Australia is an island continent located between the Indian and Pacific Oceans, Australia combines a wide variety of landscapes. The highest mountains are part of the Great Dividing Range that line the east coast from Cape York Peninsula south to the state of Victoria. Most people reside along the southeast coast, in cities like Melbourne or Sydney, because winds from the southeast release rain there—leaving the interior beyond the mountains arid or semiarid. West of the Great Dividing Range the landscape consists mostly of plains and plateaus; the Macdonnell Ranges near the country's center are an exception.

The Great Artesian Basin provides underground water for a region that would otherwise be desert. Vegetation ranges from rain forests in the far north to steppes and deserts in the vast interior (which Australians call the outback).

There are more than 130 species of marsupials, such as kangaroos, koalas, and wombats. The Murray-Darling River Basin, covering about 14 percent of the continent, helps sustain wheat and wool industries. Founded in 1788 as a British convict colony, Australia was a place of banishment until gold strikes in 1851 opened floodgates of immigration. Independence came in 1901, with a constitution adapted in part from that of the United States.

Immigration has been key to Australia's development since 1788; from 1945 through 2000 almost six million immigrants arrived. Aborigines number 410,000, and the government is making efforts to settle aboriginal land rights. Australia has one of the world's highest living standards with 85 percent living in urban areas.

Aboriginal settlers arrived on the continent from Southeast Asia about 40,000 years before the first Europeans began exploration in the 17th century. No formal territorial claims were made until 1770, when Capt. James COOK took possession in the name of Great Britain. Six colonies were created in the late 18th and 19th centuries; they federated and became the Commonwealth of Australia in 1901. The new country took advantage of its natural resources to rapidly develop its agricultural and manufacturing industries and to make a major contribution to the British effort in World Wars I and II.

In recent decades, Australia has transformed itself into an internationally competitive, advanced market economy. It boasted one of the OECD's fastest growing economies during the 1990's, a performance due in large part to economic reforms adopted in the 1980's. Long-term concerns include pollution, particularly depletion of the ozone layer, and management and conservation of coastal areas, especially the Great Barrier Reef.