AUSTRALIA

Introduction

Australia is the only country that is also a continent. In area; it ranks as the sixth largest country and smallest continent.  Australia lies between the Indian and South Pacific oceans. It is about 7,000 miles southwest of North America and about 2,000 miles southeast of mainland Asia. It is often referred to as being "down under" because it lies entirely within the Southern Hemisphere.

PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY

LAND

Land Region

Australia can be divided into three major land regions.

The Eastern Highlands include the highest elevation in Australia. The region extends form Cape York Peninsula in the extreme northeastern Australia to the south coast of Tasmania. The southeastern section of the plain, from Brisbane to Melbourne, is by far the most heavily populated part of Australia.

The Eastern Highlands are sometimes called the Great Dividing Range because their slopes divide the flow of the rivers in the region. The highlands are not a single range, nor are they overly mountainous. They consist mainly of high plateaus that are broken in many places by gorges, hills, and low mountain ranges.

The Central Lowlands have the lowest elevations in Australia. The region is generally flat. Many rivers flow through the lowlands after heavy rains.

Farmers in the southern part of the Central Lowlands grow wheat. Most of the rest of the region is too dry or too hot for most kinds of crops. The west-central part of the region is barren, sandy desert.

The two biggest cities, Mount Isa and Broken Hill, have fewer than 30,000 persons each.

The Western Highlands covers the western two-thirds of Australia. The region has a higher average elevation than the Central Lowlands. However, most of the land is flat, as in the lowlands.

Deserts cover the central part of the Western Plateau. Except in the south and northeast, the deserts gradually give way to the land covered by grass and shrubs. Low mountains ranges rise above the general level of the plateau in the grazing areas. A vast dry, treeless plateau called the "Nullarbor Plain" extends about 400 miles along the southern edge of the region.

Adelaide and Perth are the two largest cities in the Western Highlands. Both cities lie on coastal plains.

Deserts

The major deserts of Australia are distributed throughout the western plateau and interior lowlands. The total area of these deserts is 18 percent of the total mainland area Australia. Great Victoria, Great Sandy and Tanami are deserts that cover the largest mainland area. The Great Victoria desert is 348,750 sq. miles in size and covers 4.5% of Australia, Great Sandy is 267,250 sq. miles in size and covers 3.5% and Tanami is 184,500 sq. miles in size and covers 2.4%. The interior is relatively flat except for several eroded mountain chains, such as the Stuart Range and the Musgrave Ranges in the northern part of South Australia and the Macdonnell Ranges in the southern part of the Northern Territory.

Mountains

It is a little known fact that the highest point on Australian territory, at a height of over 7,500 feet, is Mawson Peak, on a mountain called Big Ben. This is an active volcano on Heard Island, well south of Australian continent in the Southern Ocean, approaching the coast of Antarctica.

The highest mountains rise in the Australian Alps in the extreme southern part of the Eastern Highlands. The Australian Alps consist of several ranges. The Snowy Mountains are the best known. The highest peak, Mount Kosciusko, rises 7,310 feet above sea level in the Snowy Mountains.

Uluru (Ayers Rock), with its dome-like appearance, is located in the center of Australia in the Uluru National Park. It is believed to be the largest monolith in the world. It is about 6 miles around its base and rises sharply to some 1,142 feet above the surrounding flat, arid land.

Rivers

Rivers are one of Australia's most vital resources. Rivers provide towns with drinking water and farmers with much needed water for irrigation. However, most of Australia's rivers are dry at least part of the year, filling only during the rainy seasons.

The Murray River and it's tributary, the Darling River, are the main rivers in the Murray-Darling River Basin. This drainage basin comprises the major part of the interior lowlands of Australia, covering more than one million square kilometers, or about 14 percent of Australia.

The Darling River flows south from the junction of the Culgoa and Barwon rivers. Although the Culgoa is longer than the Barwon, the source of the Darling is generally agreed to be the Barwon River as it has the greater volume of water. The headwaters of the Darling can be traced to the MacIntyre River, which starts in the Great Dividing Range, and forms part of the border between NSW and Queensland. It eventually flows south into the Barwon. The Barwon-MacIntyre section is sometimes referred to as the Upper Darling. When measured from its source in Queensland to its mouth on the coast southeast of Adelaide, the Murray-Darling river system is about half the length of world's longest river, the Nile.

Lakes

Australia's only large permanent lakes have been artificially created. They include Lake Argyle in Western Australia and Lake Gordon in Tasmania. Both are reservoirs for water conservation projects.

Most of Australia's natural lakes are dry for months or years at a time. Dry lakes called playas are common in South Australia and Western Australia. Most of the time, a playa is simply a dry bed of salt or clay. The largest playas are in South Australia. They include Lake Torrens, Lake Eyre, Lake Gairdner, and Lake Fromme.

The Great Barrier Reef

The Great Barrier Reef is the largest known coral formation in the world. Although the name suggests one reef, the Great Barrier Reef is a chain of more than 2,500 reefs. It extends about 1,200 miles along the eastern coast of Queensland from Cape York in the north to Bundaberg in the south. The chain of reefs forms a natural breakwater for the passage of ships along the coast.

CLIMATE

Australia lies south of the equator, and so its seasons are opposite those in the Northern Hemisphere. The southern part of the continent has four distinct seasons. Winter, the wettest and coolest season in Australia, lasts from June through August. Summer, which is the hottest and driest season, lasts from December through February.

Tropical northern Australia has only two seasons - a wet season and a dry one. The wet corresponds with summer and lasts from November through April. The dry season corresponds with winter and lasts from May through October.

ANIMALS AND PLANTS

Australia's most famous native animals include kangaroos, koalas, wallabies, wombats and other marsupials. Marsupials are mammals that give birth to tiny, poorly developed offspring.

There were several animals brought to Australia by humans. These include the dingo and platypus. Dingos are wild Australian dogs and are found all over the Australian continent, but not in Tasmania. The dingos were living in Australia more than 7,000 years ago.

Two main kinds of native plants, acacias and eucalyptuses, dominate Australia's landscape. Acacias, which Australia call wattles, represent one of the most successful of the early flower groups to appear in Australia. While other members of the Acacias' family are widely dispersed throughout the world, three quarters of the world's Acacias are Australian, about 700 species.

The eucalyptuses, called gum trees, are the tallest trees in the country and among the tallest in the world. Australia has about 500 species of eucalyptuses. However, they have been cut down in enormous numbers to feed the timber and woodchip industry, or to clear land for farming or mining. Even so there are still gum trees almost everywhere you look.

 

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