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In cities, visitors will experience a blur of fashion-festooned boutiques and plate-clattering
restaurants, then lose themselves in a long fluid moment inside a beer or wine glass.
In the interior, they might be harangued by the thump of rocks under their 4WD,
only to be transfixed by a slow, silent swirl of outback dust. Around the coast,
they'll take an endless breath in the depths of a rainforest, then slowly realise
they have an entire beach to themselves.
Virtually all visitors to Australia arrive by air. The main international airports
are Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, followed by Perth, Adelaide, Hobart, Darwin
and Cairns. There are plenty of connections to Asia, Europe and the USA, but Australia's
remoteness makes flights relatively expensive and long. Many flights are heavily
booked, so make plans well in advance. Departure tax on international flights is
US$19. This tax is usually included with the price of your airline ticket.
With distances between cities so great, flying is the most favoured and speedy option,
although buses and trains provide a more scenic, if lengthy alternative. Within
the major cities, you will find thorough and convenient rail and bus systems.
Australia is so vast (and so empty in places) that something like 80% of long-distance
trips by public transport are made by air. For many years, Qantas and Ansett monopolised
the domestic scene and a cosy cooperation between the two ensured that domestic
air travel remained relatively expensive. Recently Ansett and the regional airlines
it owned have either collapsed or run a skeleton service, while upstart airlines
have taken on Qantas, and there's a sense of competition in the air. Few people
pay full fare for domestic air travel because the airlines offer a wide range of
discounts, including random discounting and air passes.
Few people travel long-distances by train because it's usually the slowest mode
of overland transport and remains relatively expensive (though it is generally more
comfortable for overnight trips).
There are several long-distance bus companies but only one truly national service,
Greyhound Pioneer Australia. Buses are comfortable, but if you're travelling between
major cities, be prepared for a long trip. Australia has a skeletal rail network
linking all major cities.
Many visitors group together and hire or purchase a car. The latter can be an economical
way of travelling around Australia, as long as you don't have too many mechanical
failures. Highway 1 circumnavigates the continent, sticking close to the coast much
of the way. Watch out for monstrous road trains (trucks with multiple trailers)
on outback roads; naturally it's wise to give way to anything bigger than yourself.
History
Australia's original inhabitants, known as Australian Aborigines, have the longest
continuous cultural history in the world, with origins dating back to the last Ice
Age. Although mystery and debate shroud many aspects of Australian prehistory, it
is generally accepted that the first humans travelled across the sea from Indonesia
about 70,000 years ago. The first visitors, called 'Robust' by archaeologists because
of their heavy-boned physique, were followed 20,000 years later by the more slender
'Gracile' people, the ancestors of Australian Aborigines.
Europeans began to encroach on Australia in the 16th century: Portuguese navigators
were followed by Dutch explorers and the enterprising English pirate William Dampier.
Captain James Cook sailed the entire length of the eastern coast in 1770, stopping
at Botany Bay on the way. After rounding Cape York, he claimed the continent for
the British and named it New South Wales.
In 1779, Joseph Banks (a naturalist on Cook's voyage) suggested that Britain could
solve overcrowding problems in its prisons by transporting convicts to New South
Wales. In 1787, the First Fleet set sail for Botany Bay under the command of Captain
Arthur Philip, who was to become the colony's first governor. The fleet comprised
11 ships, 750 male and female convicts, four companies of marines and supplies for
two years. Philip arrived in Botany Bay on 26 January 1788, but soon moved north
to Sydney Cove, where there was better land and water. For the new arrivals, New
South Wales was a harsh and horrible place, and the threat of starvation hung over
the colony for at least 16 years.
Australia never experienced the systematic push westward that characterised
the European settlement of America. Early exploration and expansion took place for
one of three reasons: to find suitable places of secondary punishment, like the
barbaric penal settlements at Port Arthur in Van Diemen's Land and on Norfolk Island;
to occupy land before anyone else arrived; or in later years, because of the quest
for gold.
Free settlers began to be attracted to Australia over the next decades, but it was
the discovery of gold in the 1850s that changed the face of the colony. The huge
influx of migrants and several large finds boosted the economy and irrevocably changed
the colonial social structures. Aborigines were ruthlessly pushed off their tribal
lands as new settlers took up land for farming or mining. The Industrial Revolution
in England required plenty of raw materials, and Australia's agricultural and mineral
resources expanded to meet the demand.
Australia became a nation when federation of the separate colonies took place
on 1 January 1901 (although many of the legal and cultural ties with England remained).
Australian troops fought alongside the British in the Boer War and WWI. Interestingly,
while Australians rallied to the aid of Britain during WWI, the majority of voters
were prepared to support voluntary military service only. Efforts to introduce conscription
during the war led to bitter debate, both in parliament and in the streets, and
in referenda compulsory national service was rejected.
Australia was hard hit by the Depression; prices for wool and wheat - two mainstays
of the economy - plunged. In 1931 almost a third of breadwinners were unemployed
and poverty was widespread. Swagmen became a familiar sight, as they had been in
the 1890s depression, as thousands of men took to the ‘wallaby track' in search
of work in the countryside. By 1933, however, Australia's economy was starting to
recover, a result of rises in wool prices and a rapid revival of manufacturing.
When WWII broke out, Australian troops fought alongside the British in Europe
but after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, Australia's own national security finally
began to take priority. Singapore fell, the northern Australian towns of Darwin
and Broome and the New Guinean town of Port Moresby were bombed, the Japanese advanced
southward. In appalling conditions, Australian soldiers confronted and defeated
the Japanese at Milne Bay, east of Port Moresby, and began the long struggle to
push them from the Pacific. Ultimately it was the USA that helped protect Australia
from the Japanese, defeating them in the Battle of the Coral Sea. This event was
to mark the beginning of a profound shift in Australia's allegiance away from Britain
and towards the USA.
Post WWII immigration brought a flood of European immigrants, many of them non-British.
The immigrants have since made an enormous contribution to the country, enlivening
its culture and broadening its vision. The post-war era was a boom time in Australia
as its raw materials were once again in great demand.
In the 1950s Australia came to accept the American view that it was not so much
Asia but communism in Asia that threatened the increasingly Americanised Australian
way of life. Accordingly, Australia followed the USA into the Korean War, and in
1965, Australia committed troops to assist the USA in the Vietnam War, though support
for involvement was far from absolute. Still more troubling for many young Australian
men was the fact that conscription was introduced in 1964, and those undertaking
national service could now be sent overseas. By 1967 as many as 40% of Australians
serving in Vietnam were conscripts.
The civil unrest aroused by conscription was one factor that contributed to the
1972 rise to power of the Australian Labor Party, under the leadership of Gough
Whitlam. The Whitlam government withdrew Australian troops from Vietnam, abolished
national service and higher-education fees, instituted a system of free and universally
available health care, and supported land rights for Aboriginal people.
The government, however, was hampered by a hostile Senate and by much talk of
mismanagement. On 11 November 1975, the governor general (the British monarch's
representative in Australia) took the unprecedented step of dismissing the parliament
and installing a caretaker government led by the leader of the opposition Liberal
Party, Malcolm Fraser. Labor supporters were appalled - the powers that the governor
general had been able to invoke had long been regarded by many as an anachronistic
vestige of Australia's now remote British past. Nevertheless, it was a conservative
Liberal and National Country Party coalition that won the ensuing election. A Labor
government was not returned until 1983, when a former trade union leader, Bob Hawke,
led the party to victory.
After a period of recession and high unemployment in the early 1990s, the electorate
eventually lost faith in the Labor government, and in early 1996, Labor leader Paul
Keating was defeated in a landslide victory to the conservative coalition, led by
John Howard.
The issue of republicanism - replacing Britain's queen with an Australian president
as head of state - dominated Australian politics in the late 1990s. An increasing
number of people, particularly young Australians, felt that constitutional ties
with Britain were no longer relevant and the only way forward was to declare Australia
a republic. However, a national referendum in 1999 resulted in a comprehensive victory
for the status quo.
Area: 7.68 million sq km
Population: 19.5 million
Capital City: Canberra
People: 92% Caucasian, 7% Asian, 1% Aboriginal
Language: English
Religion: 75% Christian, 1% Muslim, 1% Buddhist, 0.5% Jewish
Government: independent member of the Commonwealth of Nations
Head of State: Governor General Michael Jeffery
Head of Government: Prime Minister John Howard
GDP: US$418 billion
GDP per capita: US$22,000
Annual Growth: 4%
Inflation: 2%
Major Industries: Minerals, oil, coal, gold, wool, cereals, meat, tourism
Major Trading Partners: Japan, ASEAN countries, South Korea, China, New Zealand,
USA, EU
Member of EU: No
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