Australia

• Melbourne - Australia's second largest city and the nation's first capital city. Melbourne is a huge sporting and cultural capital. Melbourne is known for fantastic public transport, night clubs and attractions.
• Canberra - the purpose-built, planned national capital of Australia
• Adelaide - the City of Churches, a relaxed South Australian alternative to the big eastern cities
• Brisbane - sun-drenched capital of Queensland, Very warm weather with beautiful sandy beaches.
• Cairns - gateway to the Great Barrier Reef, Port Douglas, the Atherton Tablelands, Daintree National Park, and many beautiful beaches and resorts. A great place for people to getaway to and relax.
• Darwin - Australia's smallest and northern-most capital, at the top of the Northern Territory
• Hobart - small and quiet capital of Tasmania
• Perth - the most remote continental capital city on earth, on the south-western edge of Western Australia
• Sydney - Australia's first and largest city, the capital of New South Wales
  Other cities can be found under their respective state articles.
  

Geography
Australia is the world's smallest continent but sixth-largest country; it's slightly smaller than the 48 contiguous United States. The highly urbanised population is heavily concentrated along the eastern and south-eastern coasts. Australia is bordered on the northwest, west, and southwest by the Indian Ocean, and on the east by the South Pacific Ocean. The Tasman Sea lies to the southeast, while the Great Barrier Reef lies to the northeast. Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Indonesia are Australia's northern neighbors, separated from Australia by the Arafura Sea and the Timor Sea.

Australia is mostly arid and semi-arid: the center is desert and much agricultural land is poor quality by the standards of continents with richer soil. The south east is temperate and the north tropical. Australia was massively deforested for agricultural purposes: forest areas survive in extensive national parks and some other areas. Australia is prone to severe drought and water restrictions are currently in place in some areas, however these shouldn't affect travellers as they mostly relate to watering gardens and washing cars.

A common perception of Australia is that it is always hot and sunny: wrong! Both Sydney and Melbourne can experience days or even weeks of almost continual rainfall, while Western Tasmania has a climate that closely resembles that of England, although Tasmania's capital, Hobart, is the second driest Australian capital.

Australia has an area of 7,682,300 square kilometres and most Australians live on the coast. Many travellers underestimate the enormous distances between cities and towns. You can use this distance tool to display the distance between any two points in Australia.

History
The continent of Australia was apparently first settled more than 40,000 years ago with successive waves of immigration of Aboriginal peoples from south and south-east Asia. With rising sea levels after the last Ice Age, Australia became largely isolated from the rest of the world and the Aboriginal tribes developed a variety of cultures, based on a close (spiritual) relationship with the land and nature, and extended kinship. Australian aborigines maintained a hunter/gatherer culture for thousands of years in association with a complex artistic and cultural life - including a very rich 'story-telling' tradition. While the 'modern impression' of Australian Aborigines is largely built around an image of the 'desert people' who have adapted to some of the harshest conditions on the planet (equivalent to the bushmen of the Kalahari), Australia provided a 'comfortable living' for the bulk of aborigines amongst the bountiful flora and fauna on the Australian coast - until the arrival of Europeans.

Although a lucrative Chinese market for shells and beche de mere had encouraged Indonesian fishermen to visit Northern Australia for centuries it was unknown to Europeans until the 1600's, when Dutch traders to Asia began to 'bump' into the Western Coast. Early Dutch impressions of this extremely harsh, dry country were unfavourable, and Australia remained for them something simply a road sign pointing north to the much richer (and lucrative) East Indies (modern Indonesia). Deliberate exploration of the Australian coast was then largely taken over by the French and the British. Consequently place names of bays, headlands and rivers around the coastline reflect a range of Dutch, French, British, and Aboriginal languages.