This article will provide information on the list of the 16 cities in Australia and their capitals, a brief history of Australia and also provide answers to questions with regard to Australia as a country.
The history of Australia is the story of the land and peoples of the continent of Australia. Aboriginal Australians first arrived on the Australian mainland by sea from Maritime Southeast Asia between 50,000 and 65,000 years ago, and penetrated to all parts of the continent, from the rainforests in the north, the deserts of the centre, and the sub-Antarctic islands of Tasmania and Bass Strait. The artistic, musical and spiritual traditions they established are among the longest surviving such traditions in human history. The first Torres Strait Islanders - ethnically and culturally distinct from Aboriginal Australians - arrived from what is now Papua New Guinea around 2,500 years ago, and settled in the islands of the Torres Strait and the Cape York Peninsula forming the northern tip of the Australian landmass. The first known landing in Australia by Europeans was in 1606 by Dutch navigator Willem Janszoon. Later that year, Spanish explorer Luís Vaz de Torres sailed through, and navigated, what is now called Torres Strait and associated islands. Twenty-nine other Dutch navigators explored the western and southern coasts in the 17th century and named the continent New Holland. Macassan trepangers visited Australia's northern coasts after 1720, possibly earlier. Other European explorers followed until, in 1770, Lieutenant James Cook charted the east coast of Australia for Great Britain. He returned to London with accounts favouring colonisation at Botany Bay (now in Sydney). The First Fleet of British ships arrived at Botany Bay in January 1788 to establish a penal colony, the first colony on the Australian mainland. In the century that followed, the British established other colonies on the continent, and European explorers ventured into its interior. Indigenous Australians were greatly weakened and their numbers diminished by introduced diseases and conflict with the colonists during this period. Gold rushes and agricultural industries brought prosperity. Autonomous parliamentary democracies began to be established throughout the six British colonies from the mid-19th century. The colonies voted by referendum to unite in a federation in 1901, and modern Australia came into being. Australia fought on the side of Britain in the two world wars and became a long-standing ally of the United States when threatened by Imperial Japan during World War II. Trade with Asia increased and a post-war immigration program received more than 6.5 million migrants from every continent. Supported by immigration of people from almost every country in the world since the end of World War II, the population increased to more than 25.5 million by 2020, with 30 per cent of the population born overseas. Indigenous Australians are believed to have arrived in Australia 50,000 to 65,000 years ago. They developed a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, established enduring spiritual and artistic traditions and used a range of technologies adapted to their environments. Recent estimates of the Indigenous population at the time of British settlement range from 500,000 to one million. There is considerable archaeological discussion as to the route taken by the first colonisers. People appear to have arrived by sea during a period of glaciation, when New Guinea and Tasmania were joined to the continent; however, the journey still required sea travel, making them among the world's earliest mariners. Scott Cane wrote in 2013 that the first wave may have been prompted by the eruption of Lake Toba. If they arrived around 70,000 years ago, they could have crossed the water from Timor, when the sea level was low, but if they came later, around 50,000 years ago, a more likely route would have been through the Moluccas to New Guinea. Given that the likely landfall regions have been under around 50 metres of water for the last 15,000 years, it is unlikely that the timing will ever be established with certainty. The oldest known sites of human occupation in Australia are in Arnhem Land in the north of the continent and have been dated to between 50,000 and 65,000 BP. The population spread into a range of very different environments. Devil's Lair in the extreme south-west of the continent was occupied around 47,000 BP and Tasmania by 39,000 BP. The earliest known human remains in Australia were found at Lake Mungo, a dry lake in the southwest of New South Wales, and are about 40,000 years old. Remains found at Mungo suggest one of the world's oldest known cremations, thus indicating early evidence for religious ritual among humans. Although a theory of Portuguese discovery in the 1520s exists, it lacks definitive evidence. The Dutch East India Company ship, Duyfken, captained by Willem Janszoon, made the first documented European landing in Australia in 1606. That same year, a Spanish expedition sailing in nearby waters and led by Portuguese navigator Pedro Fernandes de Queirós had landed in the New Hebrides and, believing them to be the fabled southern continent, named the land "Austrialia del Espiritu Santo" (Southern Land of the Holy Spirit), in honour of his queen Margaret of Austria, the wife of Philip III of Spain. Later that year, Queirós' deputy Luís Vaz de Torres sailed to the north of Australia through Torres Strait, along New Guinea's southern coast. The Dutch contributed a great deal to Europe's knowledge of Australia's coast. In 1616, Dirk Hartog, sailing off course, en route from the Cape of Good Hope to Batavia, landed on an island off Shark Bay, Western Australia. In 1622–23 the Leeuwin made the first recorded rounding of the south west corner of the continent, and gave her name to Cape Leeuwin. The breaking of the Federation Drought in 1903 heralded a period of strong economic growth. The economy grew by 75 per cent in the fourteen years to the outbreak of the First World War, with pastoralism, construction, manufacturing and government services leading the way. Rural industries were still the major employer (accounting for a quarter of all jobs) but manufacturing was fast catching up. While employment grew by 30 per cent over the period, employment in manufacturing increased by almost 70 per cent. The Australian population also grew strongly, driven by a fall in infant mortality, increasing adult life expectancy, and a revival in state-subsidised immigration. The population increased from four million in 1901 to five million in 1914. From 1910 to 1914 just under 300,000 migrants arrived, all white, and almost all from Britain.
It will interest you to know that Australia is divided into six states (New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania, Victoria, and Western Australia), three internal territories (the Australian Capital Territory, the Jervis Bay Territory, and the Northern Territory), and seven external territories (Ashmore and Cartier Islands, the Australian Antarctic Territory, Christmas Island, the Cocos (Keeling) Islands, the Coral Sea Islands, Heard Island and McDonald Islands, and Norfolk Island). Here are the list of the 16 cities in Australia and their capitals.
It is a State in Australia which occupies about 809,952 kilometer square. It has Sydney as its capital.
It is a State in Australia which occupies about 1,851,736 kilometer square. It has Brisbane as its capital.
It is a State in Australia which occupies about 1,044,353 kilometer square. It has Adelaide as its capital.
It is a State in Australia which occupies about 90,758 kilometer square. It has Hobart as its capital.
It is a State in Australia which occupies about 237,657 kilometer square. It has Melbourne as its capital.
It is a State in Australia which occupies about 2,642,753 kilometer square. It has Perth as its capital.
It is a territory in Australia which occupies about 2,358 kilometer square. It has Canberra as its capital.
It is a territory in Australia which occupies about 67 kilometer square. It has Jervis Bay Village as its capital.
It is a territory in Australia which occupies about 1,419,630 kilometer square. It has Darwin as its capital.
It is a external territory in Australia which occupies about 199 kilometer square. It does not have a capital.
It is a external territory in Australia which occupies about 5,896,500 kilometer square. It has Davis Station as its capital.
It is a external territory in Australia which occupies about 135 kilometer square. It has Flying Fish Cove as its capital.
It is a external territory in Australia which occupies about 14 kilometer square. It has West Island as its capital.
It is a external territory in Australia which occupies about 780,000 kilometer square. It has Willis Island as its capital.
It is a external territory in Australia which occupies about 372 kilometer square. It has Atlas Cove as its capital.
It is a external territory in Australia which occupies about 35 kilometer square. It has Kingston as its capital.
On January 26, 1788, Captain Arthur Phillip guides a fleet of 11 British ships carrying convicts to the colony of New South Wales, effectively founding Australia. Australia, once known as New South Wales, was originally planned as a penal colony.
After British colonisation, the name New Holland was retained for several decades and the south polar continent continued to be called Terra Australis, sometimes shortened to Australia.
While Indigenous Australians have inhabited the continent for tens of thousands of years, and traded with nearby islanders, the first documented landing on Australia by a European was in 1606. The Dutch explorer Willem Janszoon landed on the western side of Cape York Peninsula and charted about 300 km of coastline.
According to Richards, the beginning of our Australian accent emerged following the arrival of European settlers in 1788. "It emerged from a process called levelling down because you had all these people who came here on 11 ships from different dialect areas, regional dialect areas across England," he said.
The land is 4.5 billion years old. The nation Australia was formed in 1901 by amalgamating a group of British Colonies on the land at that time.
Australia has a number of political divisions that include New South Wales, Queensland, Northern Territory, Western Australia, South Australia, Victoria, the Australian Capital Territory, and Tasmania.
Mainland Australia is the world's largest island but the smallest continent. The country is divided into six states and two territories.
Unlike a state, territories do not have legislations to create laws for themselves, so they rely on the federal government to create and approve the laws. Territories are not claimed by any state so the Australian Parliament directly controls them.
The capital city of Australia is Canberra, federal capital of the Commonwealth of Australia. It occupies part of the Australian Capital Territory (ACT), in southeastern Australia, and is about 150 miles (240 km) southwest of Sydney.