Государственное бюджетное образовательное учреждение

среднего профессионального образования Нижегородской области

«Краснобаковский лесной колледж»

Лингвострановедческий журнал
по английскому языку
«Australia»

Составитель:
преподаватель
английского языка
Воронина М.В.

2014
 Содержание
1. История 3

2. География 5
3. Политическая система Австралии 6
4. Демография 7
5. Символика 8
6. Фауна 9
7. Флора 11
8. Спорт 13

History

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 It is likely that the Chinese have had some knowledge of Australia since the 13th
century or before. In 1300, Marco Polo made reference to the reputed existence of a vast
southern continent. The first recorded sighting is the subject of some uncertainty. The
French navigator Binot Paulmyer claimed to have landed at Australia in 1503, after be-
ing blown off course. However later investigators concluded it was more likely he was
in Madagascar. French authorities again made such a claim in 1531.
In 1606, the Dutch vessel Duyfken, led by William Jansz, explored perhaps 200
miles of western side of Cape York, in the Gulf of Carpentaria.
They made one landing, but were promptly attacked by natives
and hence did not attempt to explore further.
A Portuguese expedition commanded by Luis Vaez de Tor-
res and piloted by Pedro Fernandez de Quiros set out for Australia
in 1605. De Quiros was a Counter-Reformation Catholic. When he
landed on the New Hebrides, he christened the island group "Aus-
trialia del Espiritu Santo," translated as "South Land of the Holy Spirit." In another ship,
De Torres sailed through the Torres Strait, but he probably didn't sight the Australian
coast as he later claimed. This voyage occurred a couple of weeks after the discoveries
made by the Duyfken.
In 1616 Dirk Hartog landed on what is now called Dirk Hartog Island, off the
coast of Western Australia, and left behind an inscription on a pewter plate. (This plate
may now be seen in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.) The Dutch named the western
half of the continent New Holland, but made no attempt to colonize it.
In 1642, Abel Tasman sailed on a famous voyage from Batavia
(now Jakarta), to Papua New Guinea, Fiji, New Zealand and, on No-
vember 24, sighted Tasmania. He named it Van Diemen's Land, after
Anthony van Diemen, the Dutch East India Company's Governor Gen-
eral at Batavia, who had commissioned his voyage. Tasman claimed
Van Diemen's Land for the Netherlands.
William Dampier first explored the north-west coast of Australia
in 1688, in the "Cygnet", a small trading vessel. He made another voy-
age in 1699, before returning to England. The first Englishman to see Australia, he was
able to describe some of the flora and fauna of Australia, being the first to report Aus-
tralia's peculiar large hopping animals.
James Cook is widely regarded as the most important naval explorer of Australia.
He reached New Zealand in October 1769, and mapped its coast. He
then sailed across to south-east Australia, and all the way up the east
coast. He claimed the east coast, which he named New South Wales,
for Great Britain on August 22, 1770. Cook's expedition identified
Botany Bay as an appropriate place for settlement.
The last great naval explorer was Matthew Flinders, who was
responsible for filling in the gaps in the map left by other explorers.
In 1796 (after settlement), with George Bass, he took a 2.5 metre
long open boat and explored some of the coastline south of Sydney. He suspected from
this voyage that Tasmania was an island, and in 1798 he led an expedition to circum-
navigate it and hence prove his theory. He returned to his homeland of England, but was

3
soon sent back to Sydney with a much more ambitious task—to circumnavigate Aus-
tralia. He did this in 1802-03, sailing first along the south coast to Sydney, and then
completing the circumnavigation back to Sydney.
The name "Australia" was formally adopted and popularized in 1817 by the
British governor of the colony of New South Wales. The title was suggested in 1814
and derives from the Latin terra australis incognita ("the unknown south land") which
had been used by mapmakers for centuries before European colonization.
Since its days as a British colony Australia has developed a complex national cul-
ture with immigrants from many parts of the world as well as an indigenous Aboriginal
and Torres Strait Islander population. The strong sense of societal and historical distinc-
tiveness among the different states and territories has not developed into major subcul-
tural diversity based on geographic regions.
For much of the nation's history, there has been a focus on assimilating different
cultural groups into the dominant British Australian traditions; however, in the early
1970s a more pluralist policy of multiculturalism came to prominence. In 1988, bicen-
tennial events were promoted officially as the "celebration of a nation." A commitment
was made to the idea that Australia is a collectivity of diverse peoples living in a rela-
tively young society. However, the divisions within the nation continue to find expres-
sion in public life, arising from social differences in race, ethnicity, social class, and
gender.

Geography

4
 The Commonwealth of Australia is formed of Australia, Tasmania and several
smaller islands (for example, Cocos
Islands, Kangaroo Island and others).
Australia itself is made up of
the mainland of Australia and the is-
land of Tasmania in the South. It is
located between the Pacific and the
Indian oceans in the Southern Hemi-
sphere.
The Australian continent is
washed in the North by the Timor
Sea, the Arafura Sea, Gulf of Car-
pentaria and Torres Strait, in the East
by the Tasman Sea and the Coral Sea
of the South Pacific Ocean, in the
South by Bass Strait and the Indian
Ocean. Australia’s neighbouring countries are Indonesia, East Timor and Papua New
Guinea in the North, the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, New Caledonia in the north-east
and New Zealand in the south-east.
Australia is "the most" country in many ways. It is the world’s biggest island and
the smallest continent at the same time. It is almost 25 times larger than the British
Isles. And it is nearly as large as the territory of the USA without Alaska and Hawaii.
Australia is the only country in the world which has the territory of the whole
continent. Australia’s total area is 7,690,000 sq kilometres.
It is also the oldest, the flattest and the driest continent in the world. Australia is
the oldest continent, because some rocks are more than 3 million years old. Australia is
the flattest continent of all. But still it has mountains. Australia is the driest continent of
all after Antarctica. Most of it is a semi-desert. South-east is not so dry compared to the
rest of the land, so it is good for living.
Its main mountain chain is the Great Dividing Range which is known as "the
Australian Alps". It runs along the western coast. Australia’s highest point, Kosciuszko
in the Australian Alps is only about 2,000 metres high. Other mountains include the
Kimberly Range, the Hamersley Range and the Flinders Range in south Australia.
Australia is very dry. In the centre of the continent there are three deserts: Great
Sandy Desert, Great Victoria Desert and Simpson Desert. In fact, Great Sandy and
Great Victoria Deserts are among the largest deserts in the world.
There are not so many rivers and lakes in Australia. Its best known rivers are:
— the Murray (2,600 km long);
—the Darling (the Murray’s tributary; is the longest river in Australia — 2,740
km).
Massive salt lakes are often dry for long periods. They are fed by a large river
system which carries water to fill them. The largest lake is Lake Eyre.

Political system of Australia

5
 Parliament House in Canberra was opened in 1988 replacing the provisional Par-
liament House building opened in 1927.
The Commonwealth of Australia is a constitutional monarchy with a parliamen-
tary system of government. Queen Elizabeth II is the Queen of Australia, a role that is
distinct from her position as monarch of the other Commonwealth Realms. The Queen
is represented by the Governor-General at Federal level and by the Governors at State
level. Although the Constitution gives extensive executive powers to the Governor-Gen-
eral, these are normally exercised only on the advice of the Prime Minister. The most
notable exercise of the Governor-General's reserve powers outside the Prime Minister's
direction was the dismissal of the Whitlam Government in the constitutional crisis of
1975.
There are three branches of government:
 The legislature: the Commonwealth Parliament, comprising the Queen, the
Senate, and the House of Representatives; the Queen is represented by the Governor-
General, whose powers are limited to assenting to laws.
 The executive: the Federal Executive Council (the Governor-General as ad-
vised by the Executive Councillors); in practice, the councillors are the Prime Minister
and Ministers of State.
 The judiciary: the High Court of Australia and other federal courts. The
State courts became formally independent from the Judicial Committee of the Privy
Council when the Australia Act was passed in 1986.
The bicameral Commonwealth Parliament consists of the Queen, the Senate (the
upper house) of 76 senators, and a House of Representatives (the lower house) of 150
members. Members of the lower house are elected from single-member constituencies,
commonly known as 'electorates' or 'seats'. Seats in the House of Representatives are al-
located to states on the basis of population. In the Senate, each state, regardless of popu-
lation, is represented by 12 senators, while the territories (the ACT and the NT) are each
represented by two. Elections for both chambers are held every three years; typically
only half of the Senate seats are put to each election, because senators have overlapping
six-year terms. The party with majority support in the House of Representatives forms
Government, with its leader becoming Prime Minister.
There are three major political parties: the Labor Party, the Liberal Party and the
National Party. Independent members and several minor parties — including the Greens
and the Australian Democrats — have achieved representation in Australian parlia-
ments, mostly in upper houses. Since the 1996 election, the Liberal/National Coalition
led by the Prime Minister, John Howard, has been in power in Canberra. In the 2004
election, the Coalition won control of the Senate - the first time in more than 20 years
that a party (or coalition) has done so while in government. The Labor Party is in power
in every state and territory. Voting is compulsory for all enrolled citizens 18 years and
over in each state and territory and at the federal level.
Demography

6
 According to the 1986 census, the total population was just over 15.5 million. By
1992 the population had risen to 17.5 million, and in 1996 it reached 18.3 million. In the
year 2000, that number is expected to reach 19 million. In 1997, 4.3 million (23 percent)
residents were born overseas. Roughly 2 percent of the population consists of Aborigi-
nal or Torres Strait Islander people, descendants of the original inhabitants of the conti-
nent before European colonization. This sector of the population has a higher birthrate
than do the others, but also has a higher mortality rate and lower life expectancy. In
1996 the population self-identifying as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander was
372,000, probably about the same as in 1788; many of those people have both Aborigi-
nal and non-Aboriginal ancestry.
Linguistic Affiliation.
The dominant language since colonization has been English, with little multi-lin-
gualism among the majority population. Nevertheless, both the diverse Aboriginal
groups and many immigrants continue to use languages other than English.
Before the European invasion there were around 250 Aboriginal languages, most
of which probably had distinct dialects. Perhaps ninety of these languages are still spo-
ken, with around twenty being spoken fluently by indigenous children. The decline in
the use of Aboriginal languages is due to the effects of colonization. Among some Abo-
riginal groups, especially in parts of the north, a number of distinctive creole dialects
mix Aboriginal languages with English.
Apart from indigenous languages, some twelve major community languages are
spoken at home by at least fifty thousand speakers. These are, in order of the number of
speakers, Italian, Greek, Chinese, Serbo-Croatian, Arabic, German, Vietnamese, Span-
ish, Polish, Macedonian, Filipino languages, and Maltese. Melbourne is the most multi-
lingual city. Migrant groups want their languages to be maintained through government
policies such as the Languages Other Than English (LOTE) program in secondary
schools.
Australian English probably originated as a combination of British regional di-
alects used by groups of convicts and others who came to the colonies. Australian Eng-
lish is different from British and American English but does not vary much regionally.
Various social factors affect accent and style, including social class, education, gender
(women tend to use the cultivated variety more than men do), and age.

Symbolism

7
 The flag is dark blue with the British Union Jack in the upper left corner, the
seven– pointed white Commonwealth star below the Union Jack, and to the right five
white stars representing the Southern Cross constellation. The national animal emblem
is the kangaroo, the floral emblem is the golden wattle tree, and the national colors are
green and gold. The national coat of arms is a shield supported by a kangaroo and an
emu amid branches of wattle. Until 1984 the national anthem was the British "God Save
the Queen," but it was changed to "Advance Australia Fair" as part of a movement to-
ward asserting greater separation from the legacy of the colonial power.
These formal symbols have assisted in the establishment of a national conscious-
ness. A highly symbolic national event held annually is Anzac Day which marks the
landing and subsequent gallant defeat of Australian troops at Gallipoli during World
War I. Throughout the country war memorials and monuments acknowledge the
achievements and sacrifices made by Australians in that and other wars.
Flora and fauna native to the continent, such as the kangaroo, koala, emu, and
wattle, are symbols of the national ethos, especially in international and national con-
texts, although this is also the case for unique buildings such as the Sydney Harbour
Bridge and the Sydney Opera House. The beach is recognized as a symbol of the na-
tional culture.

Fauna

8
 The isolated geographical position of Australia had great influence on its fauna
and flora. That is why many animals and plants developed differently from those on
other continents.
Australia is a land of birds and animals which can not be found anywhere else in
the world. Australia’s endemic animals and birds are:
 the kangaroo
 the koala
 the wombat
 the echidna
 the platypus
 the dingo (wild dog)
 the emu
 the kookaburra
The most peculiar feature of Australian animals is the pouch (that is a kind of a
pocket). The best known of them are the kangaroo and the koala bear.

Kangaroos are the largest marsupials and inhabit forest and bushland in Australia
and Tasmania. It has large hind legs, a strong tail, small forelegs, and long ears. They
usually get around by hopping.  
Females have a pouch for carrying their young. The pregnancy may be as short as
25 days but the young are born prematurely so they must live in the pouch for up to
eight months.
Kangaroos live in Australia, Tasmania, New Guinea, and New Zealand. The
largest is the gray kangaroo, which can be over 2 m (7 ft.) tall and almost 3 m (10 ft.)
long. It can weigh 80 kg. (200 lbs.). Other members in the kangaroo family are red kan-
garoos, wallabies, and rat kangaroos. 

The koala is known as the Australian bear, but is much closer to being a relative
of the kangaroo. They are only found wild in the woods of Australia. Koalas are arbo-
real marsupials living in Queensland and Victoria. They eat the leaves on the eucalyptus
trees.

9
 Koalas are 2 to 2 1/2 feet long, tailless, and have thick, soft, grayish fur. They
have large furry ears, a curved, black nose, little eyes, and five toes on each foot so it
can hold on to things and climb.

Echidnas are egg-laying mammals. They have strong bodies, short legs, and large
feet and claws. They use their claws to dig up and eat ants, termites, and worms. They
are covered with coarse hair and spines.  
Female echidnas lay eggs which hatch in 7-10 days. When the young come out,
they stay in the mother's pouch for 6-8 weeks. During that time they nurse and develop
a spine. The average life span for an echidna is over 50 years. Humans are the only
longer living mammals. Echidnas can get to be 50 cm. (20 in.) and can weigh 6.5 kg.
(14 lbs.).

The platypus or duck-billed platypus is an egg laying mammal of Eastern Aus-

tralia. It has a duck-like bill, and wide, flat tail. It is about 61 cm. (24 in.) long and
weighs about 1.8 kg. (4 lbs.).  It has dark brown or yellow fur and its webbed feet and
tail help it to swim. Males have poison spurs on their hind feet that kill small animals
and wound larger ones. Using plates on its bill it crushes and eats worms, mollusks,
crustaceans, and plants.
Mating takes place in early spring. The female digs a hole about 4.5-18 m (15-60
ft.) deep. There she builds a nest and usually lays two eggs. They hatch in about eight to
ten days and nurse for about 5 months. The average life span is about 10 years.
They usually live by a river bank. They are able to move around on land, but they
have to walk on their knuckles because their webbing gets in the way.

Dingoes are not native to Australia but they were introduced to it so long ago that
they might as well be. Some dingoes have been domesticated, but most are wild. People

10
do not generally like dingoes because they go after sheep and cattle although they have
helped by killing small (or large) rodents.  
 Since they have been introduced to Australia, the number of marsupial wolves
and Tasmanian devils have dropped to almost nothing while on Tasmania they still
thrive. This may be because the dingo actually hunts them or just because there is less
prey. Whatever the reason, though, they are quickly becoming extinct on the mainland.
Dingoes look like wild dogs and can be dark brown, reddish or black, and sometimes
they have spots, lop ears and upswept tails. They have been known to go after sheep,
cattle, other dingoes intruding on their territory, and small rodents, such as rabbits, Tas-
manian devils, and marsupial wolves. Sometimes, they will even go after kangaroos.

Flora
Most of the Gondwanan forests were replaced by tough-leaved open forests of eu-
calypts and acacias. Some isolated remnants of the ancient Gondwanan forests remain.
These include the cool and warm temperate rainforests of Tasmania and eastern Aus-
tralia and the dry rainforests or scrub forests of northern Australia. These forests have
high conservation values.

In 1994, the Wollemi Pine was found in a remote valley in the Blue Mountains of
New South Wales. It is believed to be representative of a now extinct group of trees that
existed at the time of the dinosaurs, making it a species that has been around for 65 mil-
lion years.
There are now an estimated 20 000 vascular and 7700 non-vascular plants, and
250 000 species of fungi in Australia. Plants include living fossils such as the cycad
palm and the grass tree, and brilliant wildflowers such as the waratah, Sturt’s desert pea,
banksia and kangaroo paws

Australia has over 1000 species of acacia, which Australians call ‘wattle’, and
around 2800 species in the Myrtaceae family, which includes eucalypts (or gum trees)
and melaleucas.

11
 Wildflowers, including everlasting daisies, turn the arid and savanna grassland ar-
eas of Australia into carpets of colour after rain. Native forests are limited to wetter
coastal districts, and rainforests are found mainly in Queensland.

The high diversity of flora includes large numbers of species in ecologically sig-
nificant genera such as Acacia, Eucalyptus, Melaleuca, Grevillea and Allocasuarina.
Acacias tend to dominate in drier inland parts of Australia, while eucalypts dominate in
wetter parts. Australia’s unique flora includes the Proteaceae family of Banksia, Dryan-
dra, Grevillea, Hakea and Telopea (waratah).
The most common vegetation types today are those that have adapted to arid con-
ditions, where the land has not been cleared for agriculture. The dominant type of vege-
tation in Australia—23 per cent—is the hummock grasslands in Western Australia,
South Australia and the Northern Territory. In the east eucalypt woodlands are preva-
lent, and in the west there are Acacia forests, woodlands and shrublands. Tussock
grasslands are found largely in Queensland.

12
 Sport in Australia

A lot of Australians think you shouldn't worry too much about life. But some
things in life are really important, and to many Australian men, one of these things is
sport. It's something they don't joke about. Sport matters. In pubs, clubs and even at
work you'll often find men who can talk about only one thing — sport. Australians are
lucky. They have a perfect climate, and an endless amount of land. They have wonder-
ful waves f 01 surfers on their beaches. They also have a strong wish to win. Put these
together and you get a lot of good sportsmen and women. In fact, Australia has a very
high number of world champions, in all kinds of sports, for a country of only 16 million
people. Around the country you'll find plenty of opportunities for ilf, squash, tennis,
trail riding (horse or motorcycle), fishing and so on. Surfing is almost a religion for
many Australians who follow the waves around the country and there are a number of
important surfing contests.

You'll find football of assorted types including the unique Australian Rules Foot-
ball. Then, there's motor racing and motorcycle racing, horse racing, yacht racing,
cricket matches and lots more. The best thing, of course, is to play sport yourself. But if
you can't, or you don't want to, then you can watch other people doing it. Every year,
more than 100,000 people go to the final of Australian Rules Football. Crowds of more
than 90,000 watch the big cricket matches against India, Pakistan, New Zealand and
England.

13
 There are sport happenings and holidays in Australia year round. Here are some
of them. In February there's Regatta Day with boat races and other water activities. In
June in Darwin the Beer Can Regatta takes place when there are boat races for boats
constructed entirely out of beer cans — there are plenty of those in the world's beer
drinking capital. In August in the Northern Territory camel racing is on in Alice
Springs, arid then the Apex Rodeo is held, one of the biggest rodeo in Australia — the
town fills up with cowboys. Meanwhile in Sydney, Australians biggest race takes place
with 25,000 competitors running the 14 km from Hyde Park to Bondi Beach in the city
ace. It is a public holiday in Victoria but the whole country shuts down for the three
minutes or so which the race takes. In December the Sydney-Hobart Yacht Race starts
on the 26th, a fantastic sight as the yachts stream out of the harbour and head south. 

14