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Australia Cities with Hotels
 Australia, island continent located
southeast of Asia and forming, with the nearby island of Tasmania, the
Commonwealth of Australia, a self-governing member of the Commonwealth of
Nations. The continent is bounded on the north by the Timor Sea, the Arafura
Sea, and the Torres Strait; on the east by the Coral Sea and the Tasman Sea; on
the south by the Bass Strait and the Indian Ocean; and on the west by the Indian
Ocean. The commonwealth extends for about 4025 km (about 2500 mi) from east to
west and for about 3700 km (about 2300 mi) from north to south. Its coastline
measures some 36,735 km (about 22,826 mi). The area of the commonwealth is
7,682,292 sq km (2,966,150 sq mi), and the area of the continent alone is
7,614,500 sq km (2,939,974 sq mi), making Australia the smallest continent in
the world, but the sixth largest country.
 The Commonwealth of Australia is made up of six states-New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania, Victoria, and Western Australia-and two territories-the Australian Capital
Territory and the Northern Territory. The external dependencies of Australia are the Territory of Ashmore
and Cartier Islands, the Australian Antarctic Territory, Christmas Island, the
Territory of Cocos Islands (also called the Keeling Islands), the Coral Sea
Islands Territory, the Territory of Heard Island and McDonald Islands, and
Norfolk Island.
Some of the hotels, motels and resorts available for
booking in our reservation network include, Ramada Inn, Marriott Hotels, Super 8
Motels, Econo Lodge, Holiday Inn & Holiday Inn Express, Travelodge, Hampton Inn,
Sheraton, Hilton, Best Western, Hyatt and Hyatt Regency, Wyndham Inn, Ritz and
Ritz Carlton, Days Inn, Courtyard by Marriott, La Quinta Inns, Comfort Inn and
Comfort Suite, Embassy Suites, Quality Inn, Radisson Inn, Sleep Inn, Numerous
Resorts and Resort Villas throughout the globe, along with Plaza and Plaza
Suites and and array of private and Golf Clubs and Golf Resorts.
Select a state from the list below.
All Countries > Australia
The first people to live in Australia, called Aborigines,
migrated there about 40,000 years ago. The continent remained relatively unknown
by outsiders until the 17th century. The first European settlement by British
convicts occurred in 1788 at Botany Bay in southeastern Australia. Australia
grew as a group of British colonies during the 19th century, and in 1901 the
colonies federated to form a unified independent nation.
Land and Resources
Australia lacks mountains of great height; it is one of the world's flattest
landmasses. The average elevation is about 300 m (about 1000 ft). The
interior, referred to as the outback, is predominantly a series of great
plains, or low plateaus, which are generally higher in the northeast.
Low-lying coastal plains, averaging about 65 km (about 40 mi) in width,
fringe the continent. In the east, southeast, and southwest, these plains
are the most densely populated areas of Australia.
In the east the coastal plains are separated from the vast
interior plains by the Great Dividing Range, or Eastern Highlands. This
mountainous region averages approximately 1200 m (approximately 4000 ft) in
height and stretches along the eastern coast from Cape York in the north to
Victoria in the southeast. Much of the region consists of high plateaus
broken by gorges and canyons. Subdivisions of the range bear many local
names, including, from north to south, the New England Plateau, Blue
Mountains, and Australian Alps; in Victoria, where the range extends
westward, it is known as the Grampians, or by its Aboriginal name, Gariwerd.
The highest peak in the Australian Alps, and the highest in Australia, is
Mount Kosciusko (2228 m/7310 ft), in New South Wales.
A section of the Great Dividing Range is in Tasmania, which
is located about 240 km (about 150 mi) from the southeastern tip of the
continent and is separated from it by Bass Strait. The waters of the strait
are shallow, with an average depth of 60 m (200 ft). The major islands in
the strait are the Furneaux Group and Kent Group in the east, and King,
Hunter, Three Hummock, and Robbins islands in the west.
The western half of the continent is a great plateau, about
300 to 450 m (about 1000 to 1500 ft) above sea level. The Great Western
Plateau includes the Great Sandy, Great Victoria, and Gibson deserts.
Western Australia has, in its northern half, several isolated mountain
ranges, including the King Leopold and Hamersley ranges. The interior is
relatively flat except for several eroded mountain chains, such as the
Stuart Range and the Musgrave Ranges in the northern part of South Australia
and the Macdonnell Ranges in the southern part of the Northern Territory.
The central basin, or the Central-Eastern Lowlands, is an
area of vast, rolling plains that extends west from the Great Dividing Range
to the Great Western Plateau. In this region lies the richest pastoral and
agricultural land in Australia. Uluru (Ayers Rock), in the center of
Australia in Uluru National Park, is believed to be the largest monolith in
the world. It is about 9 km (about 6 mi) around its base and rises sharply
to some 348 m (some 1142 ft) above the surrounding flat, arid land. Other
mountain ranges of limited size in the central part of Australia are the
Flinders Ranges and Mount Lofty Ranges in South Australia. The area along
the south central coast is called the Nullarbor Plain. The Nullarbor is a
vast, arid limestone plateau that is virtually uninhabited. It has an
extensive system of caverns, tunnels, and sinkholes that contain valuable
geological information about life in ancient Australia. Extinct volcanic
craters are located in the southeastern part of South Australia and in
Victoria.
The coastline of Australia is generally regular, with few
bays or capes. The largest inlets are the Gulf of Carpentaria in the north
and the Great Australian Bight in the south. The several fine harbors
include those of Sydney, Hobart, Port Lincoln, and Albany.
The Great Barrier Reef is the largest known coral formation
in the world. It extends some 2010 km (some 1250 mi) along the eastern coast
of Queensland from Cape York in the north to Bundaberg in the south. The
chain of reefs forms a natural breakwater for the passage of ships along the
coast.
Geology
Australia was once part of the enormous landmass
Gondwanaland, which earlier formed part of the super continent Pangaea. Much
of its geological history is remarkably ancient; the oldest known rock
formations date from 3 billion to 4.3 billion years in age.
The great plateau of western Australia is underlain by a
vast, stable shield of Precambrian metamorphic and igneous rocks, ranging in
age from 570 million to 3 billion years old. These form the core of the
ancestral continent, which, with Antarctica, had split off from Gondwanaland
during the Jurassic Period, less than 200 million years ago, and had begun
drifting eastward (see Plate Tectonics). Australia began to assume its
modern configuration by the Eocene Epoch, some 50 million years ago, when
Antarctica broke away and drifted southward.
The thick sedimentary rocks of the Great Dividing Range were
deposited in a great north-south trending geosyncline during an interval
that spanned most of the Paleozoic Era (570 million to 225 million years
ago). Compressive forces buckled these rocks at least twice during the era,
forming mountain ranges and chains of volcanoes.
Rivers
The Great Dividing Range separates rivers that flow east to
the coast from those that flow across the great plains through the interior.
The most important of the rivers that flow toward the eastern coast are the
Burdekin, Fitzroy, and Hunter. The Murray-Darling-Murrumbidgee network,
which flows inland from the Great Dividing Range, drains an area of more
than 1 million sq km (more than 400,000 sq mi) in Queensland, New South
Wales, Victoria, and South Australia. The Murray River and its main
tributary, the Darling, total about 5300 km (about 3300 mi) in length. The
Murray River itself forms most of the border between New South Wales and
Victoria. Considerable lengths of the Murray, Darling, and Murrumbidgee
rivers are navigable during the wet seasons.
The central plains region, also known as the Channel Country, is interlaced
by a network of rivers. During the rainy season these rivers flood the
low-lying countryside, but in dry months they become merely a series of
water holes. The Victoria, Daly, and Roper rivers drain a section of
Northern Territory. In Queensland the main rivers flowing north to the Gulf
of Carpentaria are the Mitchell, Flinders, Gilbert, and Leichhardt.
Western Australia has few major rivers. The most important are the Fitzroy,
Ashburton, Gascoyne, Murchison, and Swan rivers.
Because of Australia's scarce water resources, dams have been
constructed on some rivers to supply cities with water and to support
irrigation farming. The Snowy Mountains Scheme (1949-1972) and the Ord River
Scheme (1960-1972) are the two largest water-conservation projects. The
Snowy Mountains Scheme, in the southeastern highlands in New South Wales, is
an enormous, multipurpose engineering project that was financed by the
federal and state governments to supply water for irrigation, domestic and
livestock use, and for the generation of hydroelectricity. The Ord River
Scheme is an irrigation project in the remote Kimberley region of Western
Australia. During its construction the scheme attracted criticism from
economists, environmentalists, and agriculture scientists, and today
questions remain about its viability.
Lakes and Underground Water
Most of the major natural lakes of Australia contain salt
water. The great network of salt lakes in South Australia-Lake Eyre, Lake
Torrens, Lake Frome, and Lake Gairdner-is the remains of a vast inland sea
that once extended south from the Gulf of Carpentaria. During the dry season
many of the salt lakes become salt-encrusted swamp beds or clay pans. Lake
Argyle, created by the construction of the Ord River Scheme, is Australia's
largest artificially created freshwater lake.
Great areas of the interior, which otherwise would be useless
for agriculture, contain water reserves beneath the surface of the land.
These artesian water reserves, usually found at a great depth, are tapped by
drilling to provide water essential for livestock. Artesian water reserves
underlie about 2.5 million sq km (about 1 million sq mi) of Australia. The
Great Artesian Basin, extending from the Gulf of Carpentaria into the
northern part of New South Wales, includes more than 1.7 million sq km
(700,000 sq mi). Other artesian basins are in the northwest, southeast, and
along the Great Australian Bight.
Climate
The climate of Australia varies greatly from region to
region, but the continent is not generally subject to marked extremes of
weather. The climate ranges from tropical (monsoonal) in the north to
temperate in the south. The tropical region, which includes about 40 percent
of the total area of Australia, essentially has only two seasons: a hot, wet
period with rains falling mainly in February and March, during which the
northwestern monsoons prevail; and a warm, dry interval characterized by the
prevalence of southeastern winds. Many points on the northern and
northeastern coast have an average annual rainfall of 1500 mm (60 in); in
parts of Queensland average annual rainfall exceeds 2500 mm (100 in). On the
fringe of the monsoonal region are the drier savanna grasslands, where the
low, unreliable rainfall is supplemented by artesian water. In central and
northern Australia average summer temperatures range between 27° and 29° C
(80° and 85° F). The deserts of central and western Australia, making up
more than two-thirds of the area, have an annual rainfall of less than 250
mm (10 in).
The warm, temperate regions of southern Australia have four
seasons, with cool winters and warm summers. Because Australia is in the
southern hemisphere, seasons there are the reverse of those in the northern
hemisphere. January and February are the warmest months, with average
temperatures varying between 18° and 21° C (65° and 70° F). June and July
are the coldest months, with an average July temperature of about 10° C
(about 50° F), except in the Australian Alps, where temperatures average 2°
C (35° F). The eastern coastal lowlands receive rain in all seasons,
although mainly in summer. The warm, temperate western and southern coasts
receive rain mainly in the winter months, usually from prevailing westerly
winds. Tasmania, lying in the cool temperate zone, receives heavy rainfall
from the prevailing westerly winds in summer and from cyclonic storms in
winter. Over the greater part of the lowlands, snow is unknown; however, in
the mountains, particularly the Australian Alps in southern New South Wales
and the northern part of Victoria, snowfall is occasionally heavy.
All of the southern states are exposed to hot, dry winds from
the interior, which can suddenly raise the temperature considerably. In most
years, parts of the continent experience drought conditions and smaller
localities are ravaged by floods and tropical cyclones. Southeastern
Australia, including Tasmania, has among the highest incidences of serious
bushfires in the world, along with California in the United States and
Mediterranean Europe. In 1994, notably, bushfires swept through New South
Wales and destroyed several hundred homes in suburban Sydney.
"Australia," Microsoft® Encarta® 97 Encyclopedia.
© 1993-1996 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
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Last Revised:
November 15, 2008 03:56 PM. |
