Australia (Commonwealth of Australia)

The name "Australia" is etymologically derived from the Latin term "terra australis", which means "southern land". Even in ancient times, it was believed that there was a continent to the south, which was called terra australis incognita. The spread of the name Australia can be traced back to the explorer Matthew Flinders (1774-1814), who added the name Australia to his hand-made map after circumnavigating the continent from 1801 to 1803 and published it in a book about his journey in 1814. By the end of the 1820s, the name Australia had become generally accepted.

Today, the term "Australia" is used ambiguously. Geographically, it refers to the central land mass of the continent minus the island of Tasmania off the southeastern tip of the continent. Politically, the English designation "Australia" serves as a short form of the official state designation "Commonwealth of Australia", which includes the island of Tasmania as a federal state as well as the Australian outer territories.

The area of the Australian continent covers almost 7.7 million square kilometers. Of this, approximately 59,000 km² is water surface. This makes it the sixth largest country on earth in terms of area. According to official measurements, the coastline is 25,760 km long. The lowest point of the Australian continent is the salt lake Lake Eyre, located in the state of South Australia, which is 17 m below sea level. The highest point of the main land mass is Mount Kosciuszko with 2228 m, the highest mountain of the whole Australian territory is with 2745 m the Big Ben located on the uninhabited island Heard. The Australian core territory is divided into three time zones. The Australian outer areas are partly in other time zones.

Australia's north-south extension from the Cape York Peninsula to the southeast cape on Tasmania is about 3860 km. The east-west extension is about 4000 km.

Large-scale landscapes

Geographically, three large landscapes can be distinguished: the eastern, the central and the western large landscape.

The Western Great Landscape, the tableland of the Western Australian Plateau, occupies about 60 percent of Australia's land mass. Here lie the great arid regions of the Great Sand Desert, the Little Sand Desert, the Gibson Desert, the Great Victoria Desert and the Nullarbor Desert. Smaller mountains such as the MacDonnell Ranges and inselbergs such as Uluru are abundant.

To the east is the central large landscape, the sedimentary basin of the Central Australian Depression or the Central Lowlands. Here is the Simpson Desert, the driest region of the country, as well as the largest river system, the Murray-Darling Basin. The Central Great Landscape contains both periodically drying freshwater lakes and salt lakes.

As both the Western and Middle Great Landscapes are predominantly uninhabitable, the majority of Australia's population lives in the Eastern Great Landscapes. This eastern great landscape encompasses the transitions from the mountains down to the coastal landscape. Thereby, coral reefs are located off the coast of the state of Queensland, which in their entirety form the Great Barrier Reef. The mountain range that characterizes this part of the country is the Great Dividing Range, which stretches from north to south over 3200 km. Tasmania is geologically regarded as a continuation of the Great Dividing Range. In the Snowy Mountains, which belong to the Great Dividing Range, is Mount Kosciuszko, with 2229 m the highest elevation of the Australian land mass. Between the mountains and the coastal strip lies the ecozone of temperate forests.

The large desert and semi-desert areas of Australia are called the outback.

Settlements

The capital Canberra, located between Sydney and Melbourne, is a city from the drawing board, a planned capital. It was created as a compromise because Sydney and Melbourne could not agree on which of the two cities should become the capital of the Commonwealth of Australia. The most populous cities are the coastal cities of Sydney (5.0 million inhabitants), Melbourne (4.7 million inhabitants), Brisbane (2.3 million inhabitants), Perth (2.1 million inhabitants) and Adelaide (1.2 million inhabitants); the inland capital Canberra (356,100 inhabitants) is only 8th after Gold Coast and Newcastle.

Climate

Global warming has increased the likelihood of wildfires and bushfires in Australia. The climate report of the Australian Weather Service and the research organization CSIRO proves this. Even below one degree of warming, wildfire season expands "with high confidence". In 2019, there were fires on about four million hectares in Australia. This is equivalent to the area of Switzerland.

flora and fauna