The Lonely Planet Guide to Australia

Major Industries

Minerals, oil, coal, gold, wool, cereals, meat, tourism

Trading Partners

Japan, ASEAN countries, South Korea, China, New Zealand, USA, EU

Getting There and Away

Air travel is Australia's best friend, with most visitors taking a long haul flight to get here.

Getting Around

With distances between cities so great, flying is the most favoured and speedy option, although buses and trains provide a more scenic, if lengthy alternative. Within the major cities, you will find thorough and convenient rail and bus systems.

Great Ocean Road

The incredible Great Ocean Road (B100) cuts its breathtaking path from Torquay to Warrnambool, every fresh twist and turn inspiring passengers to exclaim 'Oh!', and frustrated drivers to say, 'What? What's it look like?'. The stunning stretch of road attracts seven million snap-happy visitors annually and is one of the world's most spectacular coastal drives, especially between Anglesea and Apollo Bay. Beyond it, the thrashing Shipwreck Coast (from Princetown to Port Fairy) and its dramatic beachscapes inspire spooky stories of ghosts from wrecked vessels that haunt the area.

For more information visit: http://www.greatoceanrd.org.au

Cradle Mountain-Lake St Clair National Park

Tasmania's best-known national park has spectacular mountain peaks, deep gorges, lakes and wild moorlands. It's one of the areas affected most by glacial activity in Australia. There are plenty of day walks, but it's the spectacular 80.5km (50mi) walk, known as The Overland Track, between the Cradle Valley and Cynthia Bay regions that has turned this park into a bushwalkers' mecca.

For more information visit: http://www.parks.tas.gov.au/natparks/cradle/

Uluru (Ayers Rock)

With millions of postcards to prove it, nothing says outback Australia like a huge red rock in the middle of nowhere. Besides the striking beauty of Uluru, its deeper spiritual significance as a sacred mythological place of the Aboriginal Anganu is equally profound in its impact. The site can be fully and respectfully appreciated from the circuit walk.

Barossa Valley

The gently sloping valley was settled in 1842 by German settlers fleeing religious persecution in Prussia and Silesia, and its distinct Germanic flavour remains.

The central town is Tanunda. Adelaide is just over an hour's drive to the south-west. Note that the least scenic time to visit is between July and October, because the vines are heavily pruned during the winter months. The busiest months are from March to May when the grapes are harvested.

There are several other wine-growing regions in the state, notably the south-eastern corner around Penola, Coonawarra and Padthaway; in the Clare Valley, north of the Barossa; and around McLaren Vale on the Fleurieu Peninsula.

For more information visit: http://www.barossa-region.org

Great Barrier Reef

Larger than the Great Wall of China and the only living thing visible from space, the Great Barrier Reef is one of the seven wonders of the natural world. The 2000km (1240mi) conglomeration of colourful coral stretches along the Queensland seaboard and makes for some of the most spectacular diving landscape imaginable.

For more information visit: http://www.gbrmpa.gov.au

Pre 20th Century History

Australia's original inhabitants, known as Australian Aborigines, have the longest continuous cultural history in the world, with origins dating back to the last Ice Age. Although mystery and debate shroud many aspects of Australian prehistory, it is generally accepted that the first humans travelled across the sea from Indonesia about 70,000 years ago. The first visitors, called 'Robust' by archaeologists because of their heavy-boned physique, were followed 20,000 years later by the more slender 'Gracile' people, the ancestors of Australian Aborigines.

Europeans began to encroach on Australia in the 16th century: Portuguese navigators were followed by Dutch explorers and the enterprising English pirate William Dampier. Captain James Cook sailed the entire length of the eastern coast in 1770, stopping at Botany Bay on the way. After rounding Cape York, he claimed the continent for the British and named it New South Wales.

In 1779, Joseph Banks (a naturalist on Cook's voyage) suggested that Britain could solve overcrowding problems in its prisons by transporting convicts to New South Wales. In 1787, the First Fleet set sail for Botany Bay under the command of Captain Arthur Philip, who was to become the colony's first governor. The fleet comprised 11 ships, 750 male and female convicts, four companies of marines and supplies for two years. Philip arrived in Botany Bay on 26 January 1788, but soon moved north to Sydney Cove, where there was better land and water. For the new arrivals, New South Wales was a harsh and horrible place, and the threat of starvation hung over the colony for at least 16 years.

Australia never experienced the systematic push westward that characterised the European settlement of America. Early exploration and expansion took place for one of three reasons: to find suitable places of secondary punishment, like the barbaric penal settlements at Port Arthur in Van Diemen's Land and on Norfolk Island; to occupy land before anyone else arrived; or in later years, because of the quest for gold.

Free settlers began to be attracted to Australia over the next decades, but it was the discovery of gold in the 1850s that changed the face of the colony. The huge influx of migrants and several large finds boosted the economy and irrevocably changed the colonial social structures. Aborigines were ruthlessly pushed off their tribal lands as new settlers took up land for farming or mining. The Industrial Revolution in England required plenty of raw materials, and Australia's agricultural and mineral resources expanded to meet the demand.

Modern History

Australia became a nation when federation of the separate colonies took place on 1 January 1901 (although many of the legal and cultural ties with England remained). Australian troops fought alongside the British in the Boer War and WWI. Interestingly, while Australians rallied to the aid of Britain during WWI, the majority of voters were prepared to support voluntary military service only. Efforts to introduce conscription during the war led to bitter debate, both in parliament and in the streets, and in referenda compulsory national service was rejected.

Australia was hard hit by the Depression; prices for wool and wheat - two mainstays of the economy - plunged. In 1931 almost a third of breadwinners were unemployed and poverty was widespread. Swagmen became a familiar sight, as they had been in the 1890s depression, as thousands of men took to the 'wallaby track' in search of work in the countryside. By 1933, however, Australia's economy was starting to recover, a result of rises in wool prices and a rapid revival of manufacturing.

When WWII broke out, Australian troops fought alongside the British in Europe but after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, Australia's own national security finally began to take priority. Singapore fell, the northern Australian towns of Darwin and Broome and the New Guinean town of Port Moresby were bombed, the Japanese advanced southward. In appalling conditions, Australian soldiers confronted and defeated the Japanese at Milne Bay, east of Port Moresby, and began the long struggle to push them from the Pacific. Ultimately it was the USA that helped protect Australia from the Japanese, defeating them in the Battle of the Coral Sea. This event was to mark the beginning of a profound shift in Australia's allegiance away from Britain and towards the USA.

Post-WWII immigration brought a flood of European immigrants, many of them non-British. The immigrants have since made an enormous contribution to the country, enlivening its culture and broadening its vision. The post-war era was a boom time in Australia as its raw materials were once again in great demand.

In the 1950s Australia came to accept the American view that it was not so much Asia but communism in Asia that threatened the increasingly Americanised Australian way of life. Accordingly, Australia followed the USA into the Korean War, and in 1965, Australia committed troops to assist the USA in the Vietnam War, though support for involvement was far from absolute. Still more troubling for many young Australian men was the fact that conscription was introduced in 1964, and those undertaking national service could now be sent overseas. By 1967 as many as 40% of Australians serving in Vietnam were conscripts.

The civil unrest aroused by conscription was one factor that contributed to the 1972 rise to power of the Australian Labor Party, under the leadership of Gough Whitlam. The Whitlam government withdrew Australian troops from Vietnam, abolished national service and higher-education fees, instituted a system of free and universally available health care, and supported land rights for Aboriginal people.

The government, however, was hampered by a hostile Senate and by much talk of mismanagement. On 11 November 1975, the governor general (the British monarch's representative in Australia) took the unprecedented step of dismissing the parliament and installing a caretaker government led by the leader of the opposition Liberal Party, Malcolm Fraser. Labor supporters were appalled - the powers that the governor general had been able to invoke had long been regarded by many as an anachronistic vestige of Australia's now remote British past. Nevertheless, it was a conservative Liberal and National Country Party coalition that won the ensuing election. A Labor government was not returned until 1983, when a former trade union leader, Bob Hawke, led the party to victory.

Recent History

After a period of recession and high unemployment in the early 1990s, the electorate eventually lost faith in the Labor government, and in early 1996, Labor leader Paul Keating was defeated in a landslide victory to the conservative coalition, led by John Howard. Howard became the country's second-longest serving prime minister, serving until November 2007, when he was defeated by Labor's Kevin Rudd.

Under Howard's government, the prominent, divisive issues of refugees (and refugee camps) saw the majority of Australians hardening their hearts to asylum seekers. At the same time, Howard's stance on Aboriginal issues was marked more by confrontation than by sympathy.

On 13 February 2008, Prime Minister Rudd gave a historic apology speech to Australia's indigenous population for the discrimination and mistreatment they have suffered since white settlement. He also proposed practical strategies to overcome the longstanding inequality between Aboriginal and other Australians. Only time will tell if his stirring words translate into action, but the general feeling is optimistic.

Australia maintains a strong alliance with the USA, but its involvement in the war against Iraq (2003-) looks to be on the decline under the Rudd government.

The issue of republicanism - replacing Britain's queen with an Australian president as head of state - which dominated Australian politics in the late 1990s, remains on the agenda, but the Rudd government has not yet made any definitive statements on the matter.

This is an accessible and informative general history of Australia.

This bestseller gives a harrowing account of the convict era.

A sympathetic historical account of Australia's Aborigines since European settlement.

An account of pioneering days on a cattle station in the Kimberleys.

A tale of two ill-equipped urban Australians who face the vastness of their country with nothing but Neil Young and beer for guidance.

A giant shipwreck story set in precolonial Australia and written by a Nobel Prize-winner.

Carey's version of events surrounding Australia's favourite national hero, a bushranger who it turns out also had a way with words, is perhaps his best work yet.