Australia Pictures

An outline of Australia overlaid on a relative sized map of Europe. Jeez mate, it's as big as a wombat's belly! Click on the map to see all our pictures or go down under to choose a particular destination

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Oz is the world's smallest continent but the only country that occupies an entire continent. The population of 20 million lives in a vast area of 3 million square miles [7.7m sq. kms. The USA has 9.7m sq. kms and 290 million population, the UK has 130,000 sq. kms and 58m population]. Most humans are corralled in major conurbations, so there is a lot of space inhabited only by kangaroos, rabbits and funnel-web spiders.

99% of Australians are of European or Asian descent and started arriving - mostly as prisoners - in Sydney in 1788. The original inhabitants, the Aborigines, numbered in the hundreds of thousands at that time, but persecution and disease wiped out all but 60,000 some years ago. These days, pitied rather than persecuted, Aboriginal numbers are back up in the 100,000s.

The largest migrant group is still the British but while the country's immigration policy these days is apparently balanced and non-discriminatory, anti-immigration is an effective political tool and has helped to bring John Howard back for a fourth term as Prime Minister in 2004.