Facts about Australia
Capital Canberra · Oceania
10 topics · about 20 minutes
Australia is the only country that occupies an entire continent, and its long isolation produced wildlife found nowhere else on Earth. Aboriginal peoples have lived here for at least 65,000 years, giving the country the oldest continuous human cultures known.
Australia is a federation of six states and two mainland territories, and the distribution of people across it is extreme: roughly 70 percent of the continent is arid or semi-arid, and almost everyone lives on the eastern and southeastern coastal strip or around Perth on the far west coast. The Great Dividing Range separates that fertile eastern belt from the interior plains, and beyond it the outback runs for thousands of kilometers with almost nobody in it. Tasmania sits off the southeast corner, cooler and wetter than anywhere on the mainland.
Sydney and Melbourne hold the long-running rivalry and most of the population between them, while Canberra was built as a compromise capital in between. Brisbane anchors the subtropical southeast Queensland corridor, Perth is one of the most isolated cities in the world, and Adelaide and Hobart are the smaller southern capitals. Visitors typically combine a city or two with one of three very different landscapes: the Great Barrier Reef along the Queensland coast, the red center around Uluru, and the coastal drives of the southeast.
- Population
- 27 million
- Area
- 7,692,024 km²
- Currency
- Australian dollar (A$)
- National language
- English, no official status
- Divisions
- 6 states, 2 mainland territories
- Highest point
- Mount Kosciuszko, 2,228 m
The Australia course
Geography of Australia
The driest inhabited continent, with everyone on the coastal edges and the outback in between.
History of Australia
At least 65,000 years of Aboriginal presence, a penal colony from 1788, and federation in 1901.
Language of Australia
No official language at all, and a national habit of shortening every word it can.
Culture of Australia
The Dreaming and dot painting, alongside beaches, barbecues and fiercely regional football codes.
Economy of Australia
Three decades without a recession, the world’s largest iron ore exporter, and compulsory pensions.
Politics of Australia
Compulsory voting since 1924, preferential ballots, and two referendums that both failed.
Nature & Wildlife of Australia
Around 87 percent of its mammals live nowhere else, including the only egg-laying ones.
Food & Cuisine of Australia
British until postwar migration rebuilt it, and the flat white exported worldwide.
Landmarks of Australia
A 348-meter rock its owners closed to climbers in 2019, and a roof designed in Denmark.
People & Society of Australia
Twenty-seven million on a continent, with nearly 30 percent born overseas.
Geography of Australia
Australia is the sixth largest country by area and the driest inhabited continent, with roughly 70 percent classed as arid or semi-arid. The interior, known as the outback, is largely empty, and almost everyone lives on the eastern and southeastern coastal strip or around Perth in the west.
The Great Dividing Range runs down the east coast and separates the fertile coastal belt from the interior plains. Mount Kosciuszko is the highest point at only 2,228 meters, since the continent is geologically ancient and heavily eroded. The Great Barrier Reef stretches over 2,300 kilometers along the Queensland coast as the largest coral reef system in the world.
History of Australia
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples arrived at least 65,000 years ago and developed hundreds of distinct language groups with deep systems of law and land custodianship. James Cook charted the east coast in 1770, and Britain established a penal colony at Sydney Cove in January 1788, which began the dispossession of Indigenous peoples across the continent.
Gold rushes from the 1850s brought a wave of free settlers, and six colonies federated into the Commonwealth of Australia on 1 January 1901. The White Australia policy restricted non-European immigration until it was dismantled between the 1950s and 1973. Indigenous Australians were counted in the census only after a 1967 referendum, and a formal national apology for the Stolen Generations came in 2008.
Language of Australia
Australia has no official language at federal level, though English is the national language in practice, spoken at home by about 72 percent of the population. Australian English has a distinctive accent with relatively little regional variation across a very large country.
Its most recognizable feature is diminutives, shortening words and adding an ending, so afternoon becomes arvo and breakfast becomes brekkie. Around 250 Indigenous languages were spoken at colonisation and roughly 120 survive, most of them endangered, with Kriol and a handful of Central Australian languages holding the largest numbers of speakers. Mandarin, Arabic and Vietnamese are the most common languages after English.
Culture of Australia
Aboriginal culture centers on the Dreaming, a body of law and story linking people to specific country, and dot painting from the Western Desert has become internationally collected fine art. The didgeridoo, from Arnhem Land in the north, is among the oldest wind instruments still played.
Modern Australian life is heavily coastal and outdoors, with beach culture, surfing and barbecues as recurring markers. Sport carries unusual weight, and cricket, rugby league and Australian rules football each dominate different states. Egalitarian instincts run strong enough to have their own vocabulary, including mateship and the suspicion of anyone seen as putting on airs.
Economy of Australia
Australia went roughly three decades without a recession before 2020, an unmatched run among developed economies, helped by resource exports through the long Chinese construction boom. It is the largest exporter of iron ore and among the leaders in coal, liquefied natural gas, gold and lithium.
Services generate most of the output, with mining contributing a smaller share of GDP than its export dominance suggests. Agriculture remains significant through wheat, beef and wool, and international education was a major earner before the pandemic. The compulsory superannuation system, requiring employer contributions to retirement accounts since 1992, has built one of the largest pension pools in the world.
Politics of Australia
Australia is a federal parliamentary constitutional monarchy with King Charles III as head of state, represented by a governor-general. Parliament has a House of Representatives and a Senate with equal representation for each of the six states, blending British and American constitutional models.
Voting is compulsory and has been since 1924, which keeps turnout above 90 percent, and the House uses preferential voting so voters rank candidates rather than picking one. A 1999 referendum on becoming a republic failed, and a 2023 referendum to establish an Indigenous Voice to Parliament was also defeated. Six states and two mainland territories hold their own parliaments.
Nature & Wildlife of Australia
Isolation for tens of millions of years left Australia with wildlife found nowhere else, and around 87 percent of its mammals are endemic. Marsupials including kangaroos, koalas, wombats and the Tasmanian devil fill ecological roles taken elsewhere by placental mammals, and the platypus and echidna are the only egg-laying mammals in existence.
The country also holds an outsized share of the world’s most venomous snakes and spiders. Introduced species have done enormous damage, with rabbits, foxes and cats driving one of the highest mammal extinction rates on record. Bushfires are a natural part of many ecosystems, though the 2019 to 2020 season burned an unprecedented area, and coral bleaching has hit the Great Barrier Reef repeatedly.
Food & Cuisine of Australia
Australian cooking was largely British until postwar migration from Italy, Greece, Lebanon and then Southeast Asia rebuilt it, and modern Australian restaurants lean heavily on Asian technique with local produce. Melbourne and Sydney have exported their café culture and flat white coffee worldwide.
National staples include Vegemite, a salty yeast spread that divides visitors sharply, along with the meat pie, lamingtons and the pavlova whose origins Australia and New Zealand still dispute. Native ingredients such as macadamia, finger lime, wattleseed and kangaroo meat have moved from Aboriginal food traditions into mainstream kitchens over the past few decades.
Landmarks of Australia
Uluru rises 348 meters from the flat center of the continent and is a sacred site for the Anangu people, who own it and jointly manage the surrounding national park. Climbing it was permanently banned in October 2019 at their request.
Sydney Opera House, with roof shells designed by Danish architect Jørn Utzon and completed in 1973, sits beside the Sydney Harbour Bridge as the country’s most photographed pair of structures. The Great Barrier Reef is the largest living structure on the planet and visible from space, while the Twelve Apostles limestone stacks along the Great Ocean Road and the Daintree rainforest in Queensland draw millions between them.
People & Society of Australia
Australia has about 27 million residents in a country roughly the size of the continental United States, giving it one of the lowest population densities anywhere. Around 86 percent live in urban areas, and the great majority in a handful of coastal cities.
Close to 30 percent of Australians were born overseas, one of the highest proportions in the developed world, with England, India and China the largest birthplaces. About 3.8 percent of the population identifies as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander, and closing the substantial gaps in health, education and life expectancy between Indigenous and other Australians remains a stated national policy priority.
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