Australia is the sixth biggest country in the world by land area, and is part of the Oceanic and Australasian regions. Australia, New Zealand, New Guinea and other islands on the Australian tectonic plate are together called Australasia, which is one of the world's great ecozones. When other Pacific islands are included with Australasia, it is called Oceania.
25 million people live in Australia, and about 85% of them live near the east coast. The country is divided up into six states and two territories, and more than half of Australia's population lives in and around the cities of Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, Canberra and Adelaide. The first people to live in the country were Indigenous Australians but most of them died from smallpox during colonization.
Australia is known for its mining (coal, iron, gold, diamonds and crystals), its production of wool, and as the world's largest producer of bauxite. Its emblem is a flower called the Golden Wattle.
Australia is also known for it’s animals and rich wildlife. A Kangaroo is the national symbol of Australia.
Australia's landmass of 7,617,930 square kilometers is on the Indo-Australian plate. The continent of Australia, including the island of Tasmania, was separated from the other continents of the world many millions of years ago. Because of this, many animals and plants live in Australia that do not live anywhere else. These include animals like the kangaroo, the koala, the emu, the kookaburra, and the platypus.
People first arrived in Australia more than 50,000 years ago. These native Australians are called the Australian Aborigines. For the history of Australia, see History of Australia.
Most of the Australian colonies, having been settled from Britain, became mostly independent democratic states in the 1850s and all six combined as a federation on 1 January 1901. The first Prime Minister of Australia was Edmund Barton in 1901. Australia is a member of the United Nations and the Commonwealth of Nations. It is a parliamentary democracy and a constitutional monarchy with Elizabeth II as Queen of Australia and Head of State and a Governor-General who is chosen by the Prime Minister to carry out all the duties of the Queen in Australia.
Australia has six states, two major mainland territories, and other minor territories. The states are New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania, Victoria, and Western Australia. The two major mainland territories are the Northern Territory and the Australian Capital Territory (ACT).
In 2013 according to world bank Australia had just over 23.13 million people. Most Australians live in cities along the coast, such as Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, Darwin, Hobart and Adelaide. The largest inland city is Canberra, which is also the nation's capital. The largest city is Sydney.
Australia is a very big country, but much of the land is very dry, and the middle of the continent is mostly desert. Only the areas around the east, west and south coast have enough rain and a suitable climate (not too hot) for many farms and cities.
The Australian Aboriginal people arrived in Australia about 50,000 years ago or even earlier. Until the arrival of British settlers in 1788, the Aboriginal people lived by hunting and gathering food from the land. They lived in all sorts of climates and managed the land in different ways. An example of Aboriginal land management was the Cumberland Plain where Sydney is now. Every few years the Aboriginal people would burn the grass and small trees. This meant that a lot of grass grew back, but not many big trees. Kangaroos like to live on grassy plains, but not in forests. The kangaroos that lived on the plain were a good food supply for the Aboriginal people. Sometimes, Aborigines would name a person after an animal, and they could not eat that animal to help level out the food population.
Aboriginal people did not usually build houses, except huts of grass, leaves and bark. They did not usually build walls or fences, and there were no horses, cows or sheep in Australia that needed to be kept in pens. The only Aboriginal buildings that are known are fish-traps made from stones piled up in the river, and the remains of a few stone huts in Victoria and Tasmania. The Aboriginal people did not use metal or make pottery or use bows and arrows or weave cloth. In some parts of Australia the people used sharp flaked-stone spearheads, but most Aboriginal spears were made of sharply pointed wood. Australia has a lot of trees that have very hard wood that was good for spear making. The boomerang was used in some areas for sport and for hunting.
The Aboriginal people did not think that the land belonged to them. They believed that they had grown from the land, so it was like their mother, and they belonged to the land.
In the 1600s, Dutch merchants traded with the islands of Batavia (now Indonesia), to the north of Australia and several different Dutch ships touched on the coast of Australia. The Dutch governor, van Diemen, sent Abel Tasman on a voyage of discovery and he found Tasmania, which he named Van Diemen's Land. Its name was later changed to honour the man who discovered it.
The British Government was sure that there must be a very large land in the south, that had not been explored. They sent Captain James Cook to the Pacific Ocean. His ship, "HMS Endeavour", carried the famous scientists, Sir Joseph Banks and Dr Solander who were going to Tahiti where they would watch the planet Venus pass in front of the Sun. Captain Cook's secret mission was to find "Terra Australis" (the Land of the South).
The voyage of discovery was very successful, because they found New Zealand and sailed right around it. Then they sailed westward. At last, a boy, William Hicks, who was up the mast spotted land on the horizon. Captain Cook named that bit of land Point Hicks. They sailed up the coast and Captain Cook named the land that he saw "New South Wales". At last they sailed into a large open bay which was full of fish and stingrays which the sailors speared for food. Joseph Banks and Dr. Solander went ashore and were astonished to find that they did not know what any of the plants or birds or animals that they saw were. They collected hundreds of plants to take back to England.
Captain Cook saw the Aboriginal people with their simple way of life. He saw them fishing and hunting and collecting grass seeds and fruit. But there were no houses and no fences. In most parts of the world, people put up a house and a fence or some marker to show that they own the land. But the Aboriginal people did not own the land in that way. They belonged to the land, like a baby belongs to its mother. Captain Cook went home to England and told the government that no-one owned the land. This would later cause a terrible problem for the Aboriginal people.
In the 1700s, in England, laws were tough, many people were poor and gaols (jails) were full. A person could be sentenced to death for stealing a loaf of bread. Many people were hanged for small crimes. But usually they were just thrown in gaol. Often they were sent away to the British colonies in America. But by the 1770s, the colonies in America became the United States. They were free from British rule and would not take England's convicts any more, so England needed to find a new and less populated place.
By the 1780s the gaols of England were so full that convicts were often chained up in rotting old ships. The government decided to make a settlement in New South Wales and send some of the convicts there. In 1788 the First Fleet of eleven ships set sail from Portsmouth carrying convicts, sailors, marines, a few free settlers and enough food to last for two years. Their leader was Captain Arthur Phillip. They were to make a new colony at the place that Captain Cook had discovered, named Botany Bay because of all the unknown plants found there by the two scientists.