Extra reading: Life and culture
Australia
Who were the first Australians? What do you know about the first European settlers?
Australia is the sixth largest country in the world. 85 per cent of people live in the big cities, so you can travel for thousands of kilometres and never see anyone. Outside the cities, the land in Australia is mainly hot desert. This is called the outback. In some parts of the outback, there aren’t any schools. So children learn from the School of the Air – on the internet, on TV and by radio. And when people in the outback are ill, their doctor visits them by plane – the ‘Flying Doctor’.
The first Australians were Aboriginals. They lived in Australia 50,000 years before the Europeans. When the Europeans arrived, they killed many Aboriginals and took their land. Today, only three per cent of the population are Aboriginals, and many of them live in the cities.
In 1770 a British sailor, Captain James Cook, landed on the east coast of Australia and called it New South Wales. The British decided to use Australia as a prison colony, because all its prisons were full. In 1788 the first ‘prison ships’ arrived in Sydney, carrying about 1500 people. So Australia’s first settlers were convicts, and its first police force was a group of twelve of the best-behaved convicts! Later, immigrants from other European countries started to arrive.
Today, nearly 25% of Australians were born in another country. The main language of Australia is English but there are also a lot of Italian, Greek, Cantonese and Arabic speakers.
Australia produces a lot of the world’s wool – about 70%. It’s important to protect the sheep from dingoes (wild dogs), so there is a fence called the ‘dingo fence’. It’s 1.8 metres high and 5,614 kilometres long – and it’s the world’s longest fence.
Statistics
7,692,000 km2
24m people
29m cows
40m kangaroos
73m sheep
Climate | July and August are the coldest months. Many Australians go skiing!
Biggest city | Sydney is the biggest city, but Canberra is the capital.
National day | Australia Day (26th January) is the day when the British arrived in 1788.
Famous for | Australian football, swimming, rugby, cricket, wine, films.
Currency | The currency is the Australian dollar.
About Australia
There are over 300,000 camels in Australia. In 1840 explorers brought camels with them to help them in their journey across the desert.
A Read the text about Australia, then answer these questions.
B Read the text again, then copy and complete the fact file.
C Now complete a fact file for Slovenia.