AustraliaAustralia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands. Australia is the largest country by area in Oceania and the world's sixth-largest country. Australia is the oldest, flattest, and driest inhabited continent, with the least fertile soils. It is a megadiverse country, and its size gives it a wide variety of landscapes and climates, with deserts in the centre, tropical rainforests in the north-east, tropical savannas in the north, and mountain ranges in the south-east.
Australian Aboriginal cultureAustralian Aboriginal culture includes a number of practices and ceremonies centered on a belief in the Dreamtime and other mythology. Reverence and respect for the land and oral traditions are emphasised. Over 300 languages and other groupings have developed a wide range of individual cultures. Due the colonization of Australia under terra nullius concept these cultures were treated as one monoculture. Australian Aboriginal art has existed for thousands of years and ranges from ancient rock art to modern watercolour landscapes.
Indigenous AustraliansIndigenous Australians are people with familial heritage from, and membership in, the ethnic groups that lived in areas within the Australian continent before British colonisation. They consist of two distinct groups: the Aboriginal peoples of the Australian mainland and Tasmania, and the Torres Strait Islander peoples from the seas between Queensland and Papua New Guinea.
Aboriginal AustraliansAboriginal Australians are the various indigenous peoples of the Australian mainland and many of its islands, but excluding the ethnically distinct people of the Torres Strait Islands. The term "Indigenous Australians" is applied to Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islanders collectively. People first migrated to Australia at least 65,000 years ago and formed as many as 500 language-based groups. They have a broadly shared, complex genetic history, but only in the last 200 years were they defined as, and started to self-identify as, a single group.
MelbourneMelbourne (ˈmɛlbərn ; Boonwurrung/Woiwurrung: Narrm or Naarm) is the capital of the Australian state of Victoria, and the second-most populous city in Australia (although the most populous in its contiguous urban area). Its name generally refers to a metropolitan area known as Greater Melbourne, comprising an urban agglomeration of 31 local municipalities, although the name is also used specifically for the local municipality of City of Melbourne based around its central business area.
