Australia

The continent of kangaroos, koalas and the Great Reef

Australia is the only country that takes up a whole continent! Kangaroos, koalas, platypuses and the most venomous snakes live here — 80% of its animals are found nowhere else. Australia has more kangaroos than people! When it's winter here, it's summer there. The Sydney Opera House, Uluru and the Great Barrier Reef are all in Australia. Aboriginal people have lived here for 60,000 years — the oldest living culture in the world.

Capital: Canberra. Language: English.

The Commonwealth of Australia covers 7.69 million km² (6th) with 26.5 million people (90% on the coast; the interior 'Outback' is the emptiest inhabited land on Earth), 6 states, 2 territories, a constitutional monarchy. Nature: the driest inhabited continent (70% arid), the Great Barrier Reef, Uluru, the Great Dividing Range (Kosciuszko 2,228 m), Tasmania; 35 million years of isolation produced marsupials (250 species), monotremes (platypus, echidna) and eucalypts. History: Aboriginal peoples (65,000 years — the oldest continuous culture on Earth, 250 languages), Cook in 1770, a British penal colony in 1788, gold in 1851, federation in 1901, citizenship for Aboriginal people in 1967. Economy: iron ore (1st), coal, lithium, gold, wool, education exports; the 'lucky country' with a high quality of life. Culture: the Sydney Opera House, cricket, Australian rules football, surfing. Inventions: Wi-Fi (CSIRO), the black box, penicillin (Florey). With Uzbekistan: mining technology, an Uzbek diaspora in Sydney and Melbourne.

Fun facts

• Australia has twice as many kangaroos (50 million) as people (26 million).
• Wi-Fi technology was invented by Australian scientists.
• Aboriginal culture is 65,000 years old — the oldest on Earth.