Where is australias core area

Australia has never had a majority rural population since its Aboriginal times. English is the first language of the vast majority of the population. Recently enacted policies and changing attitudes toward multiculturalism have spurred growth in the number of immigrants and their descendants who speak two languages fluently—English and the language of their birthplace or national heritage.

Indigenous languages have not fared so well. As many as three hundred indigenous languages were spoken by Aborigines People native to Australia when the European colonialists arrived. Most aboriginal languages are in danger of dying out. Until , Australia had a collection of laws and policies known as the White Australia policy, which served to limit the immigration of nonwhite persons to Australia.

While the White Australia policies limited immigration from some areas, other policies sought to expand immigration from the United Kingdom. Subsidies were offered to British citizens to relocate to Australia. Between and , more than a million British citizens took advantage of the offer. Recent census data indicate that about a quarter of the population identifies itself as Roman Catholic and another 20 percent self-identifies as Anglican the national religion of the United Kingdom.

An additional 20 percent self-identify as Protestant, other than Anglican, and about 15 percent as having no religion. Regular church attendance is claimed by at about 7. Despite modern Australia having been settled by the British, Australian law decrees that Australia will have no national religion and guarantees freedom of religion. Sports are an important part of Australian culture, perhaps owing to a climate that allows for year-round outdoor activity.

About a fourth of the population is involved in some kind of organized sports team. Football soccer is popular, as is true in most European countries, and rugby and cricket are popular as well. Other forms of entertainment include television, film, and live performances of every kind.

Although Australia has a number of its own television stations, there are concerns that popular culture is beginning to be dominated by American influences. Sydney is becoming a center for world-class performances in dance, opera, music, and theatre. Education is well funded and internationally respected. School attendance is compulsory between the ages of six and fifteen, and the adult literacy rate has held steady at about 99 percent. Most students attend publicly funded schools, which are secular.

Private schools, which charge tuition fees, do exist and are typically run by religious organizations, predominantly the Catholic Church. Most of Australia—especially the wide expanse of the arid interior known as the outback—has immense open spaces, agricultural potential or excellent resource extraction possibilities.

Large agricultural businesses include thousands of acres under one operation. The western sector of the Great Dividing Range in New South Wales is an excellent region for commercial grain operations. The coastal region in Queensland, since it is warmer and receives more rainfall, is good for sugarcane and similar crops. Sheep and cattle ranches are common in central Queensland and Western Australia.

Various regions of southern Australia are excellent for grape and fruit production. Australian wine production has risen to compete with the US and European markets. Only the dry central desert regions in the center of the continent are not favorable for agriculture.

In the early portion of the twentieth century, Australia gained enormous wealth by exporting food products to the rest of the world. This is still true, but the profit margin on food goods is no longer what it used to be.

The country has had to look elsewhere to gain wealth. The agricultural region of the Barossa Valley in South Australia grows grapes and produces wine. Agricultural production is a major source of economic wealth for Australia even though only 11 percent of the population lives in rural areas.

Australia has excellent food production capabilities. It also has an excellent mineral resource base. Different types of minerals can be found in different regions throughout Australia. Western Australia has iron ore mines. The eastern region of Queensland and New South Wales has abundant coal reserves. Minerals such as zinc, copper, gold, silver, tungsten, and nickel can be found in various parts of the country, including Tasmania. Oil and gas fields can be found in the northwestern coastal waters and in the Tasman Sea east of Melbourne.

The country is self-sufficient in natural gas but does have to import some petroleum products. Are any Australian-manufactured products available where you live? What products can you think of? Australia does not export many manufactured goods. Its main exports are food and raw materials. If you remember how countries gain wealth, the method with the highest valued-added profit is manufacturing.

Think about Japan and the four Asian economic tigers, and how they have gained their wealth. The economic tigers have few raw materials. Where do you suppose the economic tigers and Japan get their raw materials? Australia is closer geographically to the Asian economic community than to the European Union.

When Australia is viewed in the news, in television programs, and in Hollywood movies, it is portrayed as a country with a similar standard of living to the United States or Europe. To evaluate this, think about the size of the population of Australia and consider the distribution of wealth.

They export an immense amount of raw materials and have a relatively small population to share the wealth. The Gold Coast of eastern Australia draws tourists from the Northern Hemisphere throughout the winter season. It is called the Gold Coast because of the long stretches of golden sand beaches, the golden tanned bodies of beach goers, and the high level of income gold derived from the tourism industry. Australia is an attractive place to visit. The environment, the animals, and the culture make it inviting for tourism.

From the Great Barrier Reef and the Gold Coast to the vast expanse of the outback, Australia has been marketing itself as an attractive place to visit with great success. Tourism from Japan provides a large percentage of the tourist activity. Australia has moved through the initial stages of the index of economic development to become a society that is about 90 percent urban with small families and high incomes.

Territorial control of Australian lands has become a major issue in recent years. Large portions of western Australia and the outback have traditionally been Aboriginal lands.

European colonialism on the Australian continent displaced many of the native people. The lowest point is the dry bed of Lake Eyre, South Australia, which is 15 metres below sea level.

The mainland and Tasmania are surrounded by many thousands of small islands and numerous larger ones. Nearly 40 per cent of the total coastline length comprises island coastlines. As an island nation, coastlines play an important role in defining national, state and territory boundaries.

Nearly 20 per cent of Australia's land mass is classified as desert. As well as having a low average annual rainfall, rainfall across Australia is also variable. The rainfall pattern is concentric around the extensive arid core of the continent, with rainfall intensity high in the tropics and some coastal areas.

Climatic zones range from tropical rainforests, deserts and cool temperature forests to snow covered mountains. Within this climate, our plants and animals have evolved on a geographically isolated continent, through a time of a slowly drying climate, combined with continuing high variability.

The nations of Russia and Kazakhstan straddle both continents. To the south, the Alps form an arc stretching from Albania to Austria, then across Switzerland and northern Italy into France. A large area of gently rolling plains extends from northern France eastward to the Urals. A climate of warm summers, cold winters, and plentiful rain helps make much of this European farmland very productive.

Almost all of Europe sits on the massive Eurasian Plate. Africa Africa, the second-largest continent, covers an area more than three times that of the United States. From north to south, Africa stretches about 8, kilometers 5, miles. It is connected to Asia by the Isthmus of Suez in Egypt. A series of falls and rapids along the southern part of the river makes navigation difficult.

The Nile has played an important role in the history of Africa. In ancient Egyptian civilization , it was a source of life for food, water, and transportation. The top half of Africa is mostly dry, hot desert. The middle area has savannas, or flat, grassy plains. This region is home to wild animals such as lions, giraffes, elephants, hyenas, cheetahs, and wildebeests.

The central and southern areas of Africa are dominated by rainforests. Much of Africa is a high plateau surrounded by narrow strips of coastal lowlands. Hilly uplands and mountains rise in some areas of the interior.

Glaciers on Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania sit just kilometers from the tropical jungles below. Even though Kilimanjaro is not far from the Equator, snow covers its summit all year long. The rift valley actually starts in southwestern Asia. The Great Rift Valley is a site of major tectonic activity, where the continent of Africa is splitting into two. Geologists have already named the two parts of the African Plate.

The area of central-eastern Africa is important to scientists who study evolution and the earliest origins of humanity. This area is thought to be the place where hominids began to evolve. The entire continent of Africa sits on the African Plate. Asia Asia, the largest continent, stretches from the eastern Mediterranean Sea to the western Pacific Ocean. There are more than 40 countries in Asia.

Some are among the most-populated countries in the world, including China, India, and Indonesia. The continent of Asia includes many islands, some of them countries. The plateaus in Central Asia are largely unsuitable for farming and are thinly populated. The continent has a wide range of climate regions, from polar in the Siberian Arctic to tropical in equatorial Indonesia. Southeast Asia, on the other hand, depends on the annual monsoons, which bring rain and make agriculture possible.

Asia is the most mountainous of all the continents. More than 50 of the highest peaks in the world are in Asia. Mount Everest, which reaches more than 8, meters 29, feet high in the Himalaya range, is the highest point on Earth. These mountains have become major destination spots for adventurous travelers.

Plate tectonics continuously push the mountains higher. As the landmass of India pushes northward into the landmass of Eurasia, parts of the Himalayas rise at a rate of about 2. The land there lies more than meters 1, feet below sea level.

Although the Eurasian Plate carries most of Asia, it is not the only one supporting major parts of the large continent. The Indian Plate supports the Indian peninsula, sometimes called the Indian subcontinent. The Australian Plate carries some islands in Indonesia. Australia In addition to being the smallest continent, Australia is the flattest and the second-driest, after Antarctica.

The continent is sometimes called Oceania , to include the thousands of tiny islands of the Central Pacific and South Pacific, most notably Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia including the U. However, the continent of Australia itself includes only the nation of Australia, the eastern portion of the island of New Guinea the nation of Papua New Guinea and the island nation of New Zealand.

Australia covers just less than 8. Its population is about 31 million. It is the most sparsely populated continent, after Antarctica. Rainfall is light on the plateau, and not many people have settled there. The Great Dividing Range, a long mountain range, rises near the east coast and extends from the northern part of the territory of Queensland through the territories of New South Wales and Victoria.

Mainland Australia is known for the Outback , a desert area in the interior. This area is so dry, hot, and barren that few people live there. In addition to the hot plateaus and deserts in mainland Australia, the continent also features lush equatorial rainforests on the island of New Guinea, tropical beaches, and high mountain peaks and glaciers in New Zealand.

Biologists who study animals consider Australia a living laboratory. When the continent began to break away from Antarctica more than 60 million years ago, it carried a cargo of animals with it. Isolated from life on other continents, the animals developed into creatures unique to Australia, such as the koala, the platypus, and the Tasmanian devil.

The reef itself is 1, kilometers 1, miles of living coral communities. Most of Australia sits on the Australian Plate. Antarctica Antarctica is the windiest, driest, and iciest place on Earth. Antarctica is larger than Europe or Australia, but unlike those continents, it has no permanent human population.

People who work there are scientific researchers and support staff, such as pilots and cooks. The climate of Antarctica makes it impossible to support agriculture or a permanent civilization. Temperatures in Antarctica, much lower than Arctic temperatures, plunge lower than degrees Celsius degrees Fahrenheit. Scientific bases and laboratories have been established in Antarctica for studies in fields that include geology , oceanography , and meteorology. Antarctica is also an ideal place for discovering meteorites, or stony objects that have impacted Earth from space.

The dark meteorites, often made of metals like iron , stand out from the white landscape of most of the continent. Antarctica is almost completely covered with ice, sometimes as thick as 3. Like all other continents, Antarctica has volcanic activity.

The most active volcano is Mount Erebus, which is less than 1, kilometers miles from the South Pole. Antarctica does not have any countries. However, scientific groups from different countries inhabit the research stations. A multinational treaty negotiated in and reviewed in states that research in Antarctica can only be used for peaceful purposes. Vostok Station, where the coldest temperature on Earth was recorded, is operated by Russia.

All of Antarctica sits on the Antarctic Plate. Microcontinents In addition to the seven major continents, Earth is home to microcontinents, or pieces of land that are not geologically identified with a continent. Major microcontinents include:. Also called cosmic dust or space dust. Gas molecules are in constant, random motion.

Also called the Somali Peninsula. The last ice age peaked about 20, years ago. Also called glacial age. Monsoon usually refers to the winds of the Indian Ocean and South Asia, which often bring heavy rains. Regions are the basic units of geography. Sea level is determined by measurements taken over a year cycle. Also called lithospheric plate. The audio, illustrations, photos, and videos are credited beneath the media asset, except for promotional images, which generally link to another page that contains the media credit.

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