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Subjects
Oceania Australia, New Zealand

Resources

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General

Portal

The Australian Portal (Wikipedia)

Dictionary

Australia : continent of the Eastern Hemisphere southeast of Asia and south of the Equator area 2,948,366 square miles (7,665,751 square kilometers) or Commonwealth of Australia dominion of the Commonwealth of Nations including the continent of Australia and the island of Tasmania; capital Canberra area 2,967,909 square miles (7,716,563 square kilometers), population 21,507,717 — Webster

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Thesaurus

Roget’s II (Thesaurus.com), Merriam-Webster Thesaurus, Visuwords

Encyclopedia

Australia officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and numerous smaller islands. It is the world’s sixth-largest country by total area. The neighbouring countries are Papua New Guinea, Indonesia and East Timor to the north; the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu to the north-east; and New Zealand to the south-east. Australia’s capital is Canberra, and its largest urban area is Sydney.

For about 50,000 years before the first British settlement in the late 18th century, Australia was inhabited by indigenous Australians, who spoke languages classifiable into roughly 250 groups. After the European discovery of the continent by Dutch explorers in 1606, Australia’s eastern half was claimed by Great Britain in 1770 and initially settled through penal transportation to the colony of New South Wales from 26 January 1788. The population grew steadily in subsequent decades, and by the 1850s most of the continent had been explored and an additional five self-governing crown colonies established. On 1 January 1901, the six colonies federated, forming the Commonwealth of Australia. Australia has since maintained a stable liberal democratic political system that functions as a federal parliamentary constitutional monarchy comprising six states and several territories. The population is highly urbanised and heavily concentrated on the eastern seaboard. — Wikipedia

Britannica, Columbia (Infoplease)