Australia’s coastline stretches around thirty thousand miles! This incredible coastline joins over ten thousand beaches. Over 85% of Australian residents live within about thirty miles of the coast – so, no wonder Australians are “water people”!
Western Australia’s Kalgoorlie is the country’s largest producer of gold, whilst ninety-five per cent of the world's precious opals and almost one hundred per cent of its black opals are produced in Coober Pedy in South Australia. (The world’s largest opal, weighing over eleven pounds, was found there in 1990).
But what springs first to mind when you think of Australia? Sheep! Australia has around eighty-five million sheep (more than enough to count to help you sleep!). These sheep (mostly Merino) produce the bulk of the world’s wool. In addition, Australia is the largest exporter of beef in the world – from over twenty-five million cattle!

Is Australia “the land of excess”?
The Great Barrier Reef is home to the world’s largest oyster, weighing up to more than six pounds.
The world’s longest earthworms, up to fifteen feet, inhabit Gippsland in Victoria.
The heaviest crab, weighing as much as thirty pounds, can be seen in Bass Strait near Tasmania.
Australia’s tallest mountain is Mt Kosciuszko, which seven thousand feet high.
Australia’s longest stretch of straight road – nearly one hundred miles – is on the Eyre Highway in Western Australia.

Australians invented:
Notepads (1902)
Aspirin (1915)
Anti-counterfeiting technology for banknotes (1992)
 The surf lifesaving reel (1906)
The pacemaker (1926
Penicillin (1940)
The plastic disposable syringe (1949)
Long-wearing contact lenses (1999).

 
Roos!
The kangaroo, Australia’s icon, has an estimated population of forty million –greater than when Australia was first settled.
Unique wildlife
Australia developed a unique fauna when it broke away from the super-continent Gondwana more than 50 million years ago. Today Australia is home to a wealth of wildlife not found anywhere else in the world. We have around 800 species of birds, half of which are unique to this country. Our marine environments contain more than 4,000 fish varieties and tens of thousands of species of invertebrates, plants and micro-organisms. About 80 per cent of Australia's southern marine species are found nowhere else in the world.
Flourishing flora
Australia also supports at least 25,000 species of plants, compared to 17,500 in Europe. That includes living fossils like the Wollemi pine and the grass tree, and brilliant wildflowers. There are over 12,000 species in Western Australia alone!

Our People and Culture
An ethnic melting pot
Since 1945 more than six million people from across the world have come to Australia to live. Today, more than 20 per cent of Australians are foreign born and more than 40 per cent are of mixed cultural origin. In our homes we speak 226 languages - after English, the most popular are Italian, Greek, Cantonese and Arabic.
Big country, big ideas 
 Aboriginal advances
Believed to be the world’s oldest civilization, Aboriginal people have lived and thrived on this continent for more than 50,000 years.  Aboriginal societies made many unique advances long before the Europeans arrived. They invented the aerodynamic boomerang and a type of spear thrower called the woomera. They were also the first society to ground edges on stone cutting tools and the first to use stone tools to grind seeds, everyday tools developed only much later by other societies.