Australia Known as the land down under, Australia is considered one of the best places to live when taken into considerations the income, healthcare, human development and civil rights. Even though it is the sixth largest country by land mass, it has a comparatively small number of people living there. Australia is sometimes called the “island continent” and is sometimes concerned the largest island in the world. The world’s largest coral reef - the Great Barrier Reef is found a short distance off the north east coast of Australia. It has a wide array of terrain from mountains peeks and flower-filled areas to flat, dessert-like lands. Over 50,000 years ago during the last Ice Age, the Aboriginal people arrived to Australia by boat from the South East part of Asia. When the Europeans discovered and settled in Australia, there was up to a million Aboriginal people living across the continent. During this time, the Aboriginal people had separated into about 300 clans speaking 250 languages and around 700 dialects. Every clan was spiritually connected to a piece of land, although they would travel across the country to find water, produce and trade, as well as for totemic and ritual gatherings. In 1770, Captain James Cook claimed the east coast of Australia for Britain, and thus used the area as a penal colony. In January 1788, a fleet of 11 ships that carried about 1,500 people, with half of those being convicts, arrived to the harbor. From the point until the end of the penal transportation in 1868, it is estimated that 160,000 convicts where sent to Australia. It wasn’t until 1901 that Australia’s six states actually became a nation under one single constitution. In 2010, about 21 million people from over 200 countries were living in Australia, which boosts the world’s 14th large national economy. Australia’s main imports consist of metals and ores, food, live animals and wools, transport machinery, fuels and equipment.
Posted on: Thu, 03 Jul 2014 19:19:22 +0000