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		Living Down Under - Outback & Co
		Australia - smallest continent, biggest island: some figures
		Australia covers an area of 7,682,300 km². That makes it the sixth biggest country in the world (after Canada, Russia, China, the US and Brazil). The smallest and driest continent of the world is 22 times as big as Germany. Australian citizens are a multicultural society with immigrants from 200 different countries. Australia´s population totals a number of about 18.261.000 (July ´96). This means that there is an average rate of only about 2,4 Ozzies per square kilometer (Germany: 222 inhabitants/km2).        Most of the Australians live in the eastern and the southwestern parts of the country. Before the 1950s a majority of people still lived in the rural parts that are known as "the outback", nowadays. But lots of Australians left the rural and remote parts of the country in the 1960s. Today cities like Sydney (3,9 mill.), Melbourne (3,3 mill.), Brisbane (1,5 mill.), Perth (1,3 mill.), Adelaide (1,0 mill.), Canberra (307,000) and the other urbanized areas are a home to 85% of the population.       Life in these cities can be compared to life in every other European or American city. Ozzies drive on the left side of the street, find the sun in the north at noon and watch their water rushing down the sink anti-clockwise. But apart from those little differences...        Consider my local city-webs for further information on each town, please. On this topic you should also check out this interactive map of Australia that offers unique entries to cool places and links all over the Fifth Continent (heavily recommended, but don´t forget to come back!).
		Christoph.Hage@ruhr-uni-bochum.de Last update: 26/03/02.