M5- Learner Manual

2. Australian Land Mass

Australia is a land of contrast and comprises a land area of about 7.692 million square kilometres.

Although this is just five per cent of the world's land mass (149.45 million square kilometres), Australia is the planet's sixth largest country after Russia, Canada, China, the United States of America and Brazil. It is also the only one of the largest six nations that is completely surrounded by water.

Australia's land mass is:

·                     almost as great as that of the United States of America

·                     about 50 per cent greater than Europe, (excluding Russia) and

·                     32 times greater than the United Kingdom.

Geographical and climatic features

Australia is the lowest, flattest, and oldest continental landmass on Earth It is the smallest of the world's continent and apart from Antarctica it is the driest.

The highest point on the Australian mainland is Mount Kosciuszko, New South Wales, at 2228 metres above sea level. The lowest point is the dry bed of Lake Eyre, South Australia, which is 15 metres below sea level.

The mainland and Tasmania are surrounded by many thousands of small islands and numerous larger ones. Nearly 40 per cent of the total coastline length comprises island coastlines. As an island nation, coastlines play an important role in defining national, state and territory boundaries.

Nearly 20 per cent of Australia's land mass is classified as desert. As well as having a low average annual rainfall, rainfall across Australia is also variable. The rainfall pattern is concentric around the extensive arid core of the continent, with rainfall intensity high in the tropics and some coastal areas.

Climatic zones range from tropical rainforests, deserts and cool temperature forests to snow covered mountains.

Within this climate, our plants and animals have evolved on a geographically isolated continent, through a time of a slowly drying climate, combined with continuing high variability. The uniqueness of much of Australia's flora and fauna is thus at least partly due to these features of our climate.

Torres Strait Islands

When considering the land and sea of Indigenous Australia, it important to remember the significance of the island nations that are not part of the mainland such as the Torres Strait Islands and the Tiwi Islands.

Whilst it is a relatively small part of Australia geographically, the Torres Strait is home to 4,514 Torres Strait Islander people according to the 2016 Census of these 50.8% were male and 49.2% were female. Although a relatively small geographical part of Australia, it does have at least four (4) types of topography.

 

The Torres Strait Regional Authority (TSRA) website states that it works fifteen (15) outer island communities, reaching from the northern most point of Australia to the border of Papua New Guinea. Our communities are made up of diverse traditional language and dialect groups. 

The Torres Strait Islands are distributed across an area of some 48 000 km². The distance across the Strait from Cape York to Papua New Guinea is around 150 km at the narrowest point; the islands lie scattered in between, extending some 200 to 300 km from farthest east to farthest west.

The Torres Strait was formerly a land bridge which connected the present-day Australian continent with Papua New Guinea. This land bridge was submerged by rising sea levels forming the Strait which now connects the Arafura and Coral seas. Many of the western Torres Strait Islands are actually the remaining peaks of this land bridge.

The islands and their surrounding waters and reefs provide a highly diverse set of land and marine ecosystems, with niches for many rare or unique species. Marine animals of the islands include dugongs (an endangered species of sea mammal), as well as Green, Hawksbill and Flatback Sea turtles and saltwater crocodiles.

Geographically, the islands in the Torres Strait can be divided into four main groups: an eastern group of high volcanic islands; a central group of low sandy islands; a western group of high islands composed of granite and other volcanic rocks; and a northern group of low islands composed of mangrove muds and peats.

 Source: http://www.tsra.gov.au