Australia Today:
Today Australia has a very diverse population of 26 million people. It is considered its own continent and has a very arid center region. This is why 85% of Australia’s population live within 50Km (30 miles) of the coast. In size, Australia is the sixth largest country in the world. but has the lowest population density in the world – only two people per square kilometre. This means there is a lot of arid and undeveloped land in its center.
The Federation of Australia constitutionally consists of six federated states (New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania, Victoria, and Western Australia) and ten federal territories. The largest state is New South Wales and the smallest - Tasmania. The largest city in Australia is Sydney at 5,300,000 people. Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth in the west round up the top four cities by population. Since the year 2000, the population of Australia has increased by an amazing 25%. More than half of this growth (around 60 per cent) has been due to net overseas migration.
Australian Early History:
Humans are thought to have arrived in Australia about 30,000 years ago. The original inhabitants, who have descendants to this day, are known as Aborigines. In the eighteenth century, the Aboriginal population was about 300,000. Today there are about 900,000 Aboriginal people representing about 3.8% of Australia’s population.
The Aborigines, who have been described alternately as nomadic hunter-gatherers and fire-stick farmers (known for using fire to clear the brush and attract grass-eating animals instead of cultivating the land), settled primarily in the well-watered coastal areas.
Like so many developed countries, Australia has and is still struggling with its past and current treatment of their indigenous population. The Aborigines like the Native North American Indians, & Canada’s First Nations People - were subject to racist polices and in many cases discriminatory cultural cleansing. I’m not going to go into this topic with great explanation - just to note that this is a hurtful topic in many developed countries around the world.
