Australia is a country in the southern hemisphere comprising the mainland of the world's smallest continent, the major island of Tasmania, and a number of other islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. The neighbouring countries are Indonesia, East Timor, and Papua New Guinea to the north, the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, and New Caledonia to the north-east, and New Zealand to the south-east.

Population
At the time of Australian Federation in 1901, the rate of natural increase was 14.9 persons per 1,000 population. The rate increased to a peak of 17.4 per thousand population in the years 1912, 1913 and 1914. During the Great Depression, the rate declined to a low of 7.1 per thousand population in 1934 and 1935.

Immediately after the Second World War, in the mid to late 1940s, the rate increased sharply as a result of the beginning of the Post-World War II baby boom and the immigration of many young people who then had children in Australia, with a plateau of rates of over 13.0 persons per 1,000 population for every year from 1946 to 1962.

There has been a fall in the rate of natural increase since 1962 due to falling fertility. In 1971 the rate of natural increase was 12.7 persons per 1,000 population; a decade later it had fallen to 8.5. In 1996 the rate of natural increase fell below seven for the first time, with the downward trend continuing in the late 1990s.

Population projections by the Australian Bureau of Statistics indicate that continued low fertility, combined with the increase in deaths from an ageing population, will result in natural increase falling below zero sometime in the mid 2030s.

However in 2006 the fertility rate rose to 1.81, one of the highest rate in the OECD, arguably as a result of some pro-fertility state and federal government campaigns, including the Federal Government's Baby Bonus.

Natural Resources
Australia comprises of a vast variety with regards to It's natural resources, these include bauxite, coal, iron ore, copper, tin, gold, silver, uranium, nickel, tungsten, mineral sands, lead, zinc, diamonds , natural gas, petroleum.

Fauna & Flora
Australia’s best-known animals are the kangaroo, koala, platypus, wombat and spiny anteater. Isolation enabled the Australian continent to become a sanctuary for marsupials - mammals that suckle their young in pouches.

Among Australia’s marsupials are grazing animals, tree climbers, amphibians, earth burrowers, and the counterparts of cats and dogs and rats and mice. There are about 50 species of kangaroo, ranging from some that stand as tall as a man to others as small as cats.

Pictured is a koala with her cub. Of the bird species listed in Australia, 400 - including the large, flightless emu - are found nowhere else. Isolation also allowed for the development of strange birds - as strange as the kangaroo and the koala. They range from tiny honeyeaters to the flightless emu which stands nearly two metres tall.

Australia has 20,000 species of plants, including living fossils such as the cycad palm and the grass tree, and brilliant wildflowers such as the waratah, Sturt’s desert pea, the flowering cones of banksia trees, and the red and green kangaroo paw.

The continent has 700 species of acacia, which Australians call wattle, and 1,200 species in the Myrtaceae family which includes eucalypts or gum trees. Wildflowers turn the arid and savanna grassland areas of Australia into carpets of colour after rain. Native forests are limited mainly to wetter coastal districts and rainforests are mainly in Queensland.

Climate
The climate of Australia varies widely, but by far the largest part of Australia is desert or semi-arid – 40% of the landmass is covered by sand dunes. Only the south-east and south-west corners have a temperate climate and moderately fertile soil.

The northern part of the country has a tropical climate: part is tropical rainforests, part grasslands, and part desert. Rainfall is highly variable, with frequent droughts lasting several seasons thought to be caused in part by the El Niño-Southern Oscillation.

Occasionally a duststorm will blanket a region or even several states and there are reports of the occasional large tornado. Rising levels of salinity and desertification in some areas is ravaging the landscape.

Language
Australia consists of a population of about 19,913,144.

170,000 are of Aboriginal descent, of whom 47,000 have some knowledge of an Aboriginal language. National or official language: English. Includes Cocos Islands (569 in 1981), Christmas Island (3,000 in 1983), and Norfolk Island (1,800 in 1985). Literacy rate: 99%.

Also includes Adyghe, Afrikaans (12,655), Assyrian Neo-Aramaic (30,000), Basque, Chaldean Neo-Aramaic, Eastern Yiddish, Estonian, Fijian Hindustani, Greek (106,677), Hebrew and many other languages of Europe.

Religion
The 2006 census identified that 64% of Australians call themselves Christian: 26% identifying themselves as Roman Catholic and 19% as Anglican. Five percent of Australians identify themselves as followers of non-Christian religions, and 19% categorised as having "No Religion"; 12% declined to answer or did not give a response adequate for interpretation.

As in many Western countries, the level of active participation in church worship is much lower than this; weekly attendance at church services is about 1.5 million, about 7.5% of the population.

According to the census, the fastest growing religions during the intercensal period between 2001 and 2006 were: Hinduism by 55.2 percent, Non-religion by 27.5 percent, Islam by 20.9 percent, Buddhist affiliation increased by 17 percent, and Judaism by 6 percent.

Christianity was the only religion to show negative growth, with the number of followers falling by 0.6 percent.


-information courtesy of wikipedia