Australia
Australia is located in the Southern Hemisphere
(that is the bottom half of the world).
This is why it is sometimes called the Land Down Under.
Australia is the smallest, flattest, and driest inhabited continent in the
world. It is the only country which is also a whole continent. 18.6 million
people live here.
The people of Australia are called Australians. Australians call different
parts of their country by different names:
• The City
Is any large city and its suburbs. Over 85% of the people live in
cities. Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Perth and Canberra are major
cities.
• The Country
Is the area immediately outside the city and usually includes the
surrounding smaller towns and farms. Most of what is called "the
country" is a stretch of land about 200 kilometres deep around the
eastern and southern seaboards of Australia. Upper Beaconsfield, the
Great Ocean Road , the Dandenongs, etc are in "the country".
• The Outback
Is the sparsely populated arid interior of Australia. The Australian
Outback is both harsh and breathtakingly beautiful. It's like no other
place on earth. Coober Pedy, Uluru, etc are in the Outback.
There are 6 states and 2 territories in Australia:
. Queensland
. New South Wales
. South Australia
. Tasmania
. Victoria
. Western Australia
. Northern Territory
. Australian Capital Territory
The capital of Australia is Canberra .
Australia has lots of unusual Animals.
Australia has the largest coral reef in the world called the Great Barrier
Reef. It is stunning!.
Australians speak English. But we also have our own special words and
phrases referred to as Strine.
Australia's favourite song is Waltzing Matilda
Aborigines - The First Australians
The word Aborigine is derived from Latin and means "from the beginning".
This is the name given to the native Australians by the Europeans.
This is not the name they called themselves.
They prefer to call themselves: Koori.
BEFORE 1770
The first human inhabitants of Australia were the Aborigines.
They are a dark-skinned people belonging to the Australoid group who
probably came from Asia. Nobody is quite sure how they came to Australia
around 60,000 years ago. They may have walked and sailed here from Asia.
The Aborigines were nomadic hunter-gathers. They roamed from place to
place. They hunted animals using spears and boomerangs. They also gathered
fruits, nuts and yams which they ate.
There were around 300,000 aborigines in about 250 tribal groups before the
first white settlers came. Each group had its own territory, traditions,
beliefs and language.
They all believed in the Dreamtime which is the center piece of aboriginal
culture.
THE FIRST ENCOUNTER WITH SETTLERS
The aborigine people had never seen white people until Captain James Cook
landed in Botany Bay in 1770. They were shocked to see these white people
in their strange clothes.
When the aborigines first saw the ships of the "First Fleet" enter Botany
Bay in 1778 with so many white skinned people they thought they were the
spirits of their dead ancestors (after all they were so white). In actual
fact these were the first European settlers led by Captain Arthur Phillip.
At first the Aborigines were friendly towards the visitors but were very
confused at the way white foreigners behaved:
. Why did the foreigners walk on aborigine sacred sites and dig up
aborigine graves?
. Why did they boss each other around and beat and hang people?
. Why did they chop down trees and take food without asking?
. Why were they mean and selfish towards each other and not sharing?
THE FIRST MISUNDERSTANDING
While exploring around the new settlement Captain Arthur Phillip befriended
an old aborigine man. When he returned to camp he met the old man again and
gave him some beads and a hatchet. Later that night Captain Phillip
discovered the old man taking one of his shovels and slapped the man on his
shoulder and pushed him away while pointing to the spade. The old man was
very upset and could not understand why his friend was acting this way.
Aborigines share what they have with their friends.
Captain Phillip was very careful not to offend the aborigines but Aborigine
and the Settlers cultures were so different! They didn't understand each
other.
CONFLICT
When the aborigines realised that the white men were not the spirits of
their dead ancestors and that the settlers were taking more and more of
their land and destroying the trees and wild life they began to fight back.
The aborigines killed a number of the settlers and even wounded Captain
Phillip in an attack. The settlers reacted by slaughtering and poisoning
the aborigines and systematically destroying the land and wild animals they
lived on.
DISEASE
White settlers brought diseases the aborigines had never had before
(diseases which were quite common in Europe at the time).
Aborigines caught smallpox and even the common cold and died in great
numbers. Within two years smallpox had killed almost half the aborigine
population around Sydney.
DEPRAVATION
The British colonists declared that before their arrival all of the
continent was terra nullius (uninhabited by humans). They used this as
justification for taking whatever they wanted.
As more and more white settlers moved in and occupied the fertile lands the
aborigines were pushed further and further away from their traditional
lands and into the harsh arid interior. Their families were broken up,
their children taken away from them and sent to be "civilised", their
sacred sites destroyed and their wild animals hunted.
The killing and exploitation of aborigines by whites continued well into
the twentieth century. The aboriginal population declined from the original
300,000 when the first white settlers arrived to only about 60,000 people
(less than the number of people that can be seated at the MCG stadium!).
Aborigines were second class citizens in their own land. They only got the
right to vote in 1967.
This is a shameful part of Australian history.
RECONCILIATION
Much progress has been made over recent years to try to right the wrongs of
the past. Where possible the government has been returning land to their
traditional owners and encouraging Aborigines to rebuild their culture and
lives.
They are the single most disadvantaged group of people in Australia.
There is still a long way to go!
ANIMALS - AUSTRALIA
Up to about 250 millions of years ago the world had just one huge super-
continent call Pangaea. Animals and plants were able to move and intermix
with one another.
About 200 million years ago this super-continent broke up into two
continents (Laurasia and Gondwana).
About 60 million years ago Gondwana broke up into what was to later become
South America, Africa, Antarctica, India and Australia.
Since then Australia has been isolated from the rest of the world by vast
oceans. The animals and plants which were originally here no longer had
contact with animals from other parts of the world. They evolved
separately. That is why they are so different.
NATIVE AUSTRALIAN ANIMALS
Australia has lots very unusual animals. About 95 percent of the mammals,
70 percent of the birds, 88 percent of the reptiles and 94 percent of the
frogs are found nowhere else in the world.
Find out about them here:
. Antechinus
. Long-Nosed Bandicoot
. Bat
. Black Snake (Red-bellied)
. Cassowary
. Cockatoo
. Crocodile (Saltwater)
. Echidna
. Emu
. Frilled Lizard
. Kangaroo
. Koala
. Kookaburra
. Penguin (Fairy)
. Platypus
. Possums:
o Bushtail
o Feathertail Glider
o Leadbeater's
o Pygmy
o Ringtail
o Sugar Glider
. Tawny Frogmouth
. Wallaby
. Wombat
WHO DISCOVERED AUSTRALIA
In about 200AD a famous Greek astronomer named Claudius Ptolemy believed
that the earth had to be balanced or it would topple over. So he figured
that there had be a land yet unknown to Europeans somewhere below the
Indian Ocean. Over time this yet to be discovered land came to be known as
|Terra Australis Incognito | [pic] |
|which means the | |
|Unknown Southern Land. | |
For many centuries people in Europe were certain that there was a land down
under (this map from 1570 shows what they thought) but nobody knew how to
get to it . They kept missing it or not realising that they had stumbled
upon it. For over 200 years hundreds of European navigators set across the
seas searching for the Unknown
Southern Land.
They expected to find gold and other treasures.
Aborigines were the first people to discover Australia. They may have
walked or sailed here from Asia over 60,000 years age. They arrived at a
time when the northern parts of Australia had a hot humid tropical climate
much like that of Asia today.
Portuguese sailors may have sailed along the coastline of Australia as far
back as 1542. Some maps have been found which show parts of what appears to
be the Australian coastline. But there is no definite proof that they did.
In 1616 a Dutch trading ship, the Eendracht, on its way to the Indies (now
called Indonesia) bumped into west coast of of Australia. Captain Dirk
Hartog landed at Shark Bay, looked around a bit but didn't find anything
