Australia Facts 3
Australia Facts 3
Australia Facts 3
Australia
The Australian mainland extends from west to east for nearly 2,500 miles
(4,000 km) and from Cape York Peninsula in the northeast to Wilsons
Promontory in the southeast for nearly 2,000 miles (3,200 km). To the south,
Australian jurisdiction extends a further 310 miles (500 km) to the southern
extremity of the island of Tasmania, and in the north it extends to the
southern shores of Papua New Guinea. Australia is separated
from Indonesia to the northwest by the Timor and Arafura seas, from Papua
New Guinea to the northeast by the Coral Sea and the Torres Strait, from
the Coral Sea Islands Territory by the Great Barrier Reef, from New
Zealand to the southeast by the Tasman Sea, and from Antarctica in the far
south by the Indian Ocean.
Head Of Government:
Capital:
Canberra
Population:
(2024 est.) 27,307,000
Head Of State:
Australia has been called “the Oldest Continent,” “the Last of Lands,” and
“the Last Frontier.” Those descriptions typify the world’s fascination with
Australia, but they are somewhat unsatisfactory. In simple physical terms,
the age of much of the continent is certainly impressive—most of the rocks
providing the foundation of Australian landforms were formed
during Precambrian and Paleozoic time (some 4.6 billion to 252 million years
ago)—but the ages of the cores of all the continents are approximately the
same. On the other hand, whereas the landscape history of extensive areas
in Europe and North America has been profoundly influenced by events and
processes that occurred since late in the last Ice Age—roughly the past
25,000 years—in Australia scientists use a more extensive timescale that
takes into account the great antiquity of the continent’s landscape.
Australia is the last of lands only in the sense that it was the last continent,
apart from Antarctica, to be explored by Europeans. At least 60,000 years
before European explorers sailed into the South Pacific, the
first Aboriginal explorers had arrived from Asia, and by 20,000 years ago
they had spread throughout the mainland and its chief island outlier,
Tasmania. When Captain Arthur Phillip of the British Royal Navy landed with
the First Fleet at Botany Bay in 1788, there may have been between 250,000
and 500,000 Aboriginals, though some estimates are much higher. Largely
nomadic hunters and gatherers, the Aboriginals had already transformed the
primeval landscape, principally by the use of fire, and, contrary to common
European perceptions, they had established robust, semipermanent
settlements in well-favoured localities.
Dove Lake, Tasmania, AustraliaDove Lake in Cradle Mountain–Lake St. Clair
National Park, Tasmania, Australia.