Australia

Australia is the only country with a whole continent to itself, plus Tasmania and thousands of smaller islands. It is the flattest continent and, after Antarctica, the driest. The Great Dividing Range runs down the east, catching the rain that feeds the Murray–Darling rivers, and beyond it the Outback stretches away in red desert, salt lakes and spinifex. The tropical north has a monsoon wet season and cyclones, the south is temperate, and the Great Barrier Reef follows much of the Queensland coast.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have lived here for tens of thousands of years, with hundreds of languages and a body of law and story tied to particular country. A British penal colony was founded at Sydney Cove in 1788, and wool and the gold rushes of the 1850s pushed the frontier inland at heavy cost to Aboriginal communities. Six colonies federated in 1901. Post-war immigration, first from Europe and then Asia, remade the suburbs and the national diet.

Most Australians live in a handful of coastal cities, and life leans outdoors: surf beaches, summer cricket and four codes of football. Animals that evolved in long isolation, such as the koala, the wombat and the egg-laying platypus, are found nowhere else. The economy digs and ships. Iron ore from the Pilbara, coal, gas, gold and lithium go mainly to Asian buyers, alongside wheat, wool and beef, and overseas students have made education a big export.