Driving in Australia: Advice & Tips
The wide-open spaces and magnificent natural scenery make driving in Australia an experience to be savored. Australians drive on the left-hand side of...
Find out more about driving in Australia
Other places to visit in Australia
Australia is such a vast country, a whole continent in fact, that simply sightseeing may need a more planned approach to each Australian state and ter...
Popular tourist destinations to visit in Australia
History of Australia
Though Aboriginal people have lived in Australia for tens of thousands of years, only oral history in the form of spoken allegories, myths, and songs have passed down from their time. The written history of Australia begins in year 1606, when the continent was first spotted by a Dutch explorers. No real attempt at settlement was made, however, until James Cook mapped the eastern coast in 1770 and claimed it for Great Britain. By 1788, the Britain had carried out plans to use Australia as a penal colony. Throughout the 19th century, the country was a wild place, the home to adventure seekers and treasure hunters, as evidenced by the gold rush in the 1850s.
Australia became independent in 1901, and today it is a country with a great diversity of people and cultures. People from all over the world have settled in Australia, and it thrives on the continual influx of immigrants. It's advisable to hire a car in Australia to see historic settlements and the sacred, ancient homeland of the Aboriginal people (be respectful).
The geography of Australia
Even though it is the world's smallest continent, Australian encompasses a wide variety of biogeographic regions. The country has extremely diverse geography ranging from the snow-capped mountains of the Australian Alps and Tasmania to large deserts and tropical and temperate forests. Look for a cheap car hire in Australia so that you can explore the Aussie landscape freely and do justice to the raw natural beauty all around you. The Outback is a great plateau in the center of the country. Mountains and plateaus are also scattered throughout the country. The Great Dividing Range shelters the east coast from the rest of the continent, which is the flattest on earth. However, smaller ranges run through the western half of the country. The eastern half of the country is mostly grassland and is home to the great sheep and cattle stations. Australia also has many beautiful coastal beaches.
Weather in Australia
Owing to its size, the weather varies greatly from one part of the Australian continent to another. An Australian vacation can offer you beach weather in the summer or a great day of skiing in the mountains. The main characteristic of Australia’s weather is that it is dry, more so than any continent besides Antarctica. Only the extreme north of the country gets significant amounts of rain, and that is very seasonal. The Outback has very high temperatures throughout most of the year, but areas around the coast are mostly temperate, and temperature varies more with the seasons. If you hire a car in Australia make sure you include air conditioning, so you can control your own climate as you drive around this huge country.