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Introduction  

The Pinnacles, Western Australia
The Pinnacles, Western Australia

The flag of Australia

Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands. Australia is the largest country by area in Oceania and the world's sixth-largest country. Australia is the oldest, flattest, and driest inhabited continent, with the least fertile soils. It is a megadiverse country, and its size gives it a wide variety of landscapes and climates, with deserts in the centre, tropical rainforests in the north-east, tropical savannas in the north, and mountain ranges in the south-east.

The ancestors of Aboriginal Australians began arriving from south-east Asia approximately 65,000 years ago, during the last ice age. Arriving by sea, they settled the continent and had formed approximately 250 distinct language groups by the time of European settlement, maintaining some of the longest known continuing artistic and religious traditions in the world. Australia's written history commenced with the European maritime exploration of Australia. The Dutch navigator Willem Janszoon was the first known European to reach Australia, in 1606. In 1770, the British explorer James Cook mapped and claimed the east coast of Australia for Great Britain, and the First Fleet of British ships arrived at Sydney in 1788 to establish the penal colony of New South Wales. The European population grew in subsequent decades, and by the end of the 1850s gold rush, most of the continent had been explored by European settlers and an additional five self-governing British colonies established. Democratic parliaments were gradually established through the 19th century, culminating with a vote for the federation of the six colonies and foundation of the Commonwealth of Australia on 1 January 1901. This began a process of increasing autonomy from the United Kingdom, highlighted by the Statute of Westminster Adoption Act 1942, and culminating in the Australia Act 1986.

Australia is a federal parliamentary constitutional monarchy, comprising six states and ten territories. Australia's population of nearly 27 million is highly urbanised and heavily concentrated on the eastern seaboard. Canberra is the nation's capital, while its most populous city and financial centre is Sydney. The next four largest cities are Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, and Adelaide. It is ethnically diverse and multicultural, the product of large-scale immigration, with almost half of the population having at least one parent born overseas. Australia's abundant natural resources and well-developed international trade relations are crucial to the country's economy, which generates its income from various sources including services, mining exports, banking, manufacturing, agriculture and international education. Australia ranks highly for quality of life, health, education, economic freedom, civil liberties and political rights.

More about Australia, its history and culture

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Radium Hill, a former minesite in South Australia which operated from 1906 until 1961. It was Australia's first uranium mine, years before the country's next major mines at Rum Jungle in the Northern Territory (opened in 1950), and the Mary Kathleen mine in Queensland (1958).
Nuclear weapons testing, uranium mining and export, and nuclear power have often been the subject of public debate in Australia, and the anti-nuclear movement in Australia has a long history. Its origins date back to the 1972–1973 debate over French nuclear testing in the Pacific and the 1976–1977 debate about uranium mining in Australia. (Full article...)
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John Hadley (born 27 September 1966) is an Australian philosopher whose research concerns moral and political philosophy, including animal ethics, environmental ethics, and metaethics. He is currently a senior lecturer in philosophy in the School of Humanities and Communication Arts at Western Sydney University. He has previously taught at Charles Sturt University and the University of Sydney, where he studied as an undergraduate and doctoral candidate. In addition to a variety of articles in peer-reviewed journals and edited collections, he is the author of the 2015 monograph Animal Property Rights (Lexington Books) and the 2019 monograph Animal Neopragmatism (Palgrave Macmillan). He is also the co-editor, with Elisa Aaltola, of the 2015 collection Animal Ethics and Philosophy (Rowman & Littlefield International). (Full article...)

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In the news  

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26 September 2023 –
Daniel Andrews announces his resignation as Premier of Victoria, Australia, after nine years in office. (The Guardian)
18 September 2023 –
Three people are taken to hospital after a mass stabbing at the Australian National University in Canberra. The attacker has been detained. (ABC News Australia)
12 September 2023 –
The New South Wales government in Australia bans logging in a 8,400-hectare forest area, identified as home to 106 "koala hubs", as part of a conservation effort to establish a 315,000-hectare Great Koala National Park. (AFP via RFI)
8 September 2023 – Australia–Philippines relations
Australia and the Philippines upgrade their bilateral relations to a strategic partnership. (Reuters)
8 September 2023 –
One person is killed and five others are injured when a car crashes into pedestrians and two other vehicles in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. The driver is arrested at the scene. (ABC News Australia)
30 August 2023 – 2023 Australian Indigenous Voice referendum
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announces that the Australian Indigenous Voice referendum will be held on 14 October. (ABC News)


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On this day  

2 October:

Gladesville Bridge: The span of the bridge is 300 m (1,000 ft) and at its highest point gives a clearance of 60 m (200 ft)
Gladesville Bridge: The span of the bridge is 300 m (1,000 ft) and at its highest point gives a clearance of 60 m (200 ft)


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Flag of the Commonwealth of Australia
Flag of the Commonwealth of Australia
Coat of Arms of the Commonwealth of Australia
Coat of Arms of the Commonwealth of Australia
Location on the world map

Consider joining WikiProject Australia, a WikiProject dedicated to improving Wikipedia's coverage of topics related to Australia. The project page and its subpages contain suggestions on formatting and style of articles, which can be discussed at the project's notice board. To participate, simply add your name to the project members page.

As of 1 October 2023, there are 200,272 articles within the scope of WikiProject Australia. Including non-article pages, such as talk pages, redirects, categories, etcetera, there are 503,798 pages in the project.

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