Top Australia Resources

The Commonwealth of Australia is a constitutional monarchy: Queen Elizabeth II is the Queen of Australia, a role distinct and separate from her position as Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom, and is considered to be the head of state, although that term is found nowhere in the Constitution or the law. The Queen is nominally represented by the Governor-General - in practice virtually the entire constitutional role of the monarch is performed independently by the Governor-General. Under the Australian Constitution the role of the monarch is almost entirely ceremonial. Although the constitution theoretically gives very extensive executive power to the Governor-General, these powers are virtually never used directly, and are delegated to the Cabinet, whose members are chosen by the governing party or by the Prime Minister alone, from amongst the current members of the parliament.

Melbourne is a reasonably cheap and easy place to shop. There are innumerable clothing shops for every budget, though bargain hunters may wish to try the outlet stores in Bridge Road, Richmond.

Writers who have achieved world recognition include Thomas Keneally, Les Murray, Colleen McCullough, Nevil Shute, Morris West, Jill Ker Conway, Booker Prize winners D.B.C. Pierre and Peter Carey and Nobel Prize winner Patrick White. In the popular music sphere Australian bands and musicians have had considerable international success. Some notable examples include the 1960s successes of The Easybeats and the folk-pop group The Seekers, through the heavy rock of AC/DC, the disco of the English-born Bee Gees, the slick pop of INXS and more recently Silverchair and Savage Garden. In the new millennium, garage rock bands Jet and The Vines have achieved popular success locally and in the United States and the United Kingdom, with the work of both featuring prominently in films and advertising.

By far the largest part of Australia is desert or semi-arid — 40% of the land mass is covered by sand dunes. Only the south-east and south-west corners have a temperate climate and moderately fertile soil. The northern part of the country has a tropical climate: part is tropical rainforests, part grasslands, and part desert. The Great Barrier Reef, the world's largest coral reef, lies a short distance off the north-east coast and extends for over 1,200 kilometres. Uluru (until 1986 known as Ayers Rock), is the second largest monolith in the world and is located in central Australia (the largest being Mount Augustus in Western Australia). The largest city in the world by area (not by population) is Mount Isa in northern Queensland.

On 1 January 1901, federation of the Colonies was completed after a 10 year gestation period, and the Commonwealth of Australia was born, as a dominion of the British Empire. The Australian Capital Territory was separated from New South Wales in 1911, to provide a neutral place for the proposed new federal capital of Canberra (the initial capital having been Melbourne). Although Australia had become independent, the British government retained some powers over Australia until the Statute of Westminster in 1931, and the theoretical authority of the British Parliament over individual states was not completely severed until the passing of the Australia Act in 1986. The original constitution gave the federal government power to make laws relating to any race of people except Aborigines. In 1967, a referendum supported by more than ninety per cent of voters gave the federal government the right to enact laws to protect Aboriginal people and to count them in the census.

Despite perhaps poetry seeming out of the typical Australian character it played an important part in the founding of Australian literature. Two poets who vie for the position of greatest Australian poet are Christopher Brennan and Adam Lindsay Gordon. Gordon was not born in Australia but the Azores. Despite this he is often called the "national poet of Australia" and is the only Australian with a monument in Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey in England.

Most of the Australian population descends from 19th and 20th century immigrants, most from the UK and Ireland to begin with, but from other sources in later years. Although the Australian colonies were founded as a penal colonies (except for South Australia and Western Australia - with the latter later receiving convicts), the transportation of British convicts to Australian colonies was gradually phased out between 1840 and 1868. During the "gold rush" of the late 19th century, the convicts and their descendants were rapidly overshadowed by hundreds of thousands of free settlers from many different countries: for example, in the 1850s about two per cent of the combined populations of Britain and Ireland emigrated to New South Wales and Victoria.

Australia has been inhabited for at least 50,000 years, since the remote ancestors of the current Australian Aboriginal people arrived from Southeast Asia. The land was not discovered by Europeans until the 17th century. It was claimed for Britain in 1770, and first colonised in 1788 as a penal colony. Five other colonies, some penal and some free, were founded in the early 19th century.

The Great Barrier Reef, by far the world's largest coral reef, lies a short distance off the north-east coast of Australia. Uluru, in central Australia, is the second largest monolith in the world.