Australië

Our speech is about Australia, we chose this subject because we had to do a presentation English it seemed a nice country to us. It was easy to find information about.

Australia is a country that lies at the other side of the world. It was a colony from Great-Britain. You can see it in the flag and money: they also use the pound to pay with. This big country is 110 times bigger as Holland and Belgium together, but it has only 18 million inhabitants. The coastline of Australia is 36.700 kilometre. The heighest point is Mount Kosciusko. This mountain is 2228 meters high. Australia has six states. Those are: New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria, Tasmania, South Australia and Western Australia. The proud capital of Australia is Canberra, but Sydney is the biggest and most important city of this country. The aboriginals where the first inhabitants. People from Europe discovered Australia and they went to that country because of the gold.

history
About 50.000 years ago, during the last ice time, the first people arrived in Australia. In that time it was very cold, so cold that a part of the sea was totally frozen. The sea level descended and big peaces of the sea got dry. These dry peaces were used as bridges. Big groups of people did that. These people are called aboriginals. When the last ice time was stopped 10.000 years ago, the bridges disappeared, and the aboriginals developed their own lifestyle in Australia. Whit a population from 300.000 people, the aboriginals were divided in 500 tribes. Every group stayed at another part of Australia and spoke another language or dialect. Sometimes the tribes came to each other, but mostly the tribes stayed at their own territory. The famous tribes are: the Wurora, de Aranda, the Yir-yoronts, the Gurijnji, the Wailbri and the Murngin. The aboriginals lived 1.000 years from their agriculture. They ate the animals, insects, fish and plants, what they found in the wilderness. They have a knowledge of the things they can eat or can’t eat. They lived peacefully together, until the European people came to Australia.
The Greek Ptolemaeus wrote the book Geographia 150 Years after Christ. In this book he wrote about an enormous country south of Europe and Asia. Since the fifteenth century people have looked for this big country. At 1606 a Dutch ship found Australia. They called it New – Holland. On the 29th of April 1770 an English ship came to Australia. They conquered New – Holland and since that time they were the master in Australia. At 1999 Australian people agreed with a breaking with Great Britain.

climate
The seasons in Australia are different than in Europe. The spring starts in September and ends in November, the summer begins in December and ends in February. The autumn lasts from March to May. The winter begins in June and ends in August.
The position of the climate of Australia is subtropical. Only in the extreme north the climate is real tropical.
The whole year the temperature is very dry and during the year there are tropical showers of rain. Averagely it rains about 1470mm each year.
Queensland is the wettest place of Australia. In 1979 it rained 11250mm. The middle of Australia has a real desert climate. The normal temperatures are there 45 degrees.
Australia has 2 peninsulas: Cape York-peninsula and Arnhemland. The Coast Mountains are in the eastern part of this country. This landscape consists of plateaus and valleys.
The Great Divided Range lies in the middle of Australia. Big cities like Sydney, Perth and Adelaide have a Mediterranean climate with hot summers and gentle winters. Victoria and Tasmania in the south have a moderate temperature.

animals
In Australia there are other animals than in Europe. For example the kangaroos, who live on the dry domains. They can run about 50 kilometres an hour. Other animals are the so-called teddy bears, the koala bears, and they mainly eat bamboo wood. Australia also has an impressive undersea climate with very beautiful fish. There are also tropical coloured birds in the tropical climate.

economy
As a modern western country Australia has a free-market economy with the minimal interference of the authorities. Australia is an extremely prosperous country with an income of $ 23200 per person per year (in the year 2000).
Characteristic for the development of the Australian economy is the quick and far-reaching change of a mostly agricultural country to a modern industrial state.
The division of the Gross National Product (BNP in Dutch) in 1999 was as following:
Agriculture: 3 % (which was 15 % in the fifties of the twentieth century)
Industry: 26 %
Tertiary sector: 71 %
Because of the discovery of several minerals (for example bauxite, uranium and iron ore) the mining is developed very well. 40 % of the total export denomination is a mining product.
In 1965 that was still 13 %.
The biggest incomes in the agricultural sector are the sheep-breeding, the breeding of for example maize and oats. In the tropical virgin forests wood sorts of great value occur, like cedar, walnut and mahogany. In the interior lie great wood areas.

tourism
The tourism has explosively developed since the seventies and forms a more and more considerable subject of the Australian economy.
The most touristy places lie in the east part of Australia, in Queensland and New South Wales.
Sydney is particularly visited because of the large, kilometres long beaches which are within the city borders, and because of the Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park, a very famous animal reserve. The most well known Australian mammal, the duck bill, is seen in the wild reserve Healesville, 65 km from Melbourne. The Snowy Mountains lie at the south of Canberra, where the ski season starts in June.
Thredbo and Perisher are the most prominent winter sports centres.
The biggest touristy attraction of Australia is the Great Barrier Reef in
front of the north eastern coast.
The tourism also has his part in the sheep shearing; sheepshearer contests are very popular with the local people as well as with the tourists.
Great Reppel Island in the south is remarkably famous because of its white beaches.
The Gold Coast is the favourite holiday spot of the Australians and lies 80 km south of Brisbane.
In the centre of the Australian ‘outback’ lies the old colonist city Alice Springs, the only city in the neighbourhood of hundreds of kilometres.
Plentifully 350 km west of this city lays Ayers Rock (with pre-historical paintings) and the gray coloured cliffs of Mount Olga.
On the green and fruitful Tasmania the landscape has a totally different view than any other place on this continent. Cradle Mountain in Lake Saint Claire National Park is the greatest nature area on Tasmania. It is in great request with trout fishermen.
In Port Arthur, a hundred km south eastern of Tasmania’s capital city Hobart, the ruins of prisons and watch-residences still lie there from the age of Australia being a punishment colony. Tourists need to have visa if they want to go to Australia.
The best times for a visit are different for every region, so you couldn’t possibly visit all of Australia in one holiday.