Australia

Fact File• FAST FACTS• OFFICIAL NAME: Commonwealth of Australia• FORM OF GOVERNMENT: Federal parliamentary

democracy• CAPITAL: Canberra• POPULATION: over 23,000,000• OFFICIAL LANGUAGE: English• MONEY: Australian dollar• AREA: 2,969,906 square miles (7,692,024 square

kilometers)• MAJOR MOUNTAIN RANGES: Great Dividing Range,

Macdonnell Ranges• MAJOR RIVERS: Murray-Darling, Murrumbidgee,

Lachlan

Sports• Australia is famous for its sport

Aussie Rules.• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=

OqymJpIhpPY • ICC CRICKET WORLD CUP 2015 is on

there now.

Australian Money

Australian Food• KangarooAcross the colonies, native kangaroo was preferable to salted meat and was one of the main sources of meat. In Adelaide in 1845, high demand for kangaroo from the new settlers pushed the price to an 'extraordinary' nine pence per pound'. In 1864, a recipe for kangaroo steamer involved small diced meat, briefly cooked with a tablespoon of milk, onion, salt and pepper then enriched with salt pork or bacon, plus a spoonful of ketchup.

• Vegemite- a savory spread made from concentrated yeast extract.

Seven Territories • Australia has seven territories:• Western Australia• Northern Territory• Queensland • South Australia• New South Wales• Victoria• Tasmania

The Outback• The Outback covers most of Australia.

• Most people think that the Outback is arid, but it receives a fair amount of rain (averaging 200 to 250mm per year).

• Temperatures in the central deserts can reach 50 degrees in the summer, but plunge to as c-c-c-cold as minus 10 in winter.

• More than 90% of the Australian population live in urban areas on the coastal fringes – the Outback is therefore mostly uninhabited.

• The Outback doesn’t have a specific size or location – it’s just a term that is used to describe any sparsely populated areas of our country.

• Due to its low humidity and the lack of light pollution, the Outback is one of the best places in the world for stargazing. In fact, astronomers can enjoy uninterrupted views of constellations, planets and up to 5,500 stars!

The Outback

The Bungle Bungles• Bungle Bungles is located 80 km

away from the Great Northern Highway in the Kimberley region.

• The national park, although famous by the name of Bungle Bungles, is actually known as Purnululu National Park. The word 'Purnululu', from which the park derives its name, means sandstone in the language of the local Kija aboriginals.

• The name Bungle Bungles is the name given to the range of rounded rock formations of sandstone, that are lined with alternate black and orange stripes.

• The Bungle Bungles was formed more than 350 million years ago, during the Devonian period. The gradual weathering and erosion of the sandstone rock led to the formation of cliffs.

• The orange and black stripes that are seen on the rocks are due to orange silica and black lichen. The dark bands are of permeable rock, which allow water to seep through, leading to a thick and dense growth of algae, while the orange bands get their color from oxidized iron compounds.

• Thousands of years before the arrival of the Europeans in Australia, the aboriginals had settled in the region that is now known as the Purnululu National Park.

Royal Botanical Gardens

• The Royal Botanic Gardens are a picturesque haven for recreation and an important resource for education, conservation, science and horticulture.

• Established in 1846, the gardens extend over 36 hectares and display an amazingly diverse collection of over 50,000 plants from around the world, including rare and threatened species. Considered one of the finest examples of Victorian-era landscaped gardens in the world, the Royal Botanic Gardens hosts year-round events, picnics, weddings and tours.

• The Ian Potter Foundation Children’s Garden is one of the most popular features in the gardens, attracting over 150,000 young visitors each year. Kids can play in the ruin garden, meeting place, wetland area, bamboo forest, gorge, plant tunnel, rill and kitchen garden.

Port Arthur• Port Arthur holds great historical significance within the history of

Tasmania. In 1830 Port Arthur started out as prison base for convicts in Tasmania.

• Port Arthur is one of Australia's most significant heritage areas with the open air museum officially Tasmania's top tourist attraction. During the day the architectural splendour takes centre stage, but during the evening and the cover of darkness the ever popular Ghost Tours take place.

• Starting life as a flour mill and granary rather than a place of incarceration it was converted into the four storey Penitentiary that is now famous partly because of the growing convict number and the fact that it failed in its original task of providing sufficient flour for the settlement.

New Parliament House• Parliament House is the meeting facility of the Parliament of

Australia. It is located in Canberra, the capital of Australia. It was designed by Mitchell/Giurgola and opened by Queen Elizabeth II on 9th May 1988. Federal Parliament meetings were first held in Melbourne until 1927.

• The principal desgin of the strucutre is based on the shape of two boomerangs and is topped by an 81 metre flagpole. (The spire is 120 metres)

• It contains 4,700 rooms and many areas are open to the public. The main foyer contains a marble staircase and leads to the Great Hall which has a large tapestry on display.

Castle Hill, Townsville• Castle Hill is a red rock monolith in the heart of Townsville offering

panoramic views and military history. There is a popular walking track.. A road offers access for vehicles and pedestrians. The hill is just metres short of being classified as a mountain.

• The Hill’s vantage was used by visiting American soldiers during World War II.

• According to local legend, the visitors famously offered to demolish the hill and use the rock to build a bridge to Magnetic Island. A World War II observation bunker sits on one corner of the hill, which also boasts public amenities, a function centre and car parking to those wanting to enjoy the best view of Magnetic Island.

• It rises to a height of some 286 metres (938 ft) above sea level and dominates the city skylnie. It is one of the most distinctive natural features on the Queensland Coast.

Uluru/ Ayers Rock• Uluru or Ayers Rock, is a large sandstone rock formation located

450km (280 mi) away from Alice Springs in the middle of the Australian Outback.

• Officially, the rock has a dual place name of Uluru / Ayers Rock.• The rock is a holy place for the Anangu tribe of Aboriginal people

in Australia who have been in the area for around 10,000 years. The first foreign people to see Uluru were explorers led by English born Australian William Christie Gosse, his group set eyes on Uluru, 19 July 1873 and decided to call it Ayers Rock after Sir Henry Ayers, the Chief Secretary of South Australia at the time.

• Uluru is estimated to be around 600 million years old, it originally would have sat at the bottom of a sea, but today it stands 348 m (1,142 ft) above the flat desert and 863m above sea level. Amazingly, some 2.5km's of Uluru's mass is believed to be underground.

Sydney Opera House• Sydney Opera House is one of the world’s most well known

and instantly recognizable live music venues. It is located in the northeast of Sydney’s central business district.

• Over 7 million people visit the Opera House every year, making it one of Australia’s biggest tourist attractions. About 1.2 million of these attend a performance.

• The Opera House was designed by Jorn Utzon, an architect from Denmark.

• The main concert hall can seat almost 2,700 people and contains one of the world’s largest organs – it has 10,000 pipes.

• One of the 1,000 rooms in the opera house is named the Utzon Room (after the building’s designer). It contains a woolen tapestry, made from enough wool to stretch from Sydney to Perth, a distance of about 2,040 miles.

Sydney Harbour Bridge

• Australia’s Sydney Harbour Bridge, nicknamed ‘the coathanger’ because of the shape of its design, carries road, rail and pedestrian traffic from Sydney’s business district to the North Shore.

• The bridge was opened in 1932, and it is just over 1,100 yards long. It is also one of the tallest bridges in the world, with a height of 130 yards from water level to the top.

• Around 14,000 workers were employed to build the bridge between 1924 and 1932. Many of these workers were immigrants and they were among the highest paid workers in the country at the time.

• Since 1998, tourists have been able to climb to the top of the bridge. It takes almost four hours to climb up and down, and tours leave every 20 minutes.

Kangaroo Island• Due to its size and the number of things to do and discover, it is

impossible to see it all in a day or 2. If you only have one or  two days available on your itinerary, choose places from the things that interest you most.

• Kangaroo Island statistics:509 km (318.2 miles) making it the second largest of the southern Australian system of islands after Tasmania. Population 4261 (2006 Census)

• Explore the culture on the island, kangaroo wildlife and fauna.