to south, No. 2 Fence is smaller and further west, and No. 3 Fence
is smaller still and runs east-w est. The fences took six years to build.
The Arts
Live music
According to recent research, in M elbourne m ore people listen to live m usic
in the city’s pubs, bars and clubs than watch football in the stadium s. It is
certainly true that, in the bigger A ustralian cities like Sydney, M elbourne
and Adelaide at least, there is a huge variety of m usic for people to enjoy
w hen they go out. Big rock concerts are usually held in sports stadium s like
the Rod Laver A rena in M elbourne. This tennis stadium is a favourite w ith
the A m erican singer Pink, who has perform ed there eighteen times!
Every year across Australia, there are m ore and m ore sum m er m usic
festivals. Some of them go on tour and are know n as Australia W ide
M usic Festivals. The best know n is the Big Day O ut, w hich tours the cities
of Sydney, Gold Coast, Adelaide, M elbourne and Perth from the end of
January, and is attended by m ore than 300,000 people. The biggest acts at
these travelling festivals can be seen in m ost capital cities where they are
supported by different local bands. The annual Tam worth C ountry Music
Festival is the largest m usic festival in the southern hem isphere and is often
in the list of the w orlds top ten best m usic festivals. Up to 50,000 people
attend this two-week festival.
The Big Day Out festival
7
Opera
O pera was first introduced into
Work on the Sydney Opera
House started in 1959, and
10,000 workers
a
small colonial theatres in the 1840s.
were employed to build it.
It was so popular that larger theatres
It cost A $ i o 2 million to build but
for bigger productions had to be
brings in more than A $ i billion a
built just a few years later. year through tourism,
The Sydney O pera House was in July 2007, it became a UNESCO
opened in 1973 and has since World Heritage Site. It was the
becom e one of the m ost im m ediately youngest cultural site ever to be
recognizable buildings of the 2 0 th added to the list.
century. D esigned by the D anish
architect Jorn Utzon, it is hom e to the four m ost im portant perform ing
arts com panies - O pera Australia, A ustralian Ballet, the Sydney Theatre
C om pany and the Sydney Sym phony Orchestra.
Theatre
Australia is still quite a young country so it does not have a long history
of theatre. For m any years, it was strongly influenced by British theatrical
tradition before its own theatrical culture started to develop at the end of
the 1960s. At that tim e a theatrical culture, which m ixed Aboriginal and
European theatrical traditions, was born. The first plays by Aboriginal
w riters were often about the problem s of survival, an im portant subject for
A boriginals and Torres Strait Islanders at the time.
Todays theatrical productions are very hi-tech, with special effects
created by new technology, and a m ix of different perform ance arts - acting,
dance, m usic and even circus acts. They are also influenced by the variety of
cultural backgrounds of the artists themselves, so A ustralian theatre really
has becom e a m irro r of the society it is part of, which is w hat it should be!
Dance
Australia’s best-know n classical ballet company, the M elbourne-based
A ustralian Ballet, has been perform ing since 1962. In its early days, the
fam ous Russian dancer Rudolph Nureyev w orked w ith the dancers, often
accom panying them on tours. In 1972, he m ade a film w ith them of the
ballet Don Quixote, directing it and also dancing in it. M any people describe
it as the best classical ballet film ever produced.
E 5 8
The Arts
O f the m any contem porary 84 dance com panies, the m ost im portant, and
the oldest, is the A ustralian Dance Theatre. It is based in Adelaide, but often
takes its shows to larger towns and cities all over Australia as well as on
international tours.
At the end of the 20th century, Aboriginal A ustralian dance traditions
began to influence dance, especially contem porary dance. O ne very
successful Aboriginal perform ing arts com pany is the Bangarra Dance
Theatre. Since it was form ed in
1989, its aims have been to help Today’s Adelaide - state capital
m ake the lives of Aboriginal of South Australia
Australians better and tell their Size: 659 square kilometres
stories through a new type of dance Population: about 1,225,235
theatre. The group was invited to Location: on the south coast
perform in the opening and closing Famous for: the Australian Dance
cerem onies of the 2000 Sum m er Theatre and its Fringe festival
Olympics.
Dancers from the Bangarra Dance Theatre

7
Arts festivals around Australia
Adelaide Fringe
O f the m any arts festivals in Australia, the Adelaide Fringe is considered to
be one of the m ost diverse in the world. For tw enty-four days in February
and M arch, m ore than 4,000 artists from Australia and the rest of the world
take part in m ore than 900 events, from comedy, circus, dance, film, theatre
and m usic to art and design.
Sydney Film Festival
A nother im portant event on the cultural calendar, the Sydney Film Festival,
takes place in June every year and lasts for twelve days. The first one was
held in 1954, m aking it one of the oldest film festivals in the world.
MONA FOMA
Tasmania is hom e to the contem porary m usic festival M ONA FOMA,
which takes place in January. The M ONA (M useum of Old and New Art) in
the capital H obart supports the festival, which gives local people and visitors
the chance to see world-fam ous perform ers as well as talented local ones.
Enlighten
Enlighten is only one of several events held to celebrate C anberra Day (the
second M onday of M arch). This day was chosen because the city was given
its official nam e on Monday, 12th M arch 1913. Enlighten is a fantastic family
festival because there are events, perform ances, tours and talks for children
as well as for adults. At night, m any of the city’s im portant buildings are lit
up in a light show. The aim is for people to
see C anberra ‘in a new light’
The light shows at Enlighten are great!

I took a lot of photos of them last year.
My favourite was the National Gallery of
Australia.’
CAMERON, A STUDENT
6o
8 Sport
Surfing at Bondi Beach in Sydney
Sport is an im portant part of the culture in Australia. Because of the good

climate, Australians can spend a lot of tim e outdoors, so m any people play
a sport of some kind.
The larger towns and cities have good facilities for people who like
taking p art in club and team sports: football and rugby fields, athletics 85
stadium s, sw im m ing pools and tennis courts. A nd for those who enjoy n o n
organized activities like walking, climbing, skiing, sw im m ing and surfing,
there is the bush, the outback, the m ountains and the beautiful coastline
w ith its thousands of kilom etres of sandy beaches.
Australians also enjoy watching sport so lots of people go to live
sporting events. As well as the action, people also love the excitem ent and
party atm osphere of live sport. The M elbourne Cup Carnival, for example,
is the liveliest horse racing event in the world and attracts over 300,000
people. A festival of horse racing, fashion and fun, it is held in O ctober and
N ovem ber betw een the football and cricket 86 seasons. The A ustralian O pen
tennis tournam ent in January is another big event on the sporting calendar,
and in February the A ustralian O pen of Surfing at Sydneys M anly Beach
attracts m any young people.
The events that attract the biggest crowds, however, are the A ustralian
rules football final and the series of cricket games played against England
know n as The Ashes.
61
8
Australian rules football
Australian rules football, or Aussie rules as the game is sometimes called,
is different from the football played in the UK or the USA. It is played with
an oval87 ball like in rugby, and the football field is oval too. The game was
invented in M elbourne and the first m atch was played there on 31st July 1858.
It was organized by a m an called Thomas Wills (1835-80), who had played
both cricket and football at Rugby School in England. W hen he returned
to Australia, he had the idea of starting a football club so that he and his
team mates in the M elbourne Cricket Club could keep fit during the winter
because cricket is only played in the summer. The Cricket Club agreed with
his suggestion and in 1859 the M elbourne Football Club was formed.
The m odern day Australian Football League (AFL) has eighteen teams,
m any of which were established in those early days. Although they come from
all the states except Tasmania, ten of the teams are based in Victoria. AFL is
perhaps the m ost watched sporting event in the country, and the AFL G rand
Final is the m ost im portant annual event on M elbournes sporting calendar. It
is usually held at the M elbourne Cricket G round (MCG) on the last Saturday
in September or the first Saturday in October.
Cricket and The Ashes series

W hen the first ships carrying convicts and settlers to Australia sailed from
England in 1787, the game of cricket was already being played in m any
parts of England. It is therefore likely that some of the people on the ship
knew how to play. However, there are no reports of any cricket m atches in
Sydney until 1804. That m atch was played by the officers and crew of the
ship H M S Calcutta on a piece of ground that is now a large public park in
the centre of Sydney called Hyde Park. After that, cricket was played m ore
often and by the 1820s it had becom e a popular sport.
The first cricket club in
Australia, the M elbourne Today's Melbourne - state capital
Cricket Club, began in the of Victoria
1830s. At first, it was not Size: 9 .9 9 0 square kilometres
very easy for the team to find Population: about 4 , 2 4 6 ,0 0 0
another team to play against, Location: on the south east coast
but very soon m any m ore Famous for: its cricket club in Yarra Park
clubs were established.
62
Sport
In 1861-62 an English cricket team sailed
A cricket team has
to Australia to play against the A ustralian eleven players.
team . They arrived in M elbourne to a w arm # The pitch that the game is
welcome on 23rd December, and played their played on is 20.12 metres
first m atch on 1st January 1862. A quarter of long and 3.05 metres
the city’s population watched the m atch. In wide.
1868, an A ustralian team , all Aboriginals, • The two most popular
went to England to play. The first m atch took types of cricket are the
place at The Oval cricket ground in London one-day game and test
match cricket, which is
and 20,000 people went to watch it. Possibly
played by international
m any of them were m ore curious about the
teams and lasts five days.
players than interested in the cricket because
they had never seen Aboriginals before.
■■■■I
The fifth and final Ashes Test
The Ashes series of test m atches betw een Australia and England is
played every two years, w ith both countries taking it in turns to hold the
series. There are five test m atches in a series and each m atch is played at a
different cricket ground (Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth, M elbourne and Sydney
in Australia). The series has an interesting history.
O n 29th August 1882 Australia beat England for the first tim e in a m atch
played in England. The defeat shocked England so m uch that one sports
journalist reported it as if it were a real person. He wrote, ‘English cricket
died at The Oval. The body will be b u rn t and the ashes 88 taken to Australia.’
W hen England was preparing to play in Australia the following year,
the captain of the team prom ised to bring back The ashes’. The team won,
everyone in England was happy and no one spoke about the ashes again
for tw enty years. Then in 1902, after another shocking defeat by Australia,
another English captain m ade the same promise: he w ould bring the ashes
back to England the following year. A nd he did! Later he wrote a book called
How we recovered the Ashes in which he described the game and how they
w on back the ashes. Ever since then the series of m atches betw een England
and Australia has been know n as The Ashes.
Tennis and the Australian Open

A lthough the attendance at tennis tournam ents 89 is not as high as at football
and cricket m atches, it is still an im portant sport in Australia where it has
been played since the end of the 19th century.
The first recorded tennis tournam ent took place in January 1880 at
the M elbourne Cricket Club, w hich also had tennis courts. Then in the early
1900s, A ustralian players started com peting in international tournam ents
like the Davis Cup, w hich they won 15 tim es in 18 years betw een 1950
and 1967. Australia’s own international tournam ent, the A ustralian O pen,
started in 1905 un d er the nam e of the A ustralasian O pen, becom ing the
A ustralian O pen in 1969. It takes place in January and is one of the four
G rand Slam tournam ents, the others being the French O pen (late May, early
June), W im bledon (late June, early July) and the US O pen (late August,
early Septem ber).
The A ustralian O pen is held in M elbourne at the Rod Laver Arena, w hich
up until 2000 was called Flinders Park. The stadium ’s nam e was changed to
hon o u r Rod Laver (born 1938), one of Australia’s greatest tennis players.
As well as being the only person to have won the G rand Slam series twice
64
Sport
(1962 and 1969), he also holds the record for the m ost singles titles won in
the history of tennis, w ith 200 career titles.
Horse racing and the Melbourne Cup

The first settlers introduced horse racing into Australia and the country is
now one of the top three racing nations of the world. In fact Australia has
m ore racetracks than any other country in the w orld - nearly 400 in all!
The m ost fam ous horse race is the M elbourne Cup, w hich is know n as
cthe race that stops a nation. No m atter w hat Australians are doing, at 3.20pm
on the first Tuesday in November, people everywhere stop to listen to the
race or watch it on TV. It
is a public holiday in the
city of M elbourne, and in
other places m any people
have a lunch party or
evening party to celebrate
the occasion. The w inner
of the M elbourne Cup
receives m ore than A $6
m illion.
is traditional for women to

ear crazy hats and dresses
>rthe Melbourne Cup. There
. even a competition called
ashion on the Field’ for the
lost creative fashion.
65
Surfing was invented by the
8 Polynesians some time
between AD 500 and 1000.
Surfing In 2003, the Brazilian surfer
Australia has about 11,000 beaches Picuruta Salazar did a record
ride of 12.5 kilometres on a wave
along its 37,000-kilometre coastline
known as the Pororoca on the
and some of them are first-class surf Amazon River. The ride lasted 37
beaches. The m ost popular ones are minutes.
M anly Beach, one of the beaches The biggest wave ever recorded
n o rth of Sydney, Bells Beach in was 530 meters high in Lituya bay,
Victoria, the beautiful white sand on the southern coast of Alaska.
beach of Cottesloe in Perth, and 20th June is International
the huge Surfers Paradise beach Surfing Day.
on the Gold Coast in Q ueensland.
W ith w onderful places like these to go, it is not surprising that surfing is
a popular A ustralian sport. However, the waters around Australia can be
dangerous for surfers. In 2012, there were five deaths from shark attacks
in W estern Australia. The average over the previous 50 years had been
only one death per year, so five is quite unusual. The box jellyfish 90 and the
irukandji jellyfish have also caused several deaths over the years.
Today’s Perth - state capital S j

of Western Australia
Size: 5,386 square kilometres
Population: about 1,898,000
Location: on the south-west coast
Famous for: its beaches
1 66
Sport
The opening ceremony of the Sydney 2000 Summer Olympics
The 2000 Summer Olympics

In 2000, the m illennium year, the Sum m er Olympic Games were held in
Sydney. They began with an amazing opening ceremony, which was a
celebration of the history of the whole country. Both the Aboriginal people
and the early settlers in the outback were represented. The cerem ony ended
with the Aboriginal 400-m etres ru n n er Cathy Freem an lighting the Olympic
flame. Later in the Games, Cathy won her first Olympic gold m edal91,
helping Team Australia to take fourth placep in the Olympic m edal table
with fifty-eight medals. There were 632 m em bers on the team , 349 m en and
283 wom en, representing their country in all of the twenty-eight sports.
The h onour of carrying the A ustralian flag in the closing cerem ony was
given to one of the team s youngest m em bers, the 17-year-old sw im m er
Ian Thorpe. He was also one of the tru e stars of the Games, w inning five
m edals - three gold and two silver. At the end of the ceremony, the IOC
(International Olympic Com m ittee) President Juan A ntonio Sam aranch
declared the Sydney Olympics to have been the T est ever5, and nobody
disagreed. It was a golden m om ent in the history of A ustralian sport.
67
9 The Big Things
of Australia
The Big Banana - one of the Big Things of Australia
Every state in Australia has at least one. A few are natural features of the
landscape like a lake or a rock, but m ost are m an-m ade sculptures of
fruit, fish, people, anim als and so on, and some of them are quite strange.
However, they all have one thing in com m onp - their extra-large size! They
are know n as the Big Things of Australia.
Big Things first appeared in the 1960s and were often built by shop
owners to attract visitors to their shops. In the 1970s it becam e a tradition
for A ustralian towns to create a Big Thing that was their own unique tourism
icon - som ething that was closely linked to the tow n and helped people to
rem em ber their visit there. For example, the small tow n of Dadswells Bridge
in Victoria has a Big Koala because of the m any koalas that can be seen
there. Some were built just to bring tourists to the place and had m useum s
inside them . Today there are over 150 of these icons around Australia and
new ones are being built all the time.
\ 68
The Big Things of Australia
In the past, people w ould organize a holiday around them . They would
plan a road trip that took them past a num ber of Big Things, w hich they
used as backgrounds for photographs of themselves. O ne of the m ost
popular Big Things was, and still is, the Big Banana.
The Big Banana (NSW)

Standing at the entrance to a banana farm in CofFs H arbour on the north
coast of New South Wales, the Big Banana (thirteen m etres long and five
m etres high) was one of the first Big Things. It was the idea of a banana
grower called John Landi, who, in 1964, was looking for a way to get
people to come to his small farm to buy his fruit. He had heard about a Big
Pineapple 92 in Hawaii that m any people went to see, so he decided to do
som ething similar. The engineer he hired to build the Big Banana based it on
a prize-w inning banana at a local farm ing show. Lots of people were curious
w hen they heard about it and went to the farm to see it. W hile they were
there, they also bought John Landis bananas, m aking him a very rich man!
The Big Banana is now an
im portant tourist attraction. Children The first bananas arrived in the
(andadults!) can have fun in the water S\ ^ arbour a |"ea tbe
. . . . i i . island of F ij i in 1881 . That area and
park, watch shows about the history anQther one further north a(ong the
of bananas in the theatre and do a New South Wales coast were the
tour of the farm to see how banana majn growing regions for bananas
products are made. There is also a in Australia in the 1900 s. Today
shop that sells sweets and drinks - all the tropical regions of Queensland
m ade with bananas of course! produce most of Australia’s bananas.
‘My favourite part of the Big Banana

is definitely the sweet shop. You can
watch them making the sweets there,
It’s very interesting for both children
and adults.’
KUMIKO, A TOURIST
69
9
The Big Pineapple (Queensland)
A nother popular fruit sculpture is the Big Pineapple on Australia’s sunshine
coast in south-east Queensland. Built in 1971, it stands in front of a large
pineapple farm. At sixteen m etres tall, it is the largest pineapple-shaped
building in the world. Visitors can take a tour of the farm and learn about
how the fruit is grown. There is also a small zoo. The farm was once a
m acadam ia nut factory, and m acadam ia nuts are still grown there.
Larry the Lobster (South Australia)

A nother sculpture w ith a food link is Larry the Lobster. The coastal tow n
of Kingston SE in South Australia is a popular holiday destination and
is fam ous for its seafood. Its fish and chip shops are said to be some of
the best in Australia - some have even won prizes! But it is also fam ous
for being the hom e of one of Australia’s biggest Big Things - Larry
the Lobster. The sculpture was built by Paul Kelly in 1979. Paul Kelly
also built the Big Scotsm an (Scotty), the oldest Big Thing in Australia.
Larry stands 17 m etres tall. He is 15.2 m etres long from head to tail and
13.7 m etres wide. Some people believe that Larry is three tim es bigger than
it was planned to be because of a mistake. The plans for the sculpture were
in feet but Kelly thought they were in metres! O ne foot is about a third of
a m etre. Larry the lobster
The Big Merino (NSW)
A nother Big A nim al is the Big
M erino. M erino is a type of sheep.
In the 19th century, wool was the
m ost im portant A ustralian product,
and the area around the city of
G oulburn, 200 kilom etres south
west of Sydney, was especially
fam ous for its sheep farms. In
recognition of this, the city built a
fifteen-m etre tall sculpture of a ram
(male sheep).
It is a life-like m odel of a famous
ram from a local farm and is known
as Rambo by the local people.
There are three floors inside the Big
Merino. O n the ground floor there
is a gift shop, and on the second
floor there is an exhibition about The Mer'no
wool production in Australia. Visitors can then climb to the third floor of
Rambo and look out through his eyes to get a good view of the local area.
Ram bo is not the only sculpture that celebrates the A ustralian wool
industry. A nother one can be found in Wagin, a tow n about 240 kilom etres
south-east of Perth in W estern Australia. However, Bart the G iant Ram is
only 9 m etres tall, so m uch sm aller than Rambo.
Sheep first arrived in Australia w ith the settlers in 1788. There were not
m any of them and after a few m onths m ost had been killed for food or had
died. In 1796, some m erino sheep were brought to Australia from South
Africa and an English-born farm er called John M acarthur bought a few of
them . He realized that he could m ake m ore m oney from selling their fine,
soft wool than he could from selling his other sheep for meat. Five years
later, he and his wife Elizabeth had built up the biggest m erino sheep farm
in the colony, and in 1807 they started to export their wool to England.
The wool industry developed very quickly and soon there were sheep
farm s in every Australian state. By 1870, Australia had becom e the w orlds
biggest producer of wool.
71
Boots made of sheepskin
have been called ugg
For one hun d red years the A ustralian boots> ugh boQts and ug boQts
econom y depended on the wool industry. jn Australia and New Zealand
People used to say that the country was since the late 1950 s. The
‘riding on the sheeps back’, m eaning original name of the boots was
that Australia depended on wool as its probably‘ugly boots’. They
m ain export. A lthough wool is now less became popular after surfers
im portant as an export, those words still startecl t0 wear them to keep
1 cr their feet warm after surfing in
show the econom ic im portance of farm ing .■ ,, , rjL. &
. r ° the cold water of the ocean,
to the country. Ugg boQts are nQW very
M any products m ade from the best popular in many other
Australian m erino wool are on sale in the countries around the world,
gift shop inside the Big Merino: scarves,
hats, jum pers and jackets, and blankets for pets. There are also products m ade
from sheepskin like Australian-made ugg boots.
The Big Ned Kelly (Victoria)

N ed Kelly (1854 or 1855-80) was an Irish-A ustralian bushranger who has
becom e an iconic A ustralian figure since his death. He is linked to the tow n
of Glenrowan, where the Big N ed Kelly stands, because on 27th June 1880 he
was arrested there for having killed three policem en.
Ned and the other m em bers of his gang (his two friends and his brother)
had gone to Glenrowan to wait for the arrival of the police, who they knew
were com ing to arrest them . They also knew that there would be a gunfight,
so they had m ade m etal protection for their heads and bodies. They had
forgotten about protecting their arm s and legs, however. W hen the police
finally arrived, there was a terrible fight, during which Kelly was shot in the
left foot and the left leg as well as in his arm s and hands, and one of his
friends was killed. Despite his wounds, Ned m anaged to escape from the
hotel in which he and his gang had been hiding. In order to finish the fight,
the police decided to burn down the building and the other two m em bers
of the gang died in the fire. Ned was caught, arrested and put to death by
hanging93. He died on 1 1th Novem ber 1880. His last words were ‘Such is life!’
Today, despite all his crim es, N ed Kelly is seen by m any as a hero
because he fought against the A nglo-A ustralian ruling class. However,
there are others who th in k that he is not a good example of a hero due to
his involvem ent in killing.
72
Some other Big Things
The Big Boxing Crocodile

This crocodile sculpture in the tow n of H um pty D oo in N orthern Territory
is a popular stopping point for tourists travelling betw een D arw in and
Kakadu N ational Park. It is a reference to the large num ber o f crocodiles in
the area. There is another Big Crocodile in the Kim berley region of W estern
Australia.
The Big Boxing Crocodile

73
9
The Big Cane Toad9*
This is in the tow n of Sarina in Q ueensland and is one of the ugliest Big
Things in Australia! Cane toads were introduced from Hawaii in 1935
to kill insects that were eating the roots of sugar cane plants. The adult
toads are very large. They can weigh up to 1.8 kilogram s and be 15-23
centim etres long. Today there are m illions of cane toads in Australia and
they are causing a lot of problem s. They produce a poison 95 on their skin
that can kill the small anim als that eat them . As a result, these species are
slowly disappearing. The poison from a cane toad can also injure hum ans.
The Big Captain Cook
This sculpture was put up in the tow n of Cairns in the far n o rth of
Q ueensland because C aptain C ook was the first European to land there. He
was sailing up the coast in June 1770 w hen his small ship Endeavour was
dam aged on the Great Barrier Reef, so he had to stop in Cairns to fix it.
The Big Farmer
The Big Farm er in South Australia celebrates Australia’s farm ing industry.
Eight m etres high and weighing about seventy tonnes, it took the sculptors
two years to carve and was first shown to the public in 2009. The top
represents the sun, while in the body there are carvings of crops. Sheep at
the foot of the statue represent the sheep farm ers in the region, as well as
creating the feet of the figure w hen seen from a distance.
74
io Talented Australians
A ustralia has a small population for such a large country, but over the years
it has produced m any talented people in a variety of areas from science and
invention to popular entertainm ent and sport.
Science and invention

The list of A ustralian Nobel Prize w inners for science and m edicine shows
the huge contribution the country has m ade to these areas.
19 15 Lawrence and William Bragg, the father and son team. Nobel
Prize in Physics. William was only 25 years old at the time, and
is still the youngest winner ever for science.
1945 Howard Florey. Nobel Prize in Physiology96 or Medicine, shared
with Alexander Fleming and Ernest Chain (both British).
Florey, Chain and Fleming were all involved in the discovery
of penicillin97 and its development for medical use. Fleming
usually gets the most credit but it was in fact Florey who
developed its use in hospitals to fight serious diseases. It is
thought that his discoveries have saved over 82 million lives.
i9 6 0 Macfarlane Burnett. Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
1963 John Eccles. Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, shared with
Andrew Huxley and Alan Hodgkin (both British) for their work
on the nervous system.
1970 Bernard Katz. Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, shared
with Julius Axelrod (American) and Ulfvon Euler (Swedish).
1975 John Cornforth. Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
1994 John Harsanyi. Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics.
1996 Peter Doherty. Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, shared
with Rolf M. Zinkernagel (Swiss).
2005 Barry Marshall. Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, shared
with Robin Warren.
2009 Elizabeth Blackburn. Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
Elizabeth was the first Australian woman to win a Nobel Prize.
2 0 11 Brian Schmidt. Nobel Prize in Physics, shared with Adam Riess
and Saul Perlmutter (both American).
Australian scientists are
especially interested in climate change,
or global warming, because it could have
many negative effects on all the plant and
animal life in Australia. For example, as the
temperature of the oceans rises, the warmer
water will damage the Great Barrier Reef.
Australia’s climate will also change; there
will be more powerful tropical storms and
longer periods of drought. Times of drought
cause the land to become very dry and this
can lead to many serious bush fires.
Talented Australians
As well as these individual prizes, a num ber of Australians have shared in
Nobel Prizes that have been awarded to groups or organizations. For example,
in 2007 the Nobel Peace Prize was given to an international group that was
working on climate change. Therefore, the Australian scientists involved in
that work shared the Prize.
Popular entertainment
The nam es of Australias fam ous film stars are probably m uch m ore fam iliar
to m ost of us than those of its scientists. A m ong the best-know n are the
actresses Cate Blanchett and Nicole Kidm an, and the actor H ugh Jackman,
who have all starred in aw ard-w inning films.
Born in 1969 in M elbourne, Cate Blanchett trained in the theatre before
she m oved into filmsp in 1997. H er acting talent was soon recognized and
in 1998 she was offered the p art of Q ueen Elizabeth I of England in the very
successful film Elizabeth. After that she appeared in the three films (2001 to
2003) m ade by the New Zealand director Peter Jackson of J.R.R. Tolkeins
books The Lord o f the Rings. In 2004, she added an Academy Award to her
already long list of awards for her perform ance as the Hollywood actress
Katherine H epburn in The Aviator (by the A m erican director M artin
Scorsese), in w hich she starred w ith Leonardo diCaprio. In 2013, another
fam ous A m erican director, W oody Allen, asked her to play the p art of a rich
A m erican w om an who suddenly becom es poor in his com edy dram a Blue
Jasmine. The reviews of the film were excellent and some said that it was her
best screen perform ance ever.
Nicole K idm an was born in 1967 in Honolulu, but m oved to Australia
w ith her family w hen she was four years old. She m ade her first film in 1983
w hen she was just 16 years old. The excellent reviews she received soon
caught the attention of Hollywood directors and in 1990 she was invited to
go to the USA to m ake Days o f Thunder, a film in w hich she co-starred w ith
Tom Cruise, her boyfriend at the tim e. The couple later m arried and were
together for ten years.
D uring the 1990s, Nicole K idm an m ade several successful films,
including a couple w ith Tom Cruise. Then in 2001, the A ustralian director
Baz L uhrm ann invited her to star in his m usical M oulin Rouge, w hich was
a huge success. The following year she w on the Academy Award for Best
Actress for her perform ance in The Hours by the English theatre and film
77
10
director Stephen Daldry. She w orked w ith Baz L uhrm ann again in the
dram a Australia (2008), in w hich she co-starred with H ugh Jackman.
Like Cate Blanchett,
H ugh Jackman (born 1968,
Sydney) started his career
in the theatre. A very
talented singer, dancer
and actor, he has been
involved in film, m usical
theatre and television. He
becam e know n outside
Australia in 1998, w hen
he played the leading part
in the Royal N ational
Theatres popular theatre
production of Oklahoma!
in Londons West End.
Recently he starred
as Jean Valjean in the
aw ard-w inning film Les
Miserables ( 2 0 1 2 ). For the
part, he had to lose about
eight kilogram s for the
early scenes in the film
w hen Valjean is in prison,
and then put on ten
kilogram s for later scenes
w hen Valjean becom es a
f n Hugh Jackman
successful businessm an.
A lot of talented singers and m usicians in Australia are very successful
in their hom e country but rem ain alm ost unknow n internationally. Kylie
M inogue, the princess of pop, is certainly not one of these! She has had a
long and successful career in the UK, Europe and her native Australia. Born
in 1968 in M elbourne, she began as a child actress on Australian television,
becom ing fam ous through her part in the television soap opera Neighbours,
before becom ing a pop singer in 1987. In 2012, she celebrated 25 years of
78
‘Why do I like Hugh Jackman? Because

he’s such a good actor, and he’s very
handsome!’
DARIA, A FILM FAN
musical perform ances with a num ber one hit song called Time Bomb. She
has never given up acting, however, and has appeared in several films. They
include Moulin Rouge (2002), Jack and Diane (2012) and Holy Motors (2012)
by the French director Leos Carax. Kylie has also starred in a popular UK
talent show called The Voice.
The hard rock band A C /D C are also big international stars. Known as
Acca Dacca in Australia, they have been perform ing for over 40 years but
are still very popular and have lots of fans all over the world. Their album
Back in Black, m ade in 1980, is one of the highest-selling album s of all time.
They even have a street nam ed after them ! The city of M elbourne, where
they started their m usical career, changed the nam e of C orporation Lane to
ACDC Lane to hon our them .
A few famous people are often thought to be Australian but in fact they
are not!
The 1970s pop group The Bee Gees, for example, were born on
the Isle of Man. In the late 1950s, their family moved to Queensland, where
the boys began their music careers.
The actor Russell Crowe was born in New Zealand but spent his childhood
in Sydney before returning to New Zealand.
Mel Gibson was born in the USA and moved to Sydney when he was twelve.
He has never had Australian nationality.
79
10
Sport
Dawn (born 1937) was the first woman to swim 100 metres in
Fraser less than a minute. The American boxer Muhammad Ali
called her ‘the greatest athlete of the 20thcentury’.
Margaret (born 1942) won sixty-six Grand Slam championships98 in

Court her professional career (1960-77) and is the only tennis
player ever to achieve the Grand Slam in doubles (playing
with a partner) matches as well as in singles matches. This
means she won all four Grand Slam tournaments in the
same year.
Don (1908-2001) is perhaps Australia’s greatest ever

Bradman sportsman. Many people say that he was the best
cricketer of all time. When Nelson Mandela was freed
from prison in 1990 after 27 years, one of his first
questions was, ‘Is Don Bradman still alive?’
Sir Jack (born 1926) won the Formula One world motor racing
Brabham championship three times - in 1959, i960 and 1966. In
his third win he drove a car that he had made himself,
becoming the only champion driver everto do so.
Rod Laver (born 1938) is one of the greatest tennis players in the
history of the sport. He is the only playerto have won the
Grand Slam twice (1962 and 1969).
Phar Lap (19 26 -32), Australia’s wonder horse, was a champion

racehorse. During the 1930s, he won nearly all the races
he competed in. He died mysteriously in 1932 just 16
days after winning a big race in the USA. After his death,
his heart, which weighed 6.2 kilograms (twice as much
as that of a normal horse), was given to a museum in
Canberra. His body was also kept and put on show in
Melbourne Museum.
80
A man with an unusual talent
Finally, a fam ous A ustralian who
becam e a popular TV personality
after his series of docum entary
films about crocodiles was first
shown on A ustralian TV in
1996 - the wildlife expert and
environm entalist, Steve Irwin.
Irw in came from a family of
anim al lovers. His parents hobby
was looking after injured anim als
and in 1970 they both gave up
their jobs so that they could start a
small reptile park in Q ueensland.
His father Bob used to catch all
the crocodiles and snakes for the
Steve Irwin in action
park him self and, w hen he saw
his son was interested in reptiles too, taught him how to do it. Steve was just
nine years old w hen he caught his first crocodile!
Steve started m anaging the park in 1991, changing the nam e to Australia
Zoo. In the same year he m et Terri Raines, an A m erican wildlife expert,
who he m arried eight m onths later. They decided to spend the first weeks
of their m arried life catching crocodiles and invited a cam era crew to film
them doing it. The film later becam e the first p art of their popular television
series The Crocodile Hunter. The shows were later watched by m illions of
people all around the world and Steve went on to m akep a full-length film
and several other TV films about crocodiles.
Sadly, in 2006 Irw in was killed by a stingray" while filming in the sea
near the n o rth ern Q ueensland coast.
Australia is often referred to as ‘The Lucky C ountry 5 and there are plenty of
reasons why that is true. It has friendly people, a good climate, interesting
and unique wildlife, beautiful beaches, healthy natural food, a huge am ount
of im portant natural resources and a rich cultural and sports calendar. It
is not surprising that Australians are very proud of their country and their
heritage, and love the lives they lead in this am azing country!
8i
Points For Understanding
1
1 W hat does the nam e Australia mean?

2 W hich parts of the country have the largest desert areas?
3 W hat is the nam e of the large rock in the Red Centre of Australia?
4 W ho was Banjo Paterson and why is he famous?
5 W hy is the future of the D aintree Rainforest in danger?
6 W hy are earthquakes com m on in New Zealand?
1 How old are the rem ains of M ungo Man?

2 W hen were the Torres Strait islands created?
3 How did the Aboriginal Elders give their knowledge to the younger
m em bers of the tribe?
4 W hat is a totem?
5 How do Aboriginal children learn to behave correctly?
6 W here do m any Aboriginals still follow their traditional way of life?
3_
1 W hat is the Dream tim e?
2 W hat are songlines?
3 How were lakes and rivers m ade according to the Rainbow Serpent
creation myth?
4 W hat is a Bora?
5 W hy is som e of the rock art in Kim berley and Kakadu interesting?
6 How did A boriginal artists hide sacred inform ation in their paintings
in the 1970s?
82
_4
1 W hat was the nam e of the ship that Captain C ook first sailed to
Australia in?
2 W hy did Britain tran sp o rt convicts to penal colonies?
3 W hich was the only A ustralian state not to have penal colonies?
4 How did Australia change w ith the m oney from the gold rushes?
5 O n which day does Australia rem em ber all the Australian soldiers
killed in wars?
6 W hen did Aboriginal people get the right to vote in Australia?
5_
1 W hat is unusual about Australia’s anim al and plant life?

2 In w hat way are possum s sim ilar to koalas?
3 W hat are m am m als that lay eggs called?
4 W hich snake is the m ost dangerous to people: the eastern brow n snake
or the inland taipan?
5 W here can birds of paradise be found in Australia?
6 W hy can Australia be described as a megadiversity?
6_
1 W hat are kakadu plum s a valuable source of?

2 W hat do w itchetty grubs taste like if they are cooked?
3 W hat is M od-O z cuisine?

4 W hy do Anzac biscuits stay fresh for a long time?
5 W hat do Australians typically eat for dessert on Easter Day?
6 How do Australians eat Vegemite?
83
7_
1 W hich is m ore popular in Australia: going to an art gallery or going to

the theatre?
2 W hy was the long fence in W estern A ustralia built?
3 W hy are some m usic festivals called A ustralia W ide M usic Festivals?
4 W hat nationality was the architect of the Sydney O pera House?
5 W hich w ell-known dancer w orked w ith the A ustralian Ballet
company?
6 W hat happens in C anberra during the Enlighten festival?
A
1 W hy was the game of A ustralian rules football invented?
2 W hen was the first cricket m atch played in Australia?
3 How did Australia honour one of its great tennis players?
4 W hy is the first Tuesday in N ovem ber an im portant date in Australian
sport?
5 W hen is International Surfing Day?
6 How m any m edals did Australia win in the Sum m er Olympics of 2000?
_9
1 In w hat way are the Big Things of Australia tourism icons?
2 W hat is the link betw een Larry the Lobster and Scotty?
3 W ho was John M acarthur?
4 W here does the nam e ugg boot probably come from?
5 How did the bushranger N ed Kelly die?
6 W hy were cane toads brought to Australia?
84
10
1 How m any tim es did an A ustralian win the Nobel Prize for Physiology
or M edicine betw een 1915 and 2011?
2 W hat was the nam e of the m usical film directed by Baz L uhrm ann and
starring Nicole Kidman?
3 How did Kylie M inogue first becom e famous?
i\ W hich sport was D on Bradm an fam ous for playing?
5 W hat was unusual about Phar Lap?
6 How did Steve Irw in spend the first few weeks of his m arried life?
85
Glossary
1 federation (page 6 )
the process by w hich the six A ustralian colonies joined together on 1st
January 1901 to create the C om m onw ealth of Australia
2 hemisphere (page 6 )
one half of the Earth, divided betw een n o rth and south by the equator -
an im aginary line that goes round the E arth
3 tropical (page 6 )
in or from the hottest parts of the w orld
4 species (page 6 )
a plant or anim al group whose m em bers all have sim ilar general features
and are able to produce young plants or anim als together
5 isolated (page 6 )
an isolated place is a long way from other places and is often difficult to
get to
6 land mass (page 6 )
a continent or large area of land surrounded by sea. A mass is a large
am ount of som ething.
7 colony (page 6 )
a country that is controlled by another country. If a country colonizes
another country or region, it takes control of it by going to live there or
by sending people to live there. This process is called colonization. The
people who establish a colony, or who go to live in it are called colonists.
The adjective used to describe a system or period in w hich one country
rules another is colonial.
8 independent (page 6 )
ruled by its own governm ent, rather than controlled by another country
9 indigenous (page 6 )
indigenous people lived in a place for a very long tim e before other
people came to live there
10 survey (page 6 )
a set of questions that you ask a large num ber of people or organizations
86
11 Oceania (page 8 )
the p art of the w orld (region) that includes the Pacific islands and the
seas around them , som etim es also including Australia and N ew Zealand
12 unique (page 8 )
not the same as anything else
13 temperate (page 9)
a temperate climate or region is never extrem ely hot or extrem ely cold
14 feature (page 9)
an im portant p art or aspect of som ething
15 whale (page 9)
a very large sea anim al that breathes air through a hole on the top of its
head
16 sacred (page 9)
considered to be holy or connected w ith religion in a special way
17 poet (page 10 )
som eone who writes poem s
18 practical (page 10 )
m aking sensible decisions and choices, especially the types of decisions
and choices that you have to m ake every day
19 range (page 10 )
a num ber of m ountains considered as a group
20 eventually (page 11 )
at the end of a process or period of tim e in w hich m any things happen
21 heritage site (page 12 )
a place that has a lot of historical im portance and is officially not
allowed to be changed or damaged. Heritage is the art, buildings, places,
traditions, and beliefs that a society considers im portant to its history
and culture.
22 skeleton (page 12 )
the set of bones that supports a hum an or anim al body
23 survival (page 12)
the fact or state of continuing to live or exist, especially in difficult
conditions. If som ething or som eone continues to exist, especially in a
difficult or dangerous situation, they survive.
24 threatened (page 12)
likely to be affected by som ething bad
87
25 predator (page 13)
an anim al that kills and eats other anim als
26 global warming (page 13)
the slow increase in the tem perature of the E arth caused partly by heat
being unable to escape from the atm osphere, increasing the am ount of
carbon dioxide in the atm osphere
27 origins (page 14)
the country, race, or social situation that som eone comes from
28 immigration (page 16)
the process in w hich people enter a country in order to live there
perm anently
29 eruption (page 16)
if a volcano erupts, it explodes inside and flames, rocks, and lava - rock
in the form of hot liquid - come out o f the top. This is called an eruption.
30 earthquake (page 16)
a sudden shaking m ovem ent of the ground
31 rugby (page 16)
a game played by two teams of players with a ball shaped like an egg. Goals
are scored by kicking the ball over a high bar, and points called tries are
scored by putting the ball behind the goal line.
32 spear (page 17)
a long weapon like a stick with one sharp end
33 remains (page 17)
the part of something that is left after the rest has been finished, used, or
destroyed or the body of a person or animal that has died
34 settler (page 18)
someone who goes to live in a place where not many people live, and starts
to make it into a com m unity The place where settlers make a community
is called a settlement.
35 tribe (page 18)
a large group of related families who live in the same area and share a
common language, religion, and customs
36 crop (page 18)
a plant grown for food, usually on a farm
37 hunting - to hunt (page 18)
to kill animals for food or for their skin or other parts
88
38 gathering - to gather something (page 18)
to search for and find similar things that you need or want
39 shellfish (page 18)
sea creatures with a hard shell around them
40 ceremony (page 20)
a form al public event w ith special traditions, actions, or words. A set of
actions that are perform ed in a particular order in a cerem ony is called
a ritual.
41 ancestor (page 2 1 )
som eone who is related to som eone else and who lived a long tim e ago
42 lizard (page 22)
a small anim al w ith a long tail and rough skin that lives m ainly in hot
places. Lizards are a type of reptile - a type of cold-blooded anim al that
gives birth to young anim als as eggs and whose body is covered in flat
hard pieces of skin called scales.
43 kangaroo (page 22)
a large A ustralian anim al that moves by jum ping, has strong back legs,
and carries its baby in a pocket on the front of its body. You can find out
m ore about kangaroos and see a photograph on page 41.
44 established - to establish something (page 24)
to m ake som ething start to exist or start to happen
45 track (page 25)
the direction in w hich som ething moves
46 source (page 25)
a person, place, or thing that provides som ething that you need or want
47 decorative (page 26)
intended to look attractive rather th an be useful. If you decorate
som ething, you m ake it look m ore attractive by putting nice things on it
or in it.
48 feather (page 26)
one of the narrow tubes w ith thin soft hairs on each side that cover a
bird s body
49 carved - to carve something (page 28)
to p ro d u ce a p a tte rn or w ritin g on th e surface o f so m e th in g by
cutting it
89
50 dot (page 30)
a very small spot of ink or colour
51 claim - to claim something (page 32)
to say that som ething is yours, especially as a right
52 base (page 32)
a place from which an activity can be planned, started, or carried out
53 convict (page 32)
som eone w ho is in prison because they have com m itted a crime. A colony
for convicts is a place where crim inals are sent to live as a punishm ent
for com m itting a crime. This is also called a penal settlement.
54 harbour (page 33)
an area of water near the land w here it is safe for boats to stay
55 printer (page 34)
som eone w hose job is to operate a printing press - a m achine that is
used for printing newspapers, books, m agazines etc
56 blacksmith (page 34)
som eone whose job is to m ake things out of m etal
57 industrialization (page 34)
the process of developing industry - the production of goods, especially
those m ade in factories. C ountries w ith a lot of industry are described as
industrialized.
58 steal - to steal something (page 34)
to take som ething that belongs to som eone else w ithout perm ission
59 gold rush (page 35)
a period in the past w hen a lot of people went to a place where gold had
been discovered in order to try to find gold and becom e rich
60 wheat (page 35)
a tall plant that produces grain for m aking bread and other foods
61 mine (page 36)
a large hole or tunnel in the ground from which people, called miners,
take coal, gold etc. The process of getting coal or m etal from under the
ground is called mining.
62 economy (page 38)
the whole of a country’s business, industry, and trade, and the m oney
that they produce
90
63 rights (page 38)
a right is som ething that you are m orally or legally allowed to do or have.
The Aboriginal people w anted to be allowed to vote in elections in the
same way that non-A boriginal people were.
64 recognize - to recognize something (page 38)
to accept the authority or status of som eone or som ething
65 diverse (page 40)
very different from each other
66 mammal (page 40)
an anim al that is b o rn from its m o th ers body, not from an egg, and
drinks its m o th ers m ilk as a baby. H um ans, dogs, and cows are all
m am m als.
67 koala (page 41)
an A ustralian anim al w ith grey fur, large ears, and no tail. Koalas live in
eucalyptus trees and eat their leaves. A eucalyptus is a tall tree originally
from Australia w ith leaves that do not fall off in winter. It produces an oil
that is used in m edicines.
68 possum (page 42)
A m arsupial with thick fur and a long tail
69 dingo (page 42)
an anim al like a wild dog that lives in Australia
70 pest (page 42)
an insect or small anim al that damages plants or supplies of food
71 habitat (page 42)
the type of place that a particular anim al usually lives in or a particular
plant usually grows in, for example a desert, forest, or lake
72 mascot (page 43)
an anim al, person, or object that is considered to be lucky or is used as a
symbol of a team or organization
73 venom (page 44)
a substance produced by some anim als, especially snakes and insects,
that can kill you if they bite or sting you. An anim al that produces venom
is described as venomous.
74 turtle (page 44)
an anim al w ith a shell and four short legs that lives on the land, in the
sea, or in rivers and lakes
91
75 parrot (page 45)
a bright coloured tropical bird
76 lyrebird (page 46)
a bird that lives on the ground in Australia. The males have very long
tails.
77 bird of paradise (page 46)
a brightly coloured bird that lives m ainly in New Guinea
78 vitamin (page 49)
vitamins are natural substances found in food that are necessary to keep
your body healthy. Vitamin C is found in fruit and vegetables.
79 consumption (page 49)
the process of eating or drinking som ething. If you eat or d rink
som ething, you consume it.
80 coconut (page 52)
the white flesh of a large nut that has a hard brow n shell covered with
fibres like rough hair
81 honour - to honour someone (page 52)
to show your respect or adm iration for som eone, especially by giving
them a prize or a title, or by praising them publicly
82 turkey (page 53)
the m eat o f a large bird sim ilar to a chicken that has no feathers on its
head and is often eaten at C hristm as and Thanksgiving
83 award (page 55)
a prize or other rew ard that is given to som eone w ho has achieved
som ething
84 contemporary (page 59)
m odern, or relating to the present tim e
85 athletics (page 61)
sports events in w hich people com pete against each other in ru nning
races, jum ping, and throw ing things
86 cricket (page 61)
a game played by two team s of 11 players who get points by hitting a
ball w ith a bat and ru n n in g betw een two sets of sticks called stum ps.
Som eone who plays this sport is called a cricketer.
87 oval (page 62)
shaped like an egg
92
88 ashes (page 64)
the substance that rem ains after a persons body is burned after death
89 tournament (page 64)
a series of games in which the w inner of each game plays in the next
game until there is one player or team left
90 jellyfish (page 6 6 )
a soft round sea anim al that you can see through. M any types of jellyfish
sting you if you touch them .
91 medal (page 67)
a small flat piece of m etal that you are given for w inning a com petition
or doing som ething very brave
92 pineapple (page 69)
a large fruit that is yellow and juicy inside and has a thick yellow-brown
skin w ith sharp points on it
93 hanging (page 72)
a way of killing som eone by putting a rope around their neck and letting
them hang from it, usually as a punishm ent
94 toad (page 74)
a small anim al that is sim ilar to a frog but has brow n skin and lives
m ainly on land
95 poison (page 74)
a substance that can kill you or m ake you ill if you eat, d rin k or
breathe it
96 physiology (page 75)
the science that deals w ith the way that the bodies of living things operate
97 penicillin (page 75)
a drug used for treating infections and illnesses caused by bacteria
98 championship (page 80)
a com petition to find the best player or team in a sport or game
99 stingray (page 81)
a large flat fish with a narrow tail that can sting
93
Useful Phrases
m ade up o f - to be made up o f something (page 10 )
to be com bined together to form som ething larger or m ore com plicated
is home to - to be home to something or someone (page 12 )

to be where people, anim als or things have their origins
passed it on - to pass something on to someone (page 19)

to give som ebody som ething that som ebody has given to you
was not enough room - to be not enough room fo r something or

somebody (page 32)
to be not enough physical space for som ething or som ebody
kept secret - to be kept secret fro m somebody (page 36)

to not tell som ebody som ething
are in danger o f - to be in danger of(+ -ing) (page 47)

to be in a situation that could cause harm , death, damage or destruction
p u t m oney into - to p u t money into something (page 55)

to provide m oney for som ething
take fou rth place - to take first, second (etc) place in something (page 67)
to have a certain position in the results of a race or com petition
have one thing in comm on - to have something in common (page 6 8 )

to have the same feature as som ething else
m oved into film s - move into something (page 77)

to begin a new job, business or type of business
w ent on to m ake - to go on to do something (page 81)

to do som ething after doing som ething else
94
Exercises
Welcome to Australia
Which of these things does Welcome to Australia talk about? Tick the boxes.
cinema I ] cities | j history { ] indigenous people [
money □ rivers j ] sport [ ] weather

Choose the correct word to complete the sentence.
1 Australia is the highest / (lowest) of the continents.
2 Most Australians live in the cities / bush.
3 Australia gets a lot of droughts / earthquakes.
4 The bush is very im portant to Australian culture / industry.
5 You can ski in the Great Dividing Range / Red Centre.
6 Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre is unusual because it fills with water only every
eight years / in winter.
7 The Daintree Rainforest gets bigger / smaller every year.
8 The crown-of-thorns starfish is damaging the Daintree Rainforest /
Great Barrier Reef.
9 You can see the Great Barrier Reef from Brisbane / space.
10 Colonization was generally a bad / good thing for the Aboriginal
population.
11 Today, immigrants to Australia come from all over the world / mainly
from Britain.
12 Australia has higher / lower unemployment than many countries.
13 Australian English is slightly / very different from British and American
English.
14 New Zealand has a lot of droughts / volcanoes.
15 People have lived in New Zealand for a thousand / thousands of years.
16 New Zealand has a bigger / smaller population than Australia.
95
The First People and Aboriginal Culture
Match the sentence starts on the left with the correct endings on the right.
1 The first people to come to Australia \ a aboriginal stories,
2 The first people arrived in Tasmania b about 34,000 years ago.
3 Before the first Europeans arrived C by their spirit ancestors,
4 The Aboriginals didn’t d can be for several months,

e of the creation of humans,
5 For Aboriginals, many laws
were decided f stay in one place for very
long.
6 Today people have started to
g the past and the present,
collect
h there were over 400 tribes
7 The Dreamtime links in Australia.
8 The Rainbow Serpent tells the story " i travelled there by boat.
9 A walkabout

Put the events in the order they happened.
a A Spanish ship and a Dutch ship reached the north of Australia. □
b Aboriginals got the right to vote.
C Australia was involved in two World Wars,
d Britain started to send convicts to Australia,
e Captain Cook claimed Australia for Britain.
f Ptolemy suggested that there was land to the south of the Indian Ocean. [T]
g Terra Australis started to appear on maps,
h The first sheep came to Australia,
i There was a gold rush in New South Wales and Victoria,
j William Dampier landed on the north-west coast of Australia.
Complete the descriptions with the words in the box.
koala lyrebird platypus red kangaroo wombat
1 T he kangaroo is the largest marsupial.

2 T h e.......................................... eats the leaves of the eucalyptus tree.
3 T he.......................................... lives in holes in the ground and is very shy.
4T he ............................. ............. spends a lot of time in the water.
5..... T he.......................................... can copy sounds.
Food Culture, The Arts and Sport

Read the following statements about Australia. Write T (True) or F (False).
1 W hen Europeans arrived in Australia they ate local plants. 0
2 Some native plants can be used as medicines. □
3 Australia Day is often celebrated with a barbecue. □
4 The most popular art form in Australia is the opera. □
5 The film Rabbit-Proof Fence is based on a true story. □
6 Australian rules football started at a cricket club. □
7 The Ashes cricket series is played every five years.
8 The Australian Open is the first Grand Slam tournam ent in the year. L ]
□
9 Sharks kill about one surfer a year in Western Australia.
10 Ian Thorpe won five gold medals in the 2000 Olympic Games.
□
□
The Big Things and Talented Australians
Complete the sentences with the words or phrases in the box.
A C /D C Big Banana D on Bradm an in the 1960s

Taurence and W illiam Bragg N ed Kelly Nicole Kidm an
seafood sheep Steve Irw in
1 The first Big Things appeared............. i.U JheJ96Q s .

2 The.................................................is thirteen metres long.
3 Kingston SE is famous for its .................................................
97
4 A merino is a type o f................................................ .
5 .................................................had a terrible fight with the police.
6 The first Australians to win a Nobel Prize were.........................................
7 has made films with Tom Cruise.
8 There is a street in Melbourne named after.................................................
9 Australia’s greatest cricketer was probably
10 ................. was an expert on crocodiles.
Vocabulary: History and geography

Replace the underlined words with the words in the box.
colony convicts earthquakes harbour im m igrants

indigenous isolated sacred species tropical
isolated
1 Australia wasjoniqu^Trom the rest of the world for millions of years.
2 Many Australian plant and animal symbols are unique.
3 The independent people of Australia are usually called Aboriginals.
4 For more than ahundred years Australia was a British federation.
5 Thereare temperate rainforests in the north of Australia.
6 Uluru is a practical site for the Aboriginals.
7 After 1788 a lot of tribes came to Australia.
8 There are a lot of deserts in New Zealand.
9 Because the prisons were full in England, a lot of miners were sent to
Australia.
10 Sydney has an excellent natural volcano.
98
Vocabulary: Animals
Match the words on the left to the descriptions on the right.
1 bird of paradise —^ a this can be up to seven metres long
2 coral
3 crocodile
)
(
b
an animal that lives in a burrow
c this sometimes comes into urban areas at night
4 jellyfish ^ d this has long tail feathers
5 wombat e this has very strong colours
6 parrot f you can collect this by the sea
7 possum S the Great Barrier Reef is made of this
8 shellfish h these sometimes kill surfers
Vocabulary: Famous people

Complete the sentences with the names of the people in the box.
Captain C ook W illiam D am pier Cathy Freem an Paul Hogan

Steve Irwin Captain Phillip Kevin Rudd Jorn Utzon Thomas Wills
1 ....... ..................................... landed in Australia in 1688.

2 .............................................claimed Australia as a colony for England.
3 .............................................. brought the first convicts to Australia.
4 The Prime Minister who apologized to the Aboriginals was
5 .............................................. designed the Sydney Opera House.

6 ............................................. was killed by a stingray in 2006.
7 ............................................. lit the Olympic flame in 2000 .
8 The man who invented Australian Rules Football was
9 ............................................. played a bushman in the film 'Crocodile' Dundee.
99
Vocabulary: Word building
Complete the table with the correct form of the words.
Noun Verb
1 colony colonize
2 consume
3 erupt
4 gathering
5 survive
6 hunting
7 immigrant
Complete the sentences with the correct form in one of the words from
the table.
1 In the past, the Aboriginals.............. their f°od all over
the country.
2 In the past, some Aboriginals ...........................................kangaroos and
other large animals with boomerangs and spears.
3 B ritain a lot of different countries all over the
world in the 18th and 19th centuries.
4 T h e.............................................. of bush tucker at home and in restaurants
has increased in recent years.
5 M ore.............................................. are coming to Australia from Asia and
Africa.
6 The islands that make up New Zealand were created by volcanic
7 T h e.....................................;....... of the Great Barrier Reef is threatened by

climate change and other environmental changes.
Vocabulary: Anagrams
Write the letters in the correct order to make words from the book.
1 REEDATIONF a country made up of individual
states
2 MSOBLY a picture or shape which represents
something
3 PROALITC from the hottest parts of the world
4 RIGEATHE things that a people think are

im portant for their history
5 KREAQUATHE a sudden shaking movement of the
ground
6 PERAS a long weapon with a sharp point
7 TERSTEL someone who moves to live in a

place
8 BRITE a group of related families
9 RENOYCEM an event with special traditions

10 CASLUYPTUE a tall tree which grows in Australia
Complete the sentences with some of the words in the table above.
1 This Aboriginal.............................................. lives in the north-west of
Australia.
2 Christchurch was badly damaged in a n 1 ....
3 There was a lot of dancing and singing in the traditional
4 For some people the koala is th e .............................................. of Australia.

5 It is really hot today. The weather is alm ost............................................. .
6 Those..............................................trees are very tall.
7 Australia is a with six states.
8 People don’t often use a .............. ’.............................. when they’re hunting
today.
101
Grammar: modal verbs
Complete the sentences with one of the modal verbs in the box.
could couldn’t m ight needn’t should shouldn’t would
1 If you go to Sydney y o u ................ should.................definitely visit the

Opera House.
2 Some volcanoes in New Z ealand.............................................. erupt at
any time.
3 W hen the land bridge to Tasmania flooded, people
............................walk there any more.
4 Ptolemy thought that a southern continent.............................................. be
there, but he was really just guessing.
5 You............................................. go onto that land because it’s sacred to
the Aboriginals.
6 If you want to watch Australian Rules football, the best place to go
............................ probably be Melbourne.
7 You............................................. bring any food with you. We’ll find some
bush tucker.
Grammar: passive verbs

Complete these sentences in the passive. Don’t use the subject of the active
sentence in the passive form.
1 Captain Cook colonized Australia in 1770.
Australia ... was............................... ........................................................................
2 Captain Phillip took lots of convicts to Australia in 1788.
A lot of convicts....................................................................................................
3 Some people discovered gold in New South Wales and Victoria.
G o ld ..........
4 In the twentieth century people destroyed a lot of the tropical rainforests.
A lot of tropical rainforests..................................................................................
5 Somebody invented meat pies in 1947.
Meat p ies...........................................................
102
6 Cooks created pavlova to honour a Russian dancer.
Pavlova...........................................................................................................
7 People organized the Summer Olympics in Sydney in 2000.
The Summer Olym pics................................................................................
8 The police arrested Ned Kelly in 1880.
Ned Kelly.......................................................................................................
9 A stingray killed Steve Irwin while he was filming in the sea.
Steve Irw in ..........................................
Grammar: Correct the mistakes

Every sentence contains a mistake. Find the mistake and write the
correction.
to work
1 People had working' hard when they lived in the bush.
2 Over the past few years the rainforest became smaller.
3 Global warming is causing the die of coral in the Great Barrier Reef.
4 The origins of the Torres Straits Islanders have been the same as the
people of Papua New Guinea.
5 Christchurch has been severely damaged in an earthquake in 201 1.
6 The population of Australia may have grew to 40 million by 2050.
7 During a Bora children are learned about secret rituals.
8 Some convicts were escaped from the penal settlements.
9 The platypus has used as one of Australia's mascots.
10 The best way celebrate Australia Day is to have a barbecue.
11 The Sydney Opera House is the more famous building in Australia.
103
Upper
Australia is the sixth largest country in the world and the only one
that covers a whole continent. The largest state, Western Australia,
is about the same size as Western Europe. Despite its size, Australia
has a small population at just over 23 million. Today, the indigenous
or native people of Australia, the Aborigines, make up nearly 3 % of
the total population. The rest is a mix of many different cultures.
As well as being a big country, Australia is home to some of the

world’s biggest things: Uluru, the largest rock in the world; the Great
Barrier Reef, the world’s largest coral reef system; and the saltwater
crocodile, the world’s biggest reptile. Not content with naturally
occurring big things, the Australians have actually built a number
of‘Big Things* themselves as tourist attractions, including the Big
Banana, the Big Merino and, the biggest of all Australia’s Big Things,
Larry the Lobster.
A big welcome to Australia!
• Extra grammar and vocabulary exercises

• Introduction and Welcome to Australia
Points for Understanding comprehension questions
Glossary of difficult vocabulary and Useful Phrases
Free resources including worksheets, tests and answer keys at
www.macmillanenglish.com/readers
Audio download and ebook available to buy for this title
B S ta rter MACMILLAN READERS

B e g in n e r This series provides a wide variety of enjoyable reading
material for all learners of English. Macmillan Readers
B E le m e n ta ry are retold versions of popular classic and contemporary
0 P re -in te rm e d ia te titles as well as specially written stories, published at
a In te rm e d ia te six levels.
www.macmiUanengUsh.com/readers
U M sm m
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UPPER LEVEL

The M acmillan Readers provide a choice of enjoyable reading materials for

The number of words at each level:

1 Climate, Landscape and People 8

Points For Understanding 82

Gold Coast PACIFIC OCEAN

AUSTRALIAN CAPITAL TERRITORY

1 W hat is a com m on nam e for 6 W hat was Australia’s m ost

The name Australia comes from

Some features 14 of the Australian landscape

The desert outback IM . .

Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre

The Great Barrier Reef

‘Aussies* - the people of Australia

‘G’day mate!’ (Many Australians say this when

The Aboriginals were the first Australian people

Despite m oving frequently from place to place, the Aboriginals had

Laws and rules of behaviour

the Elders of the tribes and usually do

Culture is a set of ideas, beliefs,

\ As a traditional Aboriginal story, the Rainbow

The Rainbow Serpent

The Rainbow Serpent creation myth

Ceremonies and rituals

‘We use leaves to represent people.

A replica of Captain James Cook's ship, Endeavour

In the M iddle Ages, up to

1606 1770 1788 1827 1901 ______

Today’s Sydney - state capital of New South Wales

The gold rushes 59 and the development of farming

The people who worked in the

Australia since federation

‘To our people our home was not a

The unique Australian landscape

Since 2005, Australians have celebrated Wombat Day on 22 nd October

‘The work done to protect the crocs has

An early Australian farm

Bush tucker food

The barbecue (barbie)

Fresh seafood and vegetables on a barbecue

Te Papa, New Zealand’s national museum in the capital Wellington,

The Sydney Opera House

Dancers from the Bangarra Dance Theatre

The light shows at Enlighten are great!

Surfing at Bondi Beach in Sydney

Sport is an im portant part of the culture in Australia. Because of the good

Cricket and The Ashes series

Tennis and the Australian Open

Horse racing and the Melbourne Cup

is traditional for women to

Today’s Perth - state capital S j

The opening ceremony of the Sydney 2000 Summer Olympics

The 2000 Summer Olympics

The Big Banana - one of the Big Things of Australia

The Big Banana (NSW)

‘My favourite part of the Big Banana

Larry the Lobster (South Australia)

The Big Ned Kelly (Victoria)

The Big Boxing Crocodile

The Big Boxing Crocodile