Australia“The Land Down Under”

“Hey, mate! What are you looking at?”

Australia’s Land Mass

5% of the world’s landmass

6th largest country

Almost the size of the United States

About double the size of Europe

Geographic & Climatic Features

Smallest continent

Lowest, flattest & driest continent (aside from Antarctica)

Nearly 20% of the continent is desert

Climate zones range from tropical rainforests to snow covered mountains

One of the most biologically diverse countries on the planet

Home to more than one million species of plants and animals, many of which are found nowhere else in the world

The People

Australia was inhabited by Indigenous peoples who made up over 500 different clan groups

Today, they make up only 2.4% of the population

The First Colony

New South Wales was settled as a place Britain could send their criminals because their prisons were overcrowded

Other colonies were settled by business men who went for the prospect of agriculture and availability of labor

Population Today

Roughly 22 million people

One of the lowest population densities in the world

Government

Official name is the Commonwealth of Australia

Constitutional monarchy with three branches (similar to the United States)

Australia’s head of state is Queen Elizabeth II

Six individual states have power to make some of their own laws

The Great Barrier Reef

World’s largest coral reef wit over 3000 individual reef systems and hundreds of islands

Named one of the seven wonders of the natural world

Larger than the Great Wall of China and the only living thing on earth that is visible from space

The Great Barrier Reef