A Guide to Australia
Australian beaches and marine reserves boast picturesque shorelines and vibrant coral reefs; Aboriginal culture thrives here, while adorable koalas can be seen everywhere you turn! Though don’t expect many trees; landscape is mostly low relief with vast plains.
Explore ancient rock art and gain a greater understanding of Dreamtime stories; or join an Aboriginal-led tour to learn to cook bush tucker! You may even witness how Sydney’s foreshores were once home to Aboriginal clans!
Table of Contents
Climate
Due to its enormous size, Australia features many distinct climate zones. The northern regions feature tropical weather characteristics – hot and humid summer days and milder, dryer winter months; while temperate conditions prevail further south.
New South Wales, Victoria and Tasmania’s coastal regions enjoy a mild/wet climate while Tasmania’s Australian Alps feature typical mountain climate. Furthermore, some parts of mainland Australia can experience snowfall in certain winters.
Central and Western regions experience a desert/semi-arid climate. Rainfall here is minimal due to a lack of major mountains that produce rain clouds; continuous periods of rainfall are therefore rare. A lot of precipitation in these areas comes from north-westerly winds pushed in by subtropical high-pressure belts moving across continent during seasons, prompting raincloud formation.
Landforms
Australia’s landforms reflect both tectonic Earth movements and long-term changes to sea level, but most of its topography can be attributed to prolonged erosion by wind and water.
Australian continent boasts an expansive variety of landscapes, from tropical rainforest to vast deserts. This range can be partially explained by Australia’s location along the Tropic of Capricorn and proximity to moisturizing breezes from southern oceans, which help create its diverse terrains.
Western parts of the continent lie within a belt of semi-arid land that receives intermittent rainfall from high pressure systems passing over from the southwest. Here, scrub vegetation such as saltbush and bluebush grow on dunes and sandy plains while on rocky ranges you might find eucalyptus and acacia woodlands or mallee trees (with multiple stems growing from one root), mallee trees with multiple trunks growing from one root, or native hummock grasslands such as spinifex dominate.
Population
Australia boasts one of the world’s highest annual population growth rates, due to high rates of natural increase and immigration. There are, however, concerns that Australia’s rapid population growth could put strain on both economy and social systems as older Australians take up an unfavorably large share of household assets while younger households struggle with rising debt levels and housing affordability issues.
2024 saw natural increase of 105,500 with migration accounting for 83% of this increase – marking its lowest rate for two decades.
Over the last decade, there has been an increased concentration of people in urban areas due to migration and population growth outpacing infrastructure development. While cities often attract attention, the majority of Australians still reside in regional areas – New South Wales and Victoria are notable for male life expectancies (81.7 years and 85.7 years respectively) reflecting greater availability of medical services in metropolitan areas.
Economy
Australia excels at exporting raw materials such as minerals and farm produce. It also has an expansive service sector including tourism and banking. As a wealthy nation with high standards of living for its people, its government controls the economy through setting interest rates that lower or increase, in an attempt to keep inflation (the speed at which prices go up) low.
Taxes in Australia are collected at three levels of government: federal, state and local council. The federal government receives most of its money through personal income and business taxes as well as goods and services tax (GST), added to most purchases; state governments get money through taxes on businesses such as stamp duty on property sales as well as income and business taxes collected directly by them; while local councils collect rates to cover services like street cleaning, garbage collection and park maintenance.
