Australia

Australia is the world's sixth largest country by land area (7,692,024 square kilometers, excluding external territories), but is sparsely populated. 86.2 percent of the population of just over twenty million people lives in one percent of the land area of the continent. This is mostly near the east coast, with a smaller population concentration in the south-west corner. The average population density of the country is less than two people per square kilometer, which is very low compared to 26 people per square kilometer in the United States and 238 people per square kilometer in Britain. Australia, in the southern hemisphere, is the driest of the inhabited continents, with much of the country being classified as arid or semi-arid. Inland settlements are often based on mining activities. Australia has 36,700 kilometers of coastline.

Australia has been home to indigenous people for at least 40,000 years. While sometimes known collectively as Aborigines, the diversity of indigenous peoples should be recognized, and the Torres Strait Islander people should also be considered as indigenous. This diversity is highlighted in the variety of languages that were present in Australia. There were about 250 Aboriginal languages at the time of European incursion into Australia; further division into dialect differences gives some 600 distinct linguistic varieties. This makes Aboriginal Australia one of the most diverse areas of the world linguistically, and in some districts an 80-kilometer journey will pass through the territories of three languages less closely related than English, Russian, and Hindi,” explains language scholar Nicholas Evans.

The country of Australia is a federation of six states which were former colonies of Britain. There are also a number of territories, including two self-governing territories. These are the Northern Territory (where Darwin is the largest city and capital) and the Australian Capital Territory, which is the location of the national capital of Canberra. In 1901 Australia had a population of 3,773,801, excluding indigenous people who were not counted in the Census. The largest city was Sydney, with a population of 496,000. Other significant cities included Melbourne (478,000), Adelaide (141,000), Brisbane (119,000) and Perth (61,000).

The six states, their state capitals and largest cities in descending order of population, are New South Wales (Sydney, with a population exceeding four million people), Victoria (Melbourne), Queensland (Brisbane), Western Australia (Perth), South Australia (Adelaide) and the island state of Tasmania (Hobart). There are also over seven hundred local governments in Australia. The structure and resources of the local governments vary enormously. For example, there are 37 local governments in Sydney, ranging in population from 256 364 in Blacktown to 12 692 in Hunters Hill.

The history of European exploration in Australia is complex. There are claims of Portuguese exploration, and reliable evidence of Dutch exploration of the northern and western coasts. Dutch vessels sailing to Batavia (modern Jakarta, Indonesia) were sometimes shipwrecked on islands off the Western Australian coast if they did not turn north in time. Despite extensive Dutch knowledge of the coast of what they called “New Holland,” it was not until 1770 that Captain James Cook claimed the continent for the British crown, narrowly defeating French explorers in this endeavour. The actual settlement did not occur until 1788, when Sydney was founded as a [Page 87]penal colony on the shores of Port Jackson, or what the local Eora people called Werrong. Other Australian cities had different foundation histories. Private settlers established Melbourne as a settlement. Perth was originally settled as a free colony in 1829, but imported convict labour from 1842 onwards. By the late 19th century, some of the key components of Australia's urban pattern, and the structure of individual cities within this urban pattern, were in place. The largest Australian cities have always held a high degree of primacy (that is, the dominance of the largest city in relation to the rest of each state). The degree of primacy is less in Queensland due to the presence of other large urban centers.

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