Australia

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CONTINENTS SHAPE MEN as surely as men shape continents, and rugged, resuve Australia has bred a people to match its perverse grandeur. The country's short history dates only from the end of the American Revolution.
Searching the world for a place to send prisoners from overcrowded jails, Britain decided on empty Australia. The First Fleet —loaded with convicts and a contingent of freemen, Australia's first setders —sailed into Sydney Cove in 1788. The men and women aboard, and others who followed, gradually transformed their new home into the vigorous young nation of today.
Each in his own way discovered Australia—the world's smallest, flattest, oldest, and driest continent—so will you, within the 220 pages of this special Publication. Three writers and three photographers spanned the country to bring you this up-to-the-minute book. Specially commissioned maps and drawings, 229 color photographs,... Tovább

Fülszöveg

«¦IP
ii ti,i| «1*
t
ll'
11


t V.'i'
fl' n'.i I! ; ¦
I t i . i .: I ¦

CONTINENTS SHAPE MEN as surely as men shape continents, and rugged, resuve Australia has bred a people to match its perverse grandeur. The country's short history dates only from the end of the American Revolution.
Searching the world for a place to send prisoners from overcrowded jails, Britain decided on empty Australia. The First Fleet —loaded with convicts and a contingent of freemen, Australia's first setders —sailed into Sydney Cove in 1788. The men and women aboard, and others who followed, gradually transformed their new home into the vigorous young nation of today.
Each in his own way discovered Australia—the world's smallest, flattest, oldest, and driest continent—so will you, within the 220 pages of this special Publication. Three writers and three photographers spanned the country to bring you this up-to-the-minute book. Specially commissioned maps and drawings, 229 color photographs, and the Society's political-physical map complete the portrait of the nation, its lusty people, its unique flora and fauna.
Cuddly koalas, kangaroos, flightless birds seven feet tall, and trees that shed their bark and retain their leaves captivate visitors. Sheep stations the-size of medieval kingdoms sprawl across the harsh interior, where drought constantly threatens and sometimes devastates. Giant road trains, diesel ' trucks with 22 gears, haul cattle hundreds of miles to market. Miners gouge gold, iron, lead, zinc, and other minerals from eroded hills.
In the hot "Red Centre," monolithic Ayers Rock crouches like an animal on the monotonous landscape. Tortured, sun-baked desert covers a third of the continent, producing a climate, as Mark Twain said, "which nothing can stand except a few of the hardier kinds of rocks."
Most Australians turn their backs on the hostile inland and live in or close to coastal cities: lively Sydney; dignified Melbourne; Brisbane, near-neighbor of the Great Barrier Reef; friendly Perth; Adelaide, home of a renowned arts festival; and Hobart, once a busy whaling port, on the island state of Tasmania.
Australia—a land as ancient as time and as new as tomorrow — welcomes you. Vissza