Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a sovereign country. It is the largest country in Oceania and the world’s sixth-largest country by total area. The population of 26 million is highly urbanised and heavily concentrated on the eastern seaboard. Indigenous Australians inhabited the continent for about 65,000 years prior to the first arrival of Dutch explorers in the early 17th century.
About Australia in brief
Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a sovereign country. It is the largest country in Oceania and the world’s sixth-largest country by total area. The population of 26 million is highly urbanised and heavily concentrated on the eastern seaboard. Indigenous Australians inhabited the continent for about 65,000 years prior to the first arrival of Dutch explorers in the early 17th century, who named it New Holland. In 1770, Australia’s eastern half was claimed by Great Britain and initially settled through penal transportation to the colony of New South Wales from 26 January 1788. On 1 January 1901, the six colonies federated, forming Australia. Australia has since maintained a stable liberal democratic political system that functions as a federal parliamentary constitutional monarchy. The country ranks highly in measures of health, education, economic freedom, and civil liberties. Australia is a member of the United Nations, G20, Commonwealth of Nations, ANZUS, World Trade Organization, Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, Pacific Islands Forum, and the ASEAN Plus Six. The name Australia ) is derived from the Latin Terra Australis, a name used for a hypothetical continent in the Southern Hemisphere since ancient times. Until the early 19th century Australia was best known as \”New Holland\”, a name first applied by the Dutch explorer Abel Tasman in 1644 and subsequently anglicised. 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.
Human habitation of the Australian continent is known to have begun at least 65,00 years ago, with the migration of people by land-crossing bridges and short sea-crossings from what is now Southeast Asia. The Madbebe rock in Arnhem Land is the oldest rock in Australia, and is recognised as the oldest shelter in the world. Other epithets for Australia include ‘the Great Land’, ‘the Sunburnt Country’, and ‘the Wide Brown Land’ The latter two derive from Dorothea Mackellar’s 1908 poem ‘My Country’ The name ‘Australia’ was first used in a book on astronomy by Cyriaco Jacob zum Barth published in Frankfurt am Main in 1545. It has a landmass of 7,617,930 square kilometres. A megadiverse country, its size gives it a wide variety of landscapes and climates, with deserts in the centre, tropical rainforests in the north-east, and mountain ranges in the south-east. Australia generates its income from various sources, including mining-related exports, telecommunications, banking, manufacturing, and international education. Immigrants account for 30% of the population, the highest proportion in any country with a population over 10 million. The country’s other major metropolitan areas are Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, and Adelaide. Australia is the thirteenth-largest economy and tenth-highest per capita income.
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This page is based on the article Australia published in Wikipedia (as of Feb. 08, 2021) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
