Country Information
Australia is the world’s smallest continent and largest island, a relatively young nation established in an ancient land. Its development represents a triumph over remoteness and a harsh landscape. It is generally accepted that Australia’s original inhabitants, the aboriginal people, have lived in the continent for 40 000to 60 000 years. They were also its sole human inhabitants until two centuries ago.
The first European settlement of the continent –by the British—began in 1788, on the site now occupied by Sydney, Australia’s largest city. There were then about 1 500 Europeans and an estimated 300 000 aboriginal people in Australia.
It is one of the most urbanized countries in the world, with about 70 percent of the population living in the 10 largest cities. Australians have a high standard of living by world standards.

Population
The population had reached 2.25million by 1881, 5.41million by 1921 and 7.4million by the end of World War II (1945). It increased sharply, partly because of a large postwar immigration program, and reached more than 17 million in 1991, despite a decline that began in the 1970s in natural increase and net immigration. The rate of population increase in the 40 years after World War II, about two per cent, has halved.
Australia’s population is now about 17 million or about two people to the square kilometer. The population is highly urbanized with the vast majority of people living in several large cities. Most of the population is in the south-eastern corner and only 15% of Australians lives in rural areas. Much of the rest of the continent is too rugged or arid for close settlement.

Climate
Australia is the world’s driest inhabited continent; vast areas are arid or semi-desert, and virtually uninhabited. There are rainforest and vast plains in the north (almost 40 percent of the country lies in the tropics), snowfields in the south-east, desert in the centre and fertile croplands in the east, south and south-west.
Lies in the Southern Hemisphere, season in Australia are to the opposite of Hong Kong. Every year, from April to November, it is the rain season; from November to April next year, it’s the dry season; from January to February, it’s the typhoon season.