Australia Fun Facts

Australia is an amazing and complex place.  In researching before and during our trip, we found some interesting tidbits that may provide color on this country and its people.  Most of the information below comes from “In a Sunburned Country” by Bill Bryson, who provides a very humorous introduction to this place (and anyone thinking about coming here should pick this book up). 

To begin with, there is probably no other place in the world more similar to America, and this is both good and bad.  It is very easy to travel here, and EVERYONE is very friendly.  Unfortunately, there are also plenty of Target’s, K-Mart’s, Blockbusters, and the like; if you desire a different culture and foreign experiences when you travel, I am not sure this is the place for you.

Also, as I write this, I and probably only a few other people are going to be interested in the info below.  For the saner majority of you, all I can offer are my apologies, but I wanted to save some of these facts to think about years from now as we look at photo albums, and I am too lazy to write them down separate from the blog (and now some of you get it, why I am writing in such boringly excruciating detail about our trip --- laziness and efficiency are closely related!).

So here, in the middle of our trip, are some thoughts about ... 

AUSTRALIA

Its people:

• There are 20 million or so people; China adds that many each year.
• In Britain, the population density is 632 people per square mile; in the U.S., it’s 76 per square mile.  Here in Australia, it’s just 6 people per square mile.  And when you consider that 80% of these Aussie’s live within 30 minutes of a coast, there are not too many humans out in the Outback.
• Its favorite sports involve water and/or things we can’t understand (cricket, rugby or Australian Rules football). The Rugby World Cup is here at the moment, with the Aussies taking on New Zealand in the finals this Saturday evening.
• The Aborigines have been here for 45,000-60,000 years, but no one knows how they arrived.  They couldn’t have walked.  The evolution theory doesn’t work, as there are no creatures here from which they could have descended.  Could they have sailed across the open ocean that long ago, and with enough people to start a society?
• We still haven’t figured out the government.  We think that they are separate from Great Britain, but we are not sure.  As an example, in the 1970’s, Her Majesty’s Representative dissolved Parliament, and called for a new election.  There was no such thing as Australian citizenship until 1949.  They became a “federation” in 1901, and they tried to become a “republic” in the 1990’s, but that failed.  Australia is a constitutional monarchy, with a Queen (Elizabeth II) who just happens to be the Queen of another country as well (and her picture is on all the coins).  So, they are indeed a country, but the great bulk of the middle of the country (the Northern Territory) obstinately refuses to join in (they are a territory but not a state, and really don’t have a say in national politics).  However, the island Tasmania off the coast is indeed a state.  After federating in the early 1900’s, the Melbournites and the Sydneysiders could not agree on which city to house the new capital, so they made one up in between, and thus Canberra was born (it too is a territory).
• Like America, they have had plenty of problems with racism, and problems with those of European descent understanding the indigenous people, and vice versus.  Not until the 1970’s could non-whites immigrate here, and after that color bar came down, people from all countries have flooded in.  Bryson points out that in one generation, Australia has re-made itself, and today, ¼ of its citizens were not born here.

Its geography:

• Things are upside down; you go north toward the tropics, the constellations are a tad different, and they have these great “upside down” maps of the world, drawn from their perspective.
• Obviously, you drive on the left side of the road, walk facing traffic on the right side of the road, look both ways twice when crossing the street for fear of being run over by cars in the wrong lane, and as will be discussed later, have no clear understanding of the myriad time zones.
• It’s the 6^th largest country in the world, its largest island, and of course, the only country that is a continent.  We’ve yet to figure out if all countries must belong to a continent, and if so, we don’t where to place New Zealand.
• It’s really old – no volcanoes or clashing tectonic plates have upset the landscape for 60 million years, so things are just lying around waiting to be discovered (and new discoveries happen all the time due to the fact that the country is so large and sparse, man has yet to visit many of its places).

Its flora, fauna and resources:

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• 80% of all that lives here live no where else, and yet, other than Antarctica, no other place is as hostile or as dry.
• It has tons of things that can kill you.  Along the beautiful beaches of most of the country, one can’t swim at this time of year due to the box jellies.  Of the 10 deadliest snakes in the world, they are all here.  Sharks and crocodiles are plentiful. Claire saw beach warning signs today for Crocodiles, Sharks and Marine Stingers, and this sign didn’t even mention the most deadly killer, than being the rip tides (the “rips”).
• The Great Barrier Reef is the largest living thing on earth, and stretches longer than the U.S. west coast.  It is visible from the moon.
• No one knows how many species of plants and animals are here.  There are at least 25,000 plant species (Britain in comparison has 1,600).  Over 1/3 of what is out there has never been named or studied.
• Up until the 1950’s (just 50 years ago!), Australia was considered to be very poor in natural resources; few had been discovered.  By the end of the 1960’s, it’s known iron ore reserves were larger than the U.S. and Canada combined, and today it is the world’s largest exporter of minerals.

Its size:

• The Australian coastline is over 23,000 miles long, almost the circumference of Planet Earth.
• There is not a paved road for the 2,000 miles of coastline between Darwin and Cairns.  500 miles north of Cairns is Cape York, but nary a road exists between the two. In the whole of Queensland (the size of western Europe), only 3 paved roads connect the coast to the western parts of the state, and only one of them goes on through toward the western coast of the country.  In some parts, one can walk the distance from New England to the Gulf Coast without crossing a paved road.
• They have built a 4,000 mile fence to keep dingo’s (the native dog; think coyote) out of the sheep-farming-rich southeast corner.
• We saw a show last night profiling a cattle ranch, employing 14 people; it is larger than Belgium.
• When we were in Uluru, we saw commercials for businesses in Adelaide and also in Darwin.  Both of those cities are 1,000+ miles away, but I guess that is where you have to go to get some supplies.