Australia• 6th largest country (by area)

• Language: English (sort of…)

• Population: 23.000.000 people

• Member of the Commonwealth ( Queen Elizabeth II is the monarch = Head of State)

• History:• discovered in 1606 by Dutch explorers• claimed by Great Britain in 1770• became a colony for British prisoners

(1788-1868)

G‘Day!

Australia‘s flag

Can you find the UK‘s flag – the

Union Jack?

Australia from space

Weather and Climate

80% of the population live in only 5% of the country.

Most of Australia is hot and dry. Most people live in the coastal areas of the south and the south-east, where it is milder.

Australia‘s most important cities

Australia‘s capital Canberra

Canberra

With a population of 367,000, it is Australia's largest inland city

Perth

Perth

Perth is the largest city of Western Australia.

It is the fourth most populous city in Australia, with an estimated population of 1.83 million living in the Perth metropolitan area.

Sydney and the Opera house

Sydney

Sydney‘s opera house

Sydney

Melbourne

It is the second largest city.

It is the „Garden city“ and the cultural center of Australia.

Animals in Australia

The fauna of Australia consists of a huge variety of animals: some 83% of mammals, 89% of reptiles, 90% of fish and insects and 93% of amphibians that inhabit the continent are endemic to Australia. This means: they are only in Australia and in no other countries.

Echidnas are small mammals covered with coarse hair and spines.

Echidna

The platypus is a mammal, but it lays eggs!

Platypus

The Tasmanian Devil is a carnivorous animal, that means it eats meat. It even can kill little lambs. It is the size of a small dog.When the ears are red it gets angry!

Tasmanian Devil

Bandiccots are rabbit-sized. They live in holes in lawns and feed on spiders, grubs, earthworms and so on.

They are marsupials – the babies are in pouches.

Bandicot

Wombats weigh 20 – 40 kilos. Their teeth have no roots and keep growing throughout the animal’s lifetime.A new born wombat has the size of a bean – stays in the pouch for 6-10 months. They are playful animals – are active at night – can dig 2 m of their burrow in one night. A burrow may be 30 m long.Their colours are grey, brown or black.

Wombat

A wallaby is a medium sized kangaroo.The tail is used for jumping and balancing.

Wallaby

Flying Foxes can weigh more than 1 kilo, they like tropical weather and hunt at night!

Flying Fox

Dingoes are wild dogs that hunt animals and sheep. So the farmers don‘t like them!

Dingo

Kookaburra

Jellyfish can be very dangerous!

Jellyfish

Kangaroo ahead!

A roo – a jill – and her joey

Great Barrier Reef

Great Barrier Reef

The Great Barrier Reef is the world's largest coral reef system composed of over 2,900 individual reefs and 900 islands stretching for over 2,600 kilometers over an area of 344,400 square kilometers. The reef is located in the Coral Sea, off the coast of Australia.

The Great Barrier Reef can be seen from outer space and is the world's biggest single structure made by living organisms. This reef structure is composed of and built by billions of tiny organisms. It supports a wide diversity of life and was selected as a World Heritage Site in 1981.

CNN labeled it one of the seven natural wonders of the world.

Great Barrier Reef

Great Barrier Reef

Ayers rock (Uluru)

Ayers Rock (Uluru) in the middle of Australia is a large sandstone rock formation. Uluru is sacred to the Aboriginal people of the area. The area around the formation is home to waterholes, rock caves and ancient paintings. Uluru is listed as a World Heritage Site.

Flying Doctors

An aeromedical health service for those who live, work or travel in outback and regional Australia.

School of the Air

School of the Air is a special kind of schooling in sparsely populated regions.Kids up to early secondary education are taught via distance education.In the beginning students and teachers communicated via two-way radio. Today ICT helps to educate these kids. “Moodle“ was also invented by an Australian teacher.Every day the student gets an hour of individual or group-teaching. The rest of the day students learn with the help of the material they get by the teachers and the help of their parents, brothers, sisters or a tutor.Among others, there is a School of the Air in Alice Springs. It educates 120 students, who are spread over an area of 1,000,000 km² (that‘s twelve times the size of Austria). About 15% of these students are Aborigines.

Aborigines

Most people think that Australia is a young continent. It was only 200 years ago that the British under Captain James Cook began their invasion. But the ABORIGINES had already been living in the country (at least 50.000 years).They say that they have been there since the beginning of time. They were seen as nomadic people as they moved from one area to the next in search of food and water. They were hunters and gatherers.

THE FIGHT TO SURVIVEWhen the British arrived, the peaceful Aborigines found themselves at war because the British took their land away. Thousands of Aborigines were killed. The British brought diseases that caused more death; even whole tribes were massacred. Those who survived were put into reservations and church missions. They were treated like prisoners or animals.

Today they live in their traditional way in some areas of the country, but they are proud of their culture.

The fight to survive

Their musical instrument is called didgeridoo ( made of special tree trunks). The boomerang actually a weapon used for hunting.

Didgeridoo & Boomerang

A life between past, present and future!

Thanks, and hooroo!