A Journey Through Australia and New Zealand: Natural Wonders, Culture, and History
Australia and New Zealand: A Journey Through Natural Wonders, Culture, and History
Uluru: The Heart of Australia
One of the most beautiful things you can see in Australia is Uluru, also called Ayers Rock. It’s an enormous rock alone in the middle of the desert southwest of Alice Springs. It is 3 km long and 348 meters high, but there are another 2,100 meters underground. Uluru is 600 million years old.
Thousands of tourists come each year to walk around it and admire its beauty. The best time to see it is at the end of the day when its color changes from yellow to gold, red, and then purple.
Australian Sheep: A Legacy of the Spanish Merinos
Sheep have been important to Australia since the end of the eighteenth century. Most Australian sheep are Spanish Merinos, which were first brought there in 1797. Merinos are strong animals and live happily in warm, dry places.
Lake Mungo: A Glimpse into the Past
Lake Mungo in New South Wales has had no water for 16,000 years.
Australia’s Wealth: From Gold to Modern Industries
Gold made Australia rich in the nineteenth century. Since then, silver, other minerals, and oil from the Northern Territory, New South Wales, and Western Australia have made millions of dollars for Australia.
Australia’s Urban Heart: Coastal Cities
In each of Australia’s six states—New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia, Western Australia, and Tasmania—there is a large city that is near a river and the sea. More than half of all Australians live in these six cities, and many others live near them. In fact, most people live only a few kilometers from the sea.
Sydney, in New South Wales, is the oldest and biggest city, with 4.2 million people. It is built around an enormous harbor; some say that it is the biggest natural harbor in the world. It is a busy, modern city, and its tall buildings are the center for a lot of Australian business.
The Aboriginal People: Ancient Culture and Modern Challenges
When British people came to Australia in 1788, they gave the name “Aborigine” to the people they found there. The 300,000 Aborigines who lived in Australia at that time belonged to more than 300 different groups, and each group had its own land and language. They traveled to different parts of their land during the year to find food and water; they ate plants and fruits and caught animals and fish.
They believed that a long time ago, the world was made by animals, plants, and humans together.
The Stolen Generations: A Dark Chapter in History
In the late 1980s, people began to talk about the forced removal of Aboriginal children from their families. In 1998, the first National Sorry Day was held in Australia to apologize to the children who were taken away.
Challenges Faced by Aboriginal Australians
Aborigines have more health problems and shorter lives than white Australians. They leave school earlier, and it is harder for them to get jobs. Many of them find their way to prison—about 20 percent of the people in Australian prisons are Aborigines—and they often have serious problems with alcohol.
Auckland: The City of Volcanoes
Auckland, the most northern of New Zealand’s four main cities, has the biggest population; 1.2 million people live there. It is situated on a narrow isthmus between the Tasman Sea and the Pacific Ocean, with the Waitemata Harbour on the east coast; at the narrowest part of the city, it is only 1.5 km from one harbor to the other.
Visitors to the city often do not realize that Auckland’s hills are volcanoes—all forty-eight of them. The youngest one is Rangitoto, which came up out of the sea only 600 years ago.
Rotorua: New Zealand’s Geothermal Wonderland
The strangest place in New Zealand is surely Rotorua, a city near the center of the North Island, known for its geothermal activity and Maori culture.
New Zealand: Land of the Long White Cloud
In 1642, the Dutch sailor Abel Tasman visited New Zealand and gave it its name, from Zeeland (“Sea Land”), which is a part of the Netherlands. Captain James Cook visited the islands four times between 1769 and 1777, sailed all the way around them, and made the first map of the country.
It is a country of islands; the North Island and the South Island are the main ones, and there are many smaller ones.
It is a long, narrow country; nowhere in New Zealand is more than 130 km from the sea. It is a little larger than Great Britain, but Great Britain has a population of 60 million, and New Zealand has just 4.1 million people.
New Zealand’s Agricultural Bounty
With warm temperatures and a lot of rain, New Zealand is a great place for farms of all kinds. Sheep and cows are found on farms in both the North and South Islands. Until the 1940s, people said that New Zealanders…
The Maori People: Guardians of the Land
Maori have lived in New Zealand for more than a thousand years. When Captain Cook and his men landed there, they found a tall, strong people with brown skin and black hair.
Unique Wildlife of New Zealand
The Kakapo: A Flightless Parrot
The kakapo is a New Zealand bird that cannot fly, but it is very good at climbing. Kakapos are large, heavy, green birds that come out at night to look for food. There are only eighty-six kakapos alive in the world today, so New Zealanders have made special places for them to live.
The Tuatara: A Living Fossil
New Zealand is also the home of the tuatara, which lives on a few small islands off the coast. It is a reptile that can live for more than 100 years.
Australia’s Unique Fauna
Until recently, it was not easy for people or animals to reach these two countries, so nothing changed quickly there. Many Australian animals are not found in any other country. The kangaroo is one Australian animal that everybody knows.