The Island Continent-Australia
Australia is the smallest continent of earth and lying between the Pacific and the Indian Oceans in the Southern Hemisphere of the globe.
Canberra is its capital and major cities of this country are Sydney and Melbourne.
It extends to around 4000kms from east to west and 3200kms from north to south. Few islands like Papua New Guinea, Tasmania, Newzealand lies in the territory of Australia.
The continent has been made up of oldest rocks from Precambrian and Paleozoic age. Also major mountains of this region are made up of Ice Age rocks.
This continent is highly developed and has 14th largest economy of the world. According to the Human Development Index, Australia ranked third in the world and according to the democracy, it ranked 8th in the world. Australia has 8th largest world’s immigrant’s population in the world.
Dutch arrived in this continent in the year 1606 near Cape York Peninsula. Later it had been invaded by Spanish, British and others.
This continent is surrounded by Indian and Pacific Oceans. Australia is separated from Asia by the Arafura and Timor Seas. The Great Barrier Reef, which is world’s largest coral reef lies to the north east coast of Australia.
Since it lies in the southern hemisphere near Tropic of Capricorn, it has wide variety of landscape with tropical rainforest in the north east, mountains in the south east, south west and east and deserts in the center. The climate here is majorly influenced by the sea and ocean currents because of its location. It has periodic droughts and seasonal tropical low pressure system. Major part of the continent contains tropical climate dominated by summer rainfall, while the interior of the continent has arid to semi arid climate.
