Australia Today

Australia Today I m going to deliver a speech about Australia. First of all I want to start with the fundamental data about the continent. Australia is a big island to the south of Indonesia which belongs to the continent of Asia. It is the world?s largest island and smallest continent. With more than 7. 6 million sq km, it s bigger than the USA, excluding Alaska and Hawaii. Nevertheless, Australia has a population of only 16 million people. If there were no cities, there would be two people per sq km. Land and climate Now I?ll tell you something about the land and climate of this continent. Australia is, as I told you before, the smallest continent. But it is the flattest and driest as well. The highest mountain, Mount Kosciusko, is only 2, 228m high. Australia is so flat because there was no episode of mountain building and the land has been eroded by wind and weather through millions of years. You can divide Australia into three parts: the Eastern Highlands which are from Cape York to Melbourne, the Central Basin which used to be flooded by ancient seas and even today contains several big lakes with some just getting filled in wet seasons, and the last part the Western Shield which is a plateau of ancient rock. These rocks are the oldest we know. Many mineral deposits are found there. Because there is so little rain, many people chose to live where most of the rain is, on the coast. Australian environments and wildlife Australia was isolated from the rest of the world for thousands of years, which means that many plants and animals have evolved in isolation. Many of them can be found only in Australia. You can find so many different animals and plants because there is desert and rainforest, flat land and high mountains. Tere are some different climates and because of this, there are so many different plants and animals. But there is another reason for many different species in fauna and flora - in Australia there are so few people that they don t disturb nature very much. There are over 12, 000 different plant species and most of the trees are hardwoods like oak, which means that they have hard wood and are growing very slowly. Australia is known by its marsupials, like the kangaroo, the koala and the Tasmanian devil. There are over 600 species of birds and some of them are flightless, like the emu (Vogelstrauss). Some species are becoming extinct because of hunting or changing climates. Australian people are protesting against destruction of the rainforest and other environmental pollution. History: from the Aborigines to the European settlement The Aborigines came to Australia 50, 000 to 100, 000 years ago. Archaeologists found the skeleton of a man who lived about 30, 000 years ago and working tools which used about 38, 000 years ago. They have found many other ancient Aboriginal sites as well and continue to find more. They are trying to build a picture of the people who lived on this continent in the past. There were more than 750, 000 ...