Saturday 26 January 2013

AUSTRALIA DAY 2013

“Oh, my ways are strange ways and new ways and old ways, And deep ways and steep ways and high ways and low, I’m at home and at ease on a track that I know not, And restless and lost on a road that I know.” - Henry Lawson

Today is Australia Day. Australia is a continent-country, in area the sixth largest country in the world, about 7.6 million square km in area.  It gained its independence from UK in 1901 and its population of only about 23 million people has accrued through colonisation and large immigration programmes. The capital city is Canberra, but this is an artificial city, a created small administrative centre, with under 400,000 people population.

The largest urban centres are Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, Adelaide and Darwin.  The North is subtropical and the South-eastern coast has temperate, almost Mediterranean climate, of greater variability of weather, however.  The majority of the continent is arid desert and scrub, making Australia one of the driest, if not the driest place on earth.

Vast mineral, oil, coal and natural gas resources exist and the fertile plains around the coast make this a bountiful land.  Immense open spaces make Australia one of the least density populated nations with only 2 people per square km. It is a country of largely underdeveloped rich resources, great natural beauty and relative isolation, which ensures Australia’s growing importance as a local and world power in the future.
Happy Australia Day!
Here is Australian composer Nigel Westlake’s Antarctica Suite for Guitar and Orchestra – 3rd Movement, “Penguin Ballet”.



1 comment:

  1. Happy Australia Day to you.

    Your blog made me think back to the days of Y!360 and our global ethernet was so new for most of us. We were quick to recognize all the holidays around the globe and blog about their history.

    Now that we have friends is England, Canada, Australia, Trinidad, etc. seems rather mundane. We take it in our stride that it is summer there and winter here and make automatic time zone calculations in our heads. Maybe we should be celebrating the birth of the first global social network as World Day.

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