Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia,[17] is a country comprising the

mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and numerous smaller
islands.[18] Australia has a total area of 7,688,287 km2 (2,968,464 sq mi), making it
the sixth-largest country in the world and the largest country by area in Oceania. It is the
world's oldest,[19] flattest,[20] and driest inhabited continent,[21][22] with some of the least
fertile soils.[23][24] It is a megadiverse country, and its size gives it a wide variety of
landscapes and climates including deserts in the interior and tropical rainforests along
the coast.

The ancestors of Aboriginal Australians began arriving from south-east Asia 50,000 to
65,000 years ago, during the last glacial period.[25][26][27] By the time of British settlement,
Aboriginal Australians spoke 250 distinct languages and had the oldest living culture in
the world.[28] Australia's written history commenced with Dutch exploration of most of the
coastline in the 17th-century. British colonisation began in 1788 with the establishment
of the penal colony of New South Wales. By the mid-19th century, most of the continent
had been explored by European settlers and five additional self-governing British
colonies were established, each gaining responsible government by 1890. The colonies
federated in 1901, forming the Commonwealth of Australia.[29] This continued a process
of increasing autonomy from the United Kingdom, highlighted by the Statute of
Westminster Adoption Act 1942, and culminating in the Australia Acts of 1986.[29]

Australia is a federal parliamentary democracy and constitutional

monarchy comprising six states and ten territories. Its population of more than 28 million
is highly urbanised and heavily concentrated on the eastern seaboard.[11][30] Canberra is
the nation's capital, while its most populous cities are Sydney and Melbourne, both with
a population of more than 5 million.[31] Australia's culture is diverse, and the country has
one of the highest foreign-born populations in the world.[32][33] It has a highly
developed market economy and one of the highest per capita incomes globally.[34][35][36] Its
abundant natural resources and well-developed international trade relations are crucial
to the country's economy. It ranks highly for quality of life, health, education, economic
freedom, civil liberties and political rights.[37]

Australia is a middle power, and has the world's thirteenth-highest military expenditure.
[38][39]
It is a member of international groups including the United Nations; the G20;
the OECD; the World Trade Organization; Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation;
the Pacific Islands Forum; the Pacific Community; the Commonwealth of Nations; and
the defence and security organisations ANZUS, AUKUS, and the Five Eyes. It is also
a major non-NATO ally of the United States.[40]

Etymology
Main article: Name of Australia

The name Australia (pronounced /əˈstreɪliə/ in Australian English[41]) is derived from the
Latin Terra Australis ('southern land'), a name used for a hypothetical continent in the
Southern Hemisphere since ancient times.[42] Several 16th-century cartographers used
the word Australia on maps, but not to identify modern Australia.[43] When Europeans
began visiting and mapping Australia in the 17th century, the name Terra Australis was
applied to the new territories.[N 5]

Until the early 19th century, Australia was best known as New Holland, a name first
applied by the Dutch explorer Abel Tasman in 1644 (as Nieuw-Holland) and
subsequently anglicised. Terra Australis still saw occasional usage, such as in scientific
texts.[N 6] The name Australia was popularised by the explorer Matthew Flinders, who
said it was "more agreeable to the ear, and an assimilation to the names of the other
great portions of the Earth".[49] The first time that Australia appears to have been officially
used was in April 1817, when Governor Lachlan Macquarie acknowledged the receipt of
Flinders' charts of Australia from Lord Bathurst.[50] In December 1817, Macquarie
recommended to the Colonial Office that it be formally adopted.[51] In 1824,
the Admiralty agreed that the continent should be known officially by that name.[52] The
first official published use of the new name came with the publication in 1830 of The
Australia Directory by the Hydrographic Office.[53]

Colloquial names for Australia include "Oz", "Straya" and "Down Under".[54] Other
epithets include "the Great Southern Land", "the Lucky Country" (from the 1964 book of
the same name), "the Sunburnt Country", and "the Wide Brown Land". The latter two
both derive from Dorothea Mackellar's 1908 poem "My Country".[55]

History
Main article: History of Australia

For a chronological guide, see Timeline of Australian history.

Indigenous prehistory
Main articles: Prehistory of Australia and Indigenous Australians

Aboriginal rock art in the Kimberley region of Western Australia

Indigenous Australians comprise two broad groups:

 Aboriginal Australians, who are the various Indigenous peoples of the Australian mainland
and many of its islands, including Tasmania
 Torres Strait Islanders, who are a distinct Melanesian people of Torres Strait Islands
Human habitation of the Australian continent is estimated to have begun 50,000 to
65,000 years ago,[25][56][57][26] with the migration of people by land bridges and short sea
crossings from what is now Southeast Asia.[58] It is uncertain how many waves of
immigration may have contributed to these ancestors of modern Aboriginal Australians.
[59][60]
The Madjedbebe rock shelter in Arnhem Land is possibly the oldest site showing
the presence of humans in Australia.[61][27] The oldest human remains found are the Lake
Mungo remains, which have been dated to around 41,000 years ago.[62][63]

Aboriginal Australian culture is one of the oldest continuous cultures on Earth. [28][64][65][59] At
the time of first European contact, Aboriginal Australians belonged to wide range of
societies, with diverse economies spread across at least 250 different language groups.
[66][67]
Estimates of the Aboriginal population before British settlement range from 300,000
to 3 million.[68][69][70] Aboriginal Australians cultures were (and remain) deeply connected
with the land and the environment, with stories of The Dreaming maintained
through oral tradition, songs, dance and paintings.[71] Certain groups engaged in fire-
stick farming,[72][73] fish farming,[74][75] and built semi-permanent shelters.[76][77] These
practices have variously been characterised as "hunter-gatherer", "agricultural", "natural
cultivation" and "intensification".[78][79][80][81][82]

Torres Strait Islander people first settled their islands at least 2,500 years ago. [83]
[84]
Culturally and linguistically distinct from mainland Aboriginal peoples, they were
seafarers and obtained their livelihood from seasonal horticulture and the resources of
their reefs and seas.[85] Agriculture also developed on some islands and villages
appeared by the 1300s.[86]

By the mid-18th century in northern Australia, contact, trade and cross-cultural

engagement had been established between local Aboriginal groups
and Makassan trepangers, visiting from present-day Indonesia.[87][88][89]

European exploration and colonisation

Main articles: European maritime exploration of Australia, European land exploration of
Australia, and History of Australia (1788–1850)

Landing of James Cook at Botany Bay on 29 April 1770 to claim Australia's east coast for Great Britain

The Dutch are the first Europeans that recorded sighting and making landfall on the
Australian mainland.[90] The first ship and crew to chart the Australian coast and meet
with Aboriginal people was the Duyfken, captained by Dutch navigator Willem
Janszoon.[91] He sighted the coast of Cape York Peninsula in early 1606, and made
landfall on 26 February 1606 at the Pennefather River near the modern town
of Weipa on Cape York.[92] Later that year, Spanish explorer Luís Vaz de Torres sailed
through and navigated the Torres Strait Islands.[93] The Dutch charted the whole of the
western and northern coastlines and named the island continent "New Holland" during
the 17th century, and although no attempt at settlement was made,[92] a number of
shipwrecks left men either stranded or, as in the case of the Batavia in 1629, marooned
for mutiny and murder, thus becoming the first Europeans to permanently inhabit the
continent.[94] In 1770, Captain James Cook sailed along and mapped the east coast,
which he named "New South Wales" and claimed for Great Britain.[95]
Following the loss of its American colonies in 1783, the British Government sent a fleet
of ships, the First Fleet, under the command of Captain Arthur Phillip, to establish a
new penal colony in New South Wales. A camp was set up and the Union Flag raised
at Sydney Cove, Port Jackson, on 26 January 1788,[96][97] a date which later
became Australia's national day.

Most early settlers were convicts, transported for petty crimes and assigned as
labourers or servants to "free settlers" (willing immigrants). Once emancipated, convicts
tended to integrate into colonial society. Convict rebellions and uprisings were
suppressed under martial law,[98] which lasted for two years following the 1808 Rum
Rebellion, Australia's only successful coup d'état.[99] During the next two decades, social
and economic reforms, together with the establishment of a Legislative
Council and Supreme Court, saw the penal colony transition to a civil society.[100][101]

The indigenous population declined for 150 years following European settlement, mainly
due to infectious disease.[102][103] British colonial authorities did not sign any treaties
with Aboriginal groups.[103][104] As settlement expanded, tens of thousands of Indigenous
people and thousands of settlers were killed in frontier conflicts while settlers
dispossessed surviving Indigenous peoples of most of their land.[105]

Colonial expansion
Main articles: History of Australia (1788–1850) and History of Australia (1851–1900)

Tasmania's Port Arthur penal settlement is one of eleven UNESCO

World Heritage-listed Australian Convict Sites.

In 1803, a settlement was established in Van Diemen's Land (present-day Tasmania),

[106]
and in 1813, Gregory Blaxland, William Lawson and William
Wentworth crossed the Blue Mountains west of Sydney, opening the interior to
European settlement.[107] The British claim extended to the whole Australian continent in
1827 when Major Edmund Lockyer established a settlement on King George
Sound (modern-day Albany).[108] The Swan River Colony (present-day Perth) was
established in 1829, evolving into the largest Australian colony by area, Western
Australia.[109] In accordance with population growth, separate