Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands. With an area of 7,617,930 square kilometres, Australia is the largest country by area in Oceania and the world’s sixth-largest country.
According to the United Nations, Australia is the second-best country in the world to live, due to its excellent quality of life index. The UN establishes a qualification, also known as the Human Development Index, based on an annual survey of social progress and economic indexes of the 187 countries Australia, the smallest continent and one of the largest countries on Earth, lying between the Pacific and Indian oceans in the Southern Hemisphere. Australia’s capital is Canberra, located in the southeast between the larger and more important economic and cultural centres of Sydney and Melbourne.
The Australian mainland extends from west to east for nearly 2,500 miles (4,000 km) and from Cape York Peninsula in the northeast to Wilsons Promontory in the southeast for nearly 2,000 miles (3,200 km). To the south, Australian jurisdiction extends a further 310 miles (500 km) to the southern extremity of the island of Tasmania, and in the north it extends to the southern shores of Papua New.
Australians are proud of their heritage and progress—proud of the fact that a nation of convicts and working-class folks could build a modern egalitarian society in a rough and inhospitable land. They typically disdain the pompous and ostentatious, and they are often characterized as informal and “laid back,” an impression fostered by the typical and now internationally recognized greeting among “mates” and “sheilas”: G’day (Good day). Their tastes in popular fashions and entertainment differ little from those in Europe and North America, and their humour is often characterized as sarcastic, ironic, and self- deprecating.
Drinking and gambling have long been important aspects of Australian popular culture, despite persistent government attempts to regulate and limit them. Beer has traditionally been the drink of choice, but the explosion of Australian wine production has somewhat altered patterns. Since World War II, laws generally have been liberalized in favour of more “civilized” drinking and greater access to gambling, often through government-owned agencies. However, whereas an older generation turned to the pub for
socializing, many of the young are likely to seek out the disco or trendy bar or restaurant.
Australian cuisine is a product of international trends and the contributions of its Aboriginal and immigrant communities. Nevertheless, it has been heavily influenced by the country’s Anglo-Celtic heritage, with the traditional British supper still common. Barbecues (“the barbie”) are a quintessential Australian pastime, and meat is ubiquitous. Traditional Aboriginal Outback cuisine consists of such unique foods as kangaroo, wombat, turtle, eel, emu, snake, and witchetty grubs (larvae of the ghost moth). Vegemite, a salty, dark-brown yeast extract, has long been a staple of the Australian diet.
Australia hosts many festivals, which often attract a wide international audience. Particularly noteworthy arts events are the Sydney Festival (January), which features concerts and theatre and is accompanied by fireworks displays; the biennial Adelaide Festival of Arts (March); and the Melbourne Festival (October). Aboriginal arts festivals include the Barunga and Cultural Sports Festival (June) and Stompin Ground (October), held in Broome. Sydney’s vibrant Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, held annually in February,
attracts hundreds of thousands of revelers from around the world and is considered the world’s largest celebration of its kind. Chinese cultural celebrations include Chinese New Year, the Dragon Boat Festival, and the Lantern Festival.
As Australia’s population became increasingly multicultural in the years after World War II, the influence of international popular culture on the Australian film industry grew. In 1964 Peter Yiannoudes, an immigrant from Cyprus who had found success in importing Greek films, introduced Australian audiences to Bollywood, the Indian popular film industry, when he exhibited the motion picture Mother India. The film was an astounding commercial success, as its powerful theme of overcoming adversity, poverty, and social hardships to find love resonated with Australia’s Greek immigrant community. Over time, the global reach of the ideas reflected in Bollywood films and the films’ use of music, dancing, and glamorous costumes became increasingly popular with viewers of all ages across a wide variety of nationalities in Australia’s multicultural society.
The long history of Chinese migration to Australia dates from the early 19th century. In the 1850s tens of thousands of Chinese people arrived to provide a source of cheap labour as workers in the goldfields. After the gold rushes, many Chinese miners returned home to their families in China, but others stayed to establish businesses or work the land. Because many Chinese immigrants had rural backgrounds and possessed water and land management skills, they played an important role in the early development of Australian agriculture. Chinese communities also set up market gardens, growing and selling fresh food such as vegetables, herbs, ginger, and other spices. Many other Chinese worked as labourers, cooks, clerks, carpenters, and interpreters. Resentment and anger grew, however, over the perceived threat that Chinese migrants posed to European colonists, who wanted to restrict the economic competition that came from Asian migrants. As a reaction, when Australia became a federation in 1901, one of the first laws passed by the newly formed government was the Immigration Restriction Act of 1901. This legislation, known as the “White Australia” policy, was specifically designed to end Asian migration to the country in order to maintain a “white” population. It severely limited the size of Chinese communities in Australia for more than 50 years, until its abolishment in 1973. Since then, migrants of Chinese origin have arrived in increasing numbers, and many have become notable figures in a variety of sectors in society.
Although English is not Australia’s official language, it is effectively the de facto national language and is almost universally spoken. Nevertheless, there are hundreds of Aboriginal languages, though many have become extinct since 1950, and most of the surviving languages have very few speakers. Mabuiag, spoken in the western Torres Strait Islands, and the Western Desert language have about 8,000 and 4,000 speakers, respectively, and about 50,000 Aboriginal people may still have some knowledge of an
Australian language. (For full discussion, see Australian Aboriginal languages.) The languages of immigrant groups in Australia are also spoken, most notably Chinese, Italian, and Greek.
Capital: Canberra Trending
Dialing code: +61
Population: 25.69 million (2020) World BankPrime minister: Anthony Albanese
Currency: Australian dollar