According to Allcitycodes, Australia is one of the 14 independent countries that make up Oceania and is the sixth largest in the world. Surrounded by the Indian, Glacial Antarctic and Pacific Oceans, it is separated from Asia by the seas of Arafura and Timor.. Australia’s 7,686,850 km² area lies on the Indo-Australian plate. Australia has a coastline of 25,760 km and claims a large exclusive economic zone of 8,148,250 km². This exclusive economic zone does not include the Australian Antarctic Territory. The Great Barrier Reef, the largest coral reef in the world, lies just off the northeast coast and stretches for more than 2,000 kilometers. With a width of 100 to 300 km, it makes up a large number of islands. In terms of relief, Australia occupies one of the oldest and lowest continental masses on the planet. At 2,228 m elevation, Mount Kosciuszko in the Great Dividing Range is the highest mountain in mainland Australia; however Mawson Peak, in the remote Australian territory of the Heard and McDonald Islands,
The largest monolith in the world, Mount Uluru, is located in Western Australia. A huge part of the country is desert or semi-arid. Australia is the driest and flattest inhabited country, and the one with the least fertile soils. Only in the southeast and southwest is there a temperate climate. The northern part of the country, with a tropical climate, has vegetation consisting mainly of rain forests, forests, grasslands, mangroves, and deserts. The climate is strongly influenced by seasonal tropical low pressure systems that produce cyclones in the northern region, and by marine currents, including the oceanic-atmospheric phenomenon of El Niño, which is correlated with periodic droughts. The Australian hydrography is a clear evidence of the drying process that the island-continent undergoes; the two most important rivers, The Darling and the Murray, despite having lengths greater than 2000 km, carry a meager flow in almost their entire section that gives them the appearance of narrow streams; Except in Tasmania and the perhumid zone of the extreme north, the great majority of the watercourses are actually paleochannels or wadis, something similar happens with their “lakes”, in present times the great Australian lakes are depressions with salt flats and some lagoons in its background. By contrast, there is an important aquifer in the western half of Australia that provides the waters emerging from the Great Artesian Basin. In the northwest of Australia is the ancient (archaic) Pilbara craton, such studied craton presents stromatolites that would be some of the oldest traces of life on the surface of planet Earth. the vast majority of the watercourses are actually paleochannels or wadis, something similar happens with their “lakes”, in present times the great Australian lakes are depressions with salt flats and some lagoons at their bottom. By contrast, there is an important aquifer in the western half of Australia that provides the waters emerging from the Great Artesian Basin. In the northwest of Australia is the ancient (archaic) Pilbara craton, such studied craton presents stromatolites that would be some of the oldest traces of life on the surface of planet Earth. the vast majority of the watercourses are actually paleochannels or wadis, something similar happens with their “lakes”, in present times the great Australian lakes are depressions with salt flats and some lagoons at their bottom. By contrast, there is an important aquifer in the western half of Australia that provides the waters emerging from the Great Artesian Basin. In the northwest of Australia is the ancient (archaic) Pilbara craton, such studied craton presents stromatolites that would be some of the oldest traces of life on the surface of planet Earth. By contrast, there is an important aquifer in the western half of Australia that provides the waters emerging from the Great Artesian Basin. In the northwest of Australia is the ancient (archaic) Pilbara craton, such studied craton presents stromatolites that would be some of the oldest traces of life on the surface of planet Earth. By contrast, there is an important aquifer in the western half of Australia that provides the waters emerging from the Great Artesian Basin. In the northwest of Australia is the ancient (archaic) Pilbara craton, such studied craton presents stromatolites that would be some of the oldest traces of life on the surface of planet Earth.
Etymology
Its name has a double etymology. On the one hand it derives from the Latin australis, from the south: legends of an unknown land of the south (terra australis incognita), dating from Roman times, were frequent in medieval geography, but uncertain. On the other hand, Pedro Fernández de Quirós discovered an island in the archipelago of the New Hebrides (current Vanuatu) named Austrialia del Espíritu Santo, mixing the words Austral, from the legend, and Austria, the dynasty at the time reigning in Spain, originating thus the name by which in the future the lands to the south of New Guinea would be known.
The Dutch adjective Australische was used in the 17th century by Dutch officials in Batavia (present-day Jakarta) to refer to the southern land discovered recently, in 1638. The name “Australia” is due to the work A voyage to Terra Australis (A voyage to Terra Australis), of 1814, by the navigator Matthew Flinders, the first to circumnavigate it. Despite the title, which reflected the admiral’s view of legitimate place names, Flinders used the word Australia, and the success of the notebook popularized the word. The Governor of New South Wales, Lachlan Macquarie, later used it in messages sent to England.. In 1817 it recommended official adoption and in 1825, the British Admiralty rejected it.
