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Top 5 Cultural Celebrations in Australia

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CAPA Admissions Advisor Emily Kearns discusses the top 5 cultural celebrations to become a part of when you study abroad in Sydney.

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Koalas are marsupials, related to kangaroos.

OFFICIAL NAME: Commonwealth of Australia

FORM OF GOVERNMENT: Federal parliamentary democracy; Commonwealth realm

CAPITAL: Canberra

POPULATION: 23,470,145

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

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.
Map created by National Geographic Maps

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.

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.

GOVERNMENT

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.

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.

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Australia Country Profile - National Geographic Kids

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Australia is the only country in the world that covers an entire continent. It is one of the largest countries on Earth.

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Kakadu National Park is home to ancient Aboriginal sites | © Greg Briggs / Alamy Stock Photo

In comparison to other nations, Australia seems quite young, having only been colonised by European settlers in the late 18th century. However, Indigenous Australians have occupied the land for at least 65,000 years. From ancient rock art in Kakadu to Cook’s Landing Place, these are some of most significant historical locations in Australia.

Australia only became a nation in 1901, but the history of this ancient land stretches back much further than that. From millennia-old pieces of Indigenous art to more recent chapters of Australia’s colourful convict past, wind back the clock at these 11 fascinating historic sites across the country.

Kakadu National Park

Park

© Marco Saracco / Alamy Stock Photo

Australia’s largest national park has been home to Indigenous people for more than 50,000 years, and there’s a series of ancient Aboriginal rock art sites to prove it. Indigenous communities have expressed their culture at places like Ubirr, Nourlangie and Nanguluwur for millennia — the stunning Ubirr escarpment is the most spectacular, offering postcard views of the Alligator River floodplain below.

Mungo National Park

Park, Historical Landmark

© Ingo Oeland / Alamy Stock Photo

The windswept dunes and barren lakes of this remote corner of New South Wales provide another important portrait of Indigenous culture. Lake Mungo is the oldest ritual burial site on the planet, containing the remains of the so-called Mungo Man and Mungo Lady. Carbon-dating the cremated couple proves that Australia has been inhabited for between 40,000 and 68,000 years, and that Aboriginal people have maintained the oldest continually surviving culture on Earth.

Wiebbe Hayes Stone Fort

Historical Landmark

© stewart allen / Alamy Stock Photo

Wiebbe Hayes Stone Fort lays claim to a tale of treachery on the high seas that The Pirates of the Caribbean franchise would be proud of. Following the infamous Batavia shipwreck and mutiny off Australia’s west coast in 1629, a group of Dutch sailors built a stone fort on the picturesque Houtman Abrolhos Islands to protect themselves from the bloodthirsty mutineers, constructing Australia’s oldest known European building in the process.

Captain Cook’s Landing Place

Building, Park, Historical Landmark

© Clive Helm / Alamy Stock Photo

Fun fact: Captain Cook wasn’t actually a captain when he first set foot on Australian soil. In 1770, Lieutenant James Cook arrived on Australia’s east coast to colonise the continent on behalf of the British, planting the Union Jack in Botany Bay in southern Sydney on 29 April. These days, the landing site is commemorated with a plaque and obelisk in the serene seaside Botany Bay National Park.

Elizabeth Farm

Historical Landmark

© Christine Wehrmeier / Alamy Stock Photo

The British quickly turned Sydney into a convict colony, but the area west of the fledgling city is where free settlers started to build a life. Constructed by pioneering military couple John and Elizabeth Macarthur, Parramatta’s Elizabeth Farm is a snapshot of agricultural life in late 18th-century Australia. Today, the historic estate is a heritage building, museum and homage to one of colonial Sydney’s most colourful characters, who was eventually sent back to the motherland for duelling.

Port Arthur Historic Site

Museum

© Robert Wyatt / Alamy Stock Photo

Convict prisons sprang up all around Australia in those early colonial days, but few boast a backdrop as beautiful as Port Arthur’s. This heritage-listed penal colony housed reoffenders, recidivists and recalcitrants in notoriously brutal conditions, although at least the view was nice – Port Arthur is located in a lush green corner of Tasmania, where 30 historic buildings remain standing to this day.

Fremantle Prison

Historical Landmark

© Rafael Ben Ari / Alamy Stock Photo

The charming port city of Fremantle also features its own impressive colonial prison, which was built with the blood, sweat and tears of convicts during the 1850s. The gaol interned Western Australia’s meanest inmates until it was decommissioned in 1991, before the male wing was transformed into a museum and the women’s wing was converted into a one-of-a-kind youth hostel where you can even spend the night in an original cell.

Eureka Stockade

Historical Landmark

© mauritius images GmbH / Alamy Stock Photo

As hordes converged on the goldfields of rural Victoria to fossick for their fortune in the 1850s, the locals grew restless with the British colonial authorities. In 1854, Ballarat was the scene of the Eureka Rebellion, when 22 miners died in a brief but violent uprising against the Crown. Eureka was a seminal moment in Australian democracy, and it’s remembered with a state-of-the-art museum containing the original Eureka flag.

Glenrowan

Historical Landmark

© Stephane Bowker / Alamy Stock Photo

The other product of the Gold Rush? Bushrangers, who trampled the countryside trying to rob their riches. Australia’s most iconic outlaw was an Irishman named Ned Kelly, who enjoys Robin Hood-like status as a fabled folk hero who stood up to British oppression. Kelly’s final showdown with the authorities came in the town of Glenrowan before he was hanged at Old Melbourne Gaol in 1880, both must-see sites for history buffs.

Royal Exhibition Building

Building, Historical Landmark

© ITPhoto / Alamy Stock Photo

When World Expos were the hottest show on the planet during the 19th century, Melbourne was lucky enough to host one – and the Victorian capital built a magnificent exhibition hall to match. Surrounded by the immaculately curated Carlton Gardens, the Royal Exhibition Building is one of the very few World Expo pavilions that survives in the 21st century, which is why it became the first building in Australia to be given UNESCO World Heritage status in 2004.

Old Parliament House

Historical Landmark

© David Wall / Alamy Stock Photo

When Australia opened a brand-new Parliament House in 1988, the old one was converted into a museum of democracy, allowing visitors to roam the halls of the building that led Australia through most of the 20th century. And even if you’re not into politics, it’s still fun to take a seat in the old prime minister’s office, which has been preserved like a time capsule from the 1980s.

Monique La Terra contributed additional reporting to this article.

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From ancient Aboriginal artworks to chapters of the colourful convict past, wind back the clock at these 11 historic sites around Australia.