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At first glance, the blue-ringed octopus looks perfectly innocuous. Its psychedelic coloring and pint-sized packaging make it seem more adorable than alarming. But don't let its cuddly exterior fool you: this tiny octopus can kill you. And quickly.

Native to the Pacific Ocean, the blue-ringed octopus can be found in the soft, sandy bottom of shallow tide pools and coral reefs. When not seeking food or a mate, blue-ringed octopuses often hide in crevices, shells or marine debris. If you catch them outside of their cozy hiding spots, it's easy to see how the animal gets its name: when threatened, bright blue rings appear all over its body as a warning signal to potential predators.

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Although all octopuses (as well as cuttlefish and some squid) are venomous, the blue-ringed octopus is in a league of its own. Its venom is 1,000 times more powerful than cyanide, and this golf-ball sized powerhouse packs enough venom to kill 26 humans within minutes. It's no surprise that it's recognized as one of the most dangerous animals in the ocean.

Blue-ringed octopuses produce a potent neurotoxin called tetrodotoxin, a potentially-deadly substance also found in pufferfish. The venom is produced by symbiotic bacteria in the animal's salivary glands and is more toxic than that of any land mammals. It's primarily used when hunting: the octopus captures crabs, shrimp and small fish by pecking through its prey's exoskeleton with its beak and inserting the venom. Then it will use its beak to pick off meat while its prey remains helplessly paralyzed. In the end, only the tough outer shell of its prey remains.

So, what happens if you're bitten by a blue-ringed octopus? First, the venom blocks nerve signals throughout the body, causing muscle numbness. Other symptoms include nausea, vision loss or blindness, loss of senses and loss of motor skills. Ultimately, it will cause muscle paralysis-including the muscles needed for humans to breathe, leading to respiratory arrest. There is no known antidote, but victims can be saved if artificial respiration is started immediately.

If you ever encounter this blue and yellow beauty, back away in a hurry-its bite is usually painless, so you might not know you've been bitten until it's too late. Fortunately, the blue-ringed octopus isn't aggressive; it's only likely to bite humans if cornered or handled. In fact, there have been no known deaths from its bite since the 1960s. As long as you keep your hands to yourself, you should be fine.

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The Blue-Ringed Octopus: Small but Deadly - Ocean Conservancy

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At first glance, the blue-ringed octopus looks perfectly innocuous. Its psychedelic coloring and pint-sized packaging make it seem more adorable than alarming. But don't let its cuddly exterior fool you: this tiny octopus can kill you. And quickly. Native to the Pacific Ocean, the blue-ringed octopus can be found in the soft, sandy bottom of shallow tide pools and coral reefs.

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Product Disclaimer: Information on listed products and services are provided by the operator and were correct at the time of publishing. Rates are indicative based on the minimum and maximum available prices of products and services. Please visit the operator's website for further information. All prices quoted are in Australian dollars (AUD).

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Boats and boating--Equipment and supplies

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Explore some of the country's best-known landmarks such as the Great Barrier Reef in Queensland, the Great Ocean Road in Victoria, Sydney Harbour in New South Wales and Tasman National Park in Tasmania. Go beyond the iconic destinations and explore the many spectacular coastal journeys that also make up Australia's repertoire of aquatic experiences.

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Visit Australia - Travel & Tour Information - Tourism Australia

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Become inspired to travel to Australia. Discover fantastic things to do, places to go and more. Visit the official site of Tourism Australia here.

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Anangu welcome you to Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park, a living cultural landscape where earth and memories exist as one.

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Australia's Great Barrier Reef is one of the listed Wonders of the Natural World and draws hundreds of thousands of tourists to the coasts of tropical North Queensland each year. As the largest single living organism on Earth, the Great Barrier Reef is a complex system of hard and soft corals that spans an overall length of over 2,600 kilometres off the eastern coast of Australia in the aptly-named Coral Sea.

Image courtesy of Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority

Easily visible from space, the sheer size of the reef a testament to its scale; over 344,000 square km worth of reef in total can be found between its tips in the north and south.

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Great Barrier Reef Australia - Tours, Accommodation, Info & Facts

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Australia's Great Barrier Reef is one of the listed Wonders of the Natural World and draws hundreds of thousands of tourists to the coasts of tropical North Queensland each year.

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The largest living structure, the Great Barrier Reef spans more than 1,200 miles (2,000 kilometers) of islands and submerged reefs. A plethora of coral thrives here, along with a sweep of parrotfish, surgeonfish, barracuda, and sharks. Narrated by National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Sylvia Earle.

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australia’s animals; mammals; marsupials; monotremes; birds; reptiles; marine animals

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Australia teems with native animals, many which are found only here.

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currency; dollars and cents; where to buy australian currency; credit cards and traveller’s cheques; bringing money into australia; goods and services tax; currency converter

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Currency in Australia - Tourism Australia

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Australia's national currency is the Australian dollar which comes in denominations of $5, $10, $20, $50 and $100 notes.

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In tropical Australia, the dry season from May to October has clear blue skies and sunny days. It's the time to experience Darwin's vibrant outdoor markets, movies and festivals. December to March is the wet season, which is hot and humid with daily rainstorms. See waterfalls thunder through Litchfield and Kakadu National Parks or fly over Katherine Gorge when its water levels are highest.

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Plan ahead with this information on weather and rainfall in Australia's capital cities.

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FAST FACTS

OFFICIAL NAME: Commonwealth of Australia

FORM OF GOVERNMENT: Federal parliamentary democracy; Commonwealth realm

CAPITAL: Canberra

POPULATION: 22,507,617

OFFICIAL LANGUAGE: English

MONEY: Australian dollar

AREA: 2,969,906 square miles (7,692,024 square kilometers)

MAJOR MOUNTAIN RANGES: Great Dividing Range, Macdonnell Ranges

MAJOR RIVERS: Murray-Darling, Murrumbidgee, Lachlan

GEOGRAPHY

Australia is the only country in the world that covers an entire continent. It is one of the largest countries on Earth. Although it is rich in natural resources and has a lot of fertile land, more than one-third of Australia is desert.

Most Australian cities and farms are located in the southwest and southeast, where the climate is more comfortable. There are dense rain forests in the northeast. The famous outback (remote rural areas) contains the country's largest deserts, where there are scorching temperatures, little water, and almost no vegetation.

Running around the eastern and southeastern edge of Australia is the Great Dividing Range. This 2,300-mile (3,700-kilometer) stretch of mountain sends water down into Australia's most important rivers and the Great Artesian Basin, the largest groundwater source in the world.

PEOPLE & CULTURE

Australia is one of the world's most ethnically diverse nations. Nearly a quarter of the people who live in Australia were born in other countries. They come from the United Kingdom and other European countries, but also from China, Vietnam, North Africa, and the Middle East.

Australia's warm, sunny climate and abundance of open spaces gives the population a love of the outdoors. The people are also passionate about sports, including swimming, surfing, sailing, tennis, soccer, cricket, rugby, and their own invention, Australian rules football.

NATURE

Australia's ecosystem is an unusual one because of its remote location. As a result, there are many animal species that occur here and nowhere else in the world, such as the platypus, kangaroo, echidna, and koala. Australia has 516 national parks to protect its unique plants and animals.

One of Australia's most amazing sites rises like an enormous whale's back from a flat red-soil desert called the Red Center. This site is called Uluru, and it is a sacred natural formation at the heart of the country. Rising 1,100 feet (335 meters) tall, it is the largest rock in the world!

Australia is home to many of the deadliest species of animals on the planet. There are 36 species of poisonous funnel-web spiders in eastern Australia. There are also 20 types of venomous snakes, including the taipan, which attacks without warning and bites repeatedly, killing its victim in minutes.

There are several types of rain forests in Australia. Tropical rain forests, mainly found in the northeast, are the richest in plant and animal species. Subtropical rain forests are found near the mid-eastern coast, and broadleaf rain forests grow in the southeast and on the island of Tasmania.

Australian Dollar

Photograph by Showface, Dreamstime

GOVERNMENT & ECONOMY

As a commonwealth of the United Kingdom, Australia's head of state is the British monarch. Many Australians think the country should end its ties to Britain and become a republic. In a vote in 1999, Australians decided against separating from the UK, but the vote was close, and the debate continues.

Australia is an important exporter of agricultural goods like wool, wheat, beef, fruit, and wine. The country is also rich in minerals and metals and is the world's fourth largest producer of gold.

HISTORY

Aboriginal people arrived in Australia about 50,000 years ago. They may have traveled from Asia across land bridges that were exposed when sea levels were lower. The hardy Aborigines have learned to live in the harsh conditions of the outback.

Dutch explorers first landed in Australia in 1606, and the British began to settle there in 1788. Many settlers were criminals sent to live in Australia as punishment. For a short time, the newcomers lived peacefully with the Aboriginal people. But soon, fighting broke out over who owned the land.

In 1851, gold was discovered in Australia. A rush to find riches brought thousands of new immigrants, and by 1859, six separate colonies existed. In 1901, these colonies joined to form a British commonwealth.

Check out the interactive map and discover more countries.

Get Facts, Photos, and videos.

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Australia Country Profile - National Geographic Kids

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FAST FACTS OFFICIAL NAME: Commonwealth of Australia FORM OF GOVERNMENT: Federal parliamentary democracy; Commonwealth realm CAPITAL: Canberra POPULATION: 22,507,617 OFFICIAL LANGUAGE: English MONEY: Australian dollar AREA: 2,969,906 square miles (7,692,024 square kilometers) MAJOR MOUNTAIN RANGES: Great Dividing Range, Macdonnell Ranges MAJOR RIVERS: Murray-Darling, Murrumbidgee, Lachlan GEOGRAPHY Australia is the only country in the world that covers an entire continent.

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Entry point for all Australian Commonwealth Government authorised information and services.

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The Sydney Opera House is the symbol of modern Australia. A World Heritage-listed masterpiece of "human creative genius," it exists because a few brave people dared to think differently.

From conception to completion, the building tested the limits of engineering, construction and design. When the Opera House opened its doors in 1973, changing the image of Australia, a new era of cultural discovery and community engagement began.

Five decades later, we stand as an important community meeting place, the nation's busiest performing arts centre and an integral part of Sydney through our contribution to culture, heritage, sustainability and tourism.

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The Sydney Opera House is the symbol of modern Australia. A World Heritage-listed masterpiece of "human creative genius," it exists because a few brave people dared to think differently. From conception to completion, the building tested the limits of engineering, construction and design.

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Rare artworks from an unsurpassed collection evoke the inner lives and secret rites of Australia's indigenous people

Smithsonian Magazine |

An art movement's origins usually can't be pinpointed, but boldly patterned Aboriginal acrylic painting first appeared at a specific time and place. In July 1971, an art teacher named Geoffrey Bardon distributed some brushes, paints and other materials to a group of Aboriginal men in the forlorn resettlement community of Papunya, 160 miles from the nearest town, Alice Springs. Bardon had moved near the remote Western Desert from cosmopolitan Sydney hoping to preserve an ancient aboriginal culture imperiled by the uprooting of Aboriginal people from their traditional territories in the 1950s and '60s. The men, who saw Bardon distributing the art supplies to schoolchildren, had a simpler aim: they were looking for something to do. Together they painted a mural on a whitewashed schoolhouse wall, and then they created individual works in a former military hangar that Bardon called the Great Painting Room. In 1972, with his assistance, 11 of the men formed a cooperative called Papunya Tula Artists. By 1974 the group had grown to 40.

Papunya Tula is now one of about 60 Aboriginal arts cooperatives, and Australian Aboriginal art generates nearly $200 million in annual revenues. It is not only the largest source of income for Aboriginal people but also, arguably, the most prestigious Australian contemporary art. Featuring bold geometric designs in earth tones, with characteristic circles, dots and wavy snakelike lines, Aboriginal acrylic painting appeals to Western collectors of both abstract and folk art. Prices have soared. A mural-size 1977 painting on canvas by the Papunya artist Clifford Possum established a record price for the genre when it sold in 2007 for $1.1 million.

Still, a special aura attaches to the first, small paintings, done on masonite boards usually less than 2 by 3 feet. Created before there was commercial interest, they benefit from the perception that they are more "authentic" than the stretched-canvas works that came later. It is hard to deny the energy and inventiveness of the early boards; artists used unfamiliar tools and materials to cover two-dimensional surfaces with designs they'd employed in ritualistic body painting or sand mosaics. They improvised, applying paint with a twig or the tip of a paintbrush's wooden handle. "The early period-you're never going to find anyplace where there's so much experimentation," says Fred Myers, a New York University anthropologist. "They had to figure everything out. There's an energy that the early paintings have, because there's so much excess to compress."

The first exhibition in the United States to focus on these seminal works-49 paintings, most of them early Papunya boards-recently appeared at New York University, following showings at Cornell University and the University of California at Los Angeles. The paintings are owned by John Wilkerson, a New York City-based venture capitalist in the medical field, and his wife, Barbara, a former plant physiologist. The Wilkersons collect early American folk art and first became enamored of Aboriginal work when they visited Australia in 1994. "We both thought, 'We don't like this-we love it,'" Barbara recalls. "We just liked everything." With the help of a Melbourne-based gallery owner, they soon concentrated on the earliest paintings.

The Wilkersons' costliest board was the 1972 painting Water Dreaming at Kalipinypa, a dazzling patchwork of stippled, dotted and crosshatched shapes, bought in 2000 for some $220,000-more than twice the price it had been auctioned for only three years earlier. The painting was done by Johnny Warangkula Tjupurrula, an original member of the Papunya cooperative and one of its most celebrated. Sadly, the artist himself had long been overlooked; in 1997, an Australian journalist found Warangkula, by then old and homeless, sleeping along with other Aboriginal people in a dry riverbed near Alice Springs. Though he reportedly received less than $150 for his best-known painting, the publicity surrounding the 1997 sale revived his career somewhat and he soon resumed painting. Warangkula died in a nursing home in 2001.

Though the Aboriginal art movement launched in Papunya is just four decades old, it's possible to discern four periods. In the first, which lasted barely a year, sacred practices and ritual objects were often depicted in a representational style. That was dangerous: certain rituals, songs and religious objects are strictly off limits to women and uninitiated boys. In August 1972, an angry dispute broke out at an exhibition in the aboriginal community of Yuendumu over explicit renderings in Papunya paintings. Some community members were offended by the realistic depictions of a wooden paddle swung in the air to produce a whirring sound in initiation ceremonies that are hidden from women and children.

In response to the furor, artists began to avoid forbidden images or conceal them under dotting, stippling and cross-hatches. So began the next period. A forerunner of that style, painted around August 1972, is Water Dreaming at Kalipinypa, in which Warangkula's elaborate veilings acquire a mesmerizing beauty that relates to the symbolic theme of raindrops bringing forth the vegetation stirring below the earth.

"I think the older men love playing with almost showing you," Myers says. It's not just a game. These paintings mirror traditional ritual practice; for example, in one initiation ceremony, adolescent boys whose bodies are painted in geometric or dotted patterns appear before women at night through a scrim of smoke, so the designs can be glimpsed but not seen clearly. "You have people who already have a tradition of working with concealment and revelation," Myers says.

In the third period, the art found a commercial market with acclaimed, large-scale canvases in the 1980s. And the fourth period, roughly from the 1990s to the present, includes lower-quality commercial paintings-disparaged by some art dealers as "dots for dollars"-that slake the tourist demand for souvenirs. Some painters today lay down geometric, Aboriginal-style markings without any underlying secret to disguise. (There have even been cases of fake Aboriginal art produced by backpackers.)

Still, much fine work continues to be produced. "I'm very optimistic, because I think it's amazing that it has lasted as long as it has," Myers says. Roger Benjamin, a University of Sydney art historian who curated the exhibition, "Icons of the Desert," says gloomy predictions of the late '80s have not been borne out: "Fewer and fewer of the original artists were painting, and people thought the movement was dying out. That didn't happen."

One striking change is that many Aboriginal painters today are women, who have their own stories and traditions to recount. "The women painting in Papunya Tula now tend to use stronger colors and-especially the older ladies-are less meticulous," Benjamin says.

Though seemingly abstract, the multilayered paintings reflect the Aboriginal experience of reading the veiled secrets of the hostile desert-divining underground water and predicting where plants will reappear in the spring. According to Aboriginal mythology, the desert has been marked by the movements of legendary ancestors-the wanderings known as Dreamings-and an initiate can recall the ancestral stories by studying and decoding the terrain. "In the bush, when you see somebody making a painting, they often break into song," Benjamin says. They're singing the Dreaming stories in their paintings.

The Wilkersons' original plan to exhibit paintings in Australian museums fell through after curators feared that Aboriginal women or boys might be exposed to sacred imagery. Aboriginal community members also decreed that nine reproductions could not be included in the exhibition catalog. (The American edition contains a supplement with the banned images. Smithsonian was not granted the right to publish any of them.)

While Western art collectors may value the works according to how well they were executed, Aboriginal people tend to rank them by the importance of the Dreaming in them. "White people can't understand our painting, they just see a 'pretty picture,' " the Papunya artist Michael Tjakamarra Nelson once remarked.

Some of the imagery in the exhibition is comprehensible to informed outsiders, while some is ambiguous or completely opaque. For many Western spectators, the secret religious content of the paintings-including, in the early boards, images said to be fatal to uninitiated Aboriginal people-only adds to their appeal. Like much geometrically ordered art, Aboriginal painting is beautiful. Tantalizingly, it also exudes mystery and danger.

New York City-based freelance journalist Arthur Lubow last wrote for Smithsonian about China's terra cotta soldiers.

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Smithsonian Magazine | An art movement's origins usually can't be pinpointed, but boldly patterned Aboriginal acrylic painting first appeared at a specific time and place. In July 1971, an art teacher named Geoffrey Bardon distributed some brushes, paints and other materials to a group of Aboriginal men in the forlorn resettlement community of Papunya, 160 miles from the nearest town, Alice Springs.

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Aboriginal Art has survived for over thousands of years and continues to be one of the oldest art forms practiced today. Aboriginal Art consists of symbols. These symbols were used as a means of...

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We are not aiming to present a comprehensive story of Australian art and the imagery used by Australian artists, but rather to select key moments which tell us something about our nation's identity. We will be regularly changing these displays so that over time we can rotate far more works from our extensive collection and build up layers of meaning and experience.

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Aboriginal Dreamtime Stories - Dreamtime Stories

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Dreamtime is a portal that allows any person, from any race, religion, gender, and generation, to step into the world of the Aboriginal Dreamtime.

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Indigenous Australians are the native people of Australia. They include the Aboriginal Australians as well as Torres Strait Islanders, and are often known together as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.[1]

In the past, Indigenous Australians used weapons like boomerangs sticks and spears to kill animals for food. It is unknown where they came from and how they appeared in Australia. It is estimated they first arrived in their homeland between 50,000 and 65,000 years BP.[2][3] Aboriginal people have their own type of art.

Many indigenous Australians suffered when Europeans from Britain and Ireland arrived in Australia. Disease and the loss of their hunting lands are two of the reasons.[4]

History of Aboriginal Australia

The first people of Australia were nomadic people who came to Australia from southeast Asia. Scientists do not know exactly when they arrived but it is at least 60,000 years ago. They were hunter-gatherers.

When the British came to Australia in 1788, they called these native people "aboriginals", meaning people who had lived there since the earliest times.

There are now about 650,000 Aboriginal people living in Australia.

Aboriginal Australians believe that they have animal, plant, and human ancestors who created the world and everything in it. This process of creation is called Dreamtime. There are many songs and stories about Dreamtime, which generations of Aboriginal people have passed down to their children.

The modern-day art of the Aboriginal Australians is mostly based on old stories about Dreamtime. Paintings of the people, spirits, and animals of Dreamtime cover sacred cliffs and rocks in tribal territories. Some of the pictures are made in red and yellow ochre and white clay, others have been carved into the rocks. Many are thousands of years old.

Boomerangs

The typical boomerang is designed to be self-returning, but it has to be properly thrown. Modern computer-designed boomerangs may have three or four wings instead of the traditional two.[11]

Boomerangs have been discovered in cultures with no connection with Australia (such as ancient Egypt),[12] so their design was presumably mutually independent. Boomerangs are one of a group of weapons known as "throwsticks".

Land claims

When British people came to live in Australia, they decided that the land was empty: that nobody "owned" the land, in the way Europeans used that word. This was called "terra nullius", Latin words for "empty land".

In 1976, the Australian government agreed that Aboriginal people have rights to the land where their tribes were originally located and gained the right to use the land. On 3 June, 1992, the High Court of Australia said that the idea of terra nullius was wrong, and the government brought in new laws, to set up Native Title. If Aboriginal people can prove they have always used particular land, it has not been sold, or changed by government acts, then the land could be claimed as Aboriginal land.

Population by region

Indigenous Australians Media

Aboriginal farmers in Victoria, 1858

Phylogenetic position of the Aboriginal Australian lineage among other Eastern Eurasians

PCA of Orang Asli (Semang) and Andamanese, with worldwide populations in HGDP.

The scar on this tree is where Aboriginal people have removed the bark to make a canoe, for use on the Murray River. It was identified near Mildura, Victoria, and is now in the Mildura Visitor Centre.

ABC footage and interviews of Australians celebrating Freeman's Olympics win - many noting how it brought the country together "as one"

Other websites

References

1. Studies, Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (12 July 2020). "Indigenous Australians: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people". aiatsis.gov.au.

2. Griffiths, Billy (2018). Deep Time Dreaming: Uncovering Ancient Australia. Black Inc. pp. 288-289. ISBN 9781760640446.

3. Clarkson, Chris; Jacobs, Zenobia; et al. (19 July 2017). "Human occupation of northern Australia by 65,000 years ago" (PDF). Nature. 547 (7663): 306-310. Bibcode:2017Natur.547..306C. doi:10.1038/nature22968. hdl:2440/107043. PMID 28726833. S2CID 205257212.

4. Hesp, Patrick A. et al 1999. Aboriginal occupation on Rottnest Island, Western Australia, provisionally dated by aspartic acid racemisation assay of land snails to greater than 50 ka. Australian Archaeology, No 49 (1999)

5. "Stone Pages Archaeo News: Australia colonized earlier than previously thought?". stonepages.com. 2003.

6. "Dreaming Online: Indigenous Australian Timeline". www.dreamtime.net.au. Archived from the original on 2009-02-06.

7. Australia census: Five takeaways from a changing country". BBC News. 27 June 2017.

8. Australian Bureau of Statistics Archived 2010-04-29 at the Wayback Machine 2006 Census data

9. "10 Facts About Aboriginal Art | Kate Owen Gallery". www.kateowengallery.com.

10. Jones, Philip 1996. Boomerang: behind an Australian icon. Wakefield Press. ISBN 9781862543829

11. Valde-Nowak & others 1987. Upper Palaeolithic boomerang made of a mammoth tusk in south Poland. Nature 329: 436-438 (1 October 1987); doi:10.1038/329436a0 [1]

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Indigenous Australians facts. Indigenous Australians are the native people of Australia. They include the Aboriginal Australians as well as Torres Strait Islanders, and are often known together as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.[1]

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PBS Kids' Game

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Enter the Wild Kratts Headquarters. Play games, create a character, and more!